Mickey

I think Jabari Greer stays and Eric King goes. Price makes the roster, Sam Aiken? Maybe not. If I were Roscoe or Josh Reed, I would be worried about getting beat out by a camp wonder, especially that 6-4 UDFA we signed.

That has an added bonus, it slows the defense down a bit on third down because they have to worry about that swing pass, especially a defense that blitzes like mad, sending guy in from all over the place, like New England.

Taking him out on 3rd downs kind of took him out of the passing game quite a bit. That drove me crazy all year. The problem with situational subs like that is it tips your hand to the defense which is the last thing you want to do on 3rd down. Seems to me you should have your best players on the field on 3rd down just as much as you would on 1st and 2nd.

I didn't address the Joseph thing. I personally would have had no problem with a trade down to get Joseph assuming we would still have been able to trade up and get McCargo. That is because, for me, I think G was a need about as big as DT or SS. However, I don't think the Bills' staff are idiots for rating DT and SS as higher needs than OG, especially after signing Reyes. If we traded down and got Joseph and McCargo, I would have been satisfied though we would have had real problems at SS since I don't think much at all of the guys that were taken after Whitner such as Bullock, Manning and Pollard. Too slow. In any event, given their rating of DT and SS as the overriding needs, I think they did a credible job in getting the top guys available at those positions when they were taken.

I am with you on your criticisms of drafts past. I don't really see the resemblance between those drafts and the one Marv just completed that you see however. Whitner was the best SS on the board when we took him and SS was a position of need. McCargo was the second best penetrating DT on the board and the best one still on the board when we took him at 26. DT was a position we really needed to fill. I think that is different then taking Parrish when we already have Moulds and Evans at WR. We didn't need a WR anywhere near as bad as we needed a G and the second round would have been just the place to get a good value at G. Same with taking Willis when we had Henry and Steinbach was on the board. I have posted many times that we might have been better off with Steinbach so you are preaching to the choir here. This draft was a different situation. Back then we took Willis when we had Henry and arguably, did not need to get another RB. Willis was a luxury, an upgrade to an already satisfactorily manned position. Steinbach was there and we were in dire need of a decent guard but passed him up for the Willis upgrade. This year, we really, really needed a DT who can penetrate and a SS. We lost Milloy at SS leaving Wire and a mediocre FA. At DT, we have lost the top 4 DT's on the roster over the last two years and on top of that, we are switching to a defense for which a solid, penetrating DT is vital. SS and DT were definitely needs that had to be filled unlike the drafting of Willis over Steinbach when we already had Travis Henry. We agree on the past drafts, we just disagree over whether this draft is a departure from those awful drafts. As for Clements, I am not his biggest fan. I know that Bill Belichek loved to run the naked WR screens to his side because he, unlike Winfield at the time, often missed the tackle turning a 2 yard play into a 62 yard play. He had a poor year last year and given the contract situation, he might be gone next year.

I agree John. Once you accept that our top needs going in to the draft were at SS and DT, then what they did on draft day pretty much makes sense. A reasonable argument could be made that OG or OT was a bigger need than one of those two or maybe that Leinart was just too special to pass up. Basically though, if you accept their judgment on how badly we needed a SS and a DT, how much can you object to their having obtained the best SS in the draft and the 2nd best penetrating DT in the draft? At the end of the day, that is what we ended up with regardless of whether they could have been taken with slightly lower round picks. I don't think it would have been insanity to trade down and hope Whitner lasted although, if they had and he was gone before pick 15 as would Bunkley have been, I don't know who the heck they would have drafted that would have made any sense there. I have asked people in favor of the trade down with Denver several times to tell me who they would have selected at 15 assuming Bunkely and Whitner were gone by then. The answer has been silence or I think one person suggested Davin Joseph, the guard from Oaklahoma. If McCargo and Whitner were reaches at 26 and 8, how bad a reach would Joseph have been at 15? Again, that move, even if you like Joseph at 15, doesn't make sense if you accept their judgment that SS and DT were the biggest needs. I have watched and complained about Donahoe's penchant for using repeated high draft picks on the same position while letting other positions languish. We have spent 2 first and one second round pick to get a QB and it still doesn't look like we have one. We spent a first rounder on Willis who I like and all but Travis Henry was perfectly serviceable if not exactly spectacular. That was a first and a second round pick to get one running back. We let Price go in FA and use a second and a first to get Josh Reed and Lee Evans. That is two high picks to fill one position that didn't need to be filled if we just signed Price. I don't dispute that some of those guys ended up being upgrades over the ones they replaced. I just question whether it was worth it given the other unmet personnel needs of the team. If we had stuck with Drew, Price and Henry, we would have had three first round picks (the ones used on Evans, Willis and JP) and a second (the one used on Reed) which we could have used on the offensive line that ended up being the worst in football or to get some real depth on defense. That is a lot of top drawer talent we missed out on. At least in this first draft, Marv filled very definite needs. Without Whitner, our SS would have been Wire or mediocre FA Bowen, yikes. We have lost our top 4 DT's in the last two years so, no question about it, we needed a DT, baaaadly. Given the situation with Clements and, in my opinion, the fact that King is not a good coverman, getting Youboty was fine. Simpson, given Vincent's age, was probably a good investment and too good to pass up in the 4th. I don't think they really took anyone just to upgrade a position over an already on the roster adequate starter. This was an "anti-Donahoe" draft in that sense. No big splashes, no too-clever for your own good trades. Totally basic. There is a guy you like who fills a top need, take him, no 'effin around.

No one knows for sure, one way or the other. However, Detroit did take a SS in the second as did Chicago with their first pick which was in the second due to the trade with us. Joe Herne does a nice job explaining the scenario the Bills faced in this passage from an article I read recently: "After discussions with many “close to the organization” as well as the interview with Bills director of Operations Tom Modrak, here is what REALLY happened in round 1 of the NFL draft, as it occurred in the Buffalo Bills war room. The Bills were selecting directly behind the Oakland Raiders. The raiders selected Michael Huff. As it turns out the Bills rated Whitner more highly than Huff based more on the need at SS vs. FS. However; Huff going ahead of Buffalo made things interesting. Everyone in the Buffalo war room wanted to trade down and select Whitner at a later pick as the idea was that he would be available, that theory hinged on the belief that the Lions would select Huff at the #9 spot. When Oakland selected Huff at #7 it made that Lions selection much more uncertain. The Buffalo war room was convinced that should they trade back with Philadelphia (they wanted to move up for Broderick Bunkley) that the Lions would then select Donte Whitner at #9. That would mean that Huff would go at 7, then Bunkley at #8, and Whitner at #9…leaving Buffalo sitting at pick #14 with none of their desired prospects left on the board. So the Bills stood steadfastly at #8 and had to make a decision between Broderick Bunkley and Donte Whitner. Knowing that the draft was incredibly thin at Strong Safety and having the starting Safety spot vacated by the release of Lawyer Milloy, the Buffalo war room selected the guy that not only had incredible measurable qualities and on the field play, but also filled the teams biggest hole." As for trading down and then back up, that is staking an awful lot on stacked variables that are out of your control. I wouldn't plan a draft on that kind of thing. Its like counting on getting a date for saturday night with the girl who is your second choice in the event your first choice cancels at the last minute without even calling her ahead of time (as someone who had to plan for every contingency just to get a date, you'll just have to trust me on that one ). Why do all that monkeying around when you can get the guy you want just by staying put? I am not saying that it would have been crazy for Levy to take the risk, trade down and see what happens, far from it. I do think however that what they did was reasonable and not the senile idiocy of a doddering octogenarian as so many others have characterized. When the season starts and we have Whitner starting at SS rather than Coy Wire, McCargo on the line knifing into the backfield rather than Tim Anderson, Youboty instead of King in the nickel and Simpson stepping in if Vincent gets hurt, this draft won't look so bad. Afterall, we ended up with the best SS in the draft, the second best penetrating DT along with a FS and CB in the 3rd and 4th rounds that many had rated as high as late first round material. Add in the signing of that huge FA WR, Nance (what is he, 6 feet 700 inches or something like that?), maybe old Marv didn't do so very bad. And yes, it would have looked better still with some offesive lineman but you can only fill so many holes in one draft. We are, unfortunately, in a pretty major rebuilding effort although I don't think anyone in the front office is going to admit that. Donahoe had a plan, 5 years in the making, and it failed. Marv has to pick up the pieces. If Losman can't hack it, we are looking at a three year rebuild, if he can play, maybe it'll only be two years with some improvement apparent even in year one. Again Scraps, I am not disputing your logic at all, I just think this is a case where reasonable minds can differ. It is this kind of discussion that makes the draft so interesting to talk about. Too bad so many have to make it one of those "you're an idiot" fights.

Guys can hurt on any play. McGee returning kicks is one of our best offensive weapons and we need all the help we can get in that department. If we are serious about winning, we play him on special teams, no doubt about it.

If we moved down to 15, we lose Whitner and Bunkley. If McCargo was a reach at 26, doesn't that mean he would have been an even bigger reach at 15? Who would you have taken at 15? Cutler and Leinart were gone at that point. There were some CB's and a LB or two in that range which are nowhere near the positions we needed the most help on so as to use our top pick. Theoretically, we would still have had to use a second and a third to move up to get McCargo anyway. We end up with a few extra picks but lose out on Whitner and end up taking a guy we don't really need at 15 because the safety and DT and OT and QB's we might have been interested in are gone. I don't mean to say that there weren't other options worth considering that were reasonable but at the same time, I don't think it is fair to characterize what they did as stupid or that they couldn't handle the pressure and so on. What they did was reasonable and even preferable when you look at some of the alternatives.

Assuming Whitner would have been gone before we picked at 15 after the trade down with Denver, who would you have taken at that position? If people think McCargo was a reach at 26, he certainly would have been an even bigger reach at 15. Given our needs which were SS, DT, OT and G, who was there that was worth the 15th pick in the draft at those positions? Cutler and Leinart were gone by then. All that was left worthy of that position were maybe a few CB's. We still would have had to deal up from the second to land McCargo. As troubling as some might find what we did, the alternatives could have been much worse. I just think that given the needs we had, the handful of players available at those positions that were any good and our draft position, that we didn't really have the wide range of free wheeling deals available that so many think we had.

I understand your frustration on a certain level but I don't think that what they did was outright stupid. Hold on for a FFS ride to perdition: They decided, for better or worse, that our top needs were at safety and DT. Given that we are going to the Tampa 2, I accept that we needed a stud SS and a penetrating DT. Those are two essentials for that defense. At SS going into the draft, we have Coy Wire and a mediocre free agent so we were embarassingly thin at a crucial position. We have, over the last two years, lost Adams, Williams, Banaan and Edwards at DT so we were certainly in dire straits there as well. Add in how awful the defense was last year and then balance that with most of the FA signings benefitting the offense (Fowler, Reyes, Price, A-Train to name a few) and I can't really come out and say that their choice to target SS and DT as our top needs was out and out stupid. The next question then is how best should they have handled the draft accepting the choice of SS and DT being the top needs? Lets say they passed on Whitner and instead took Bunkley. I don't think anyone would be complaining about a reach with Bunkley in the first. Detroit took a safety, Bullocks, in the second round. I have no problem with the ideat that Detroit would have taken Whitner had we not and even if they hadn't, no way he was going to last very long into the first round. Three safeties were taken in the second so there were at least that many teams looking for a SS as a top need. The comparison that has to be made then is whether we are better off with Whitner and McCargo than we would have been with Bunkley and Manning, Bullock or Pollard (the three 2nd rd. SS's). Manning played at a small school, runs a 4.55 and is undersized. Supposedly lacks the ability to get to the sideline in time to break up passes. Pollard runs a 4.59 and is a poor tackler. Bullocks runs a 4.49 and is also a suspect tackler. Whitner runs a 4.38 and though he is a little undersized, has always been a playmaker. I won't argue with anyone who thinks that we would have been better off with Bunkley and one of those 2nd rd. SS's but at the same time, I think there was a drop off after Whitner and that taking him first instead of Bunkley wasn't exactly stupid even if I would have preferred Bunkley. In a sense, they were in a bad situation with McCargo. There was a very good chance he wasn't going to be around for us in the second round. The next two DT's were not taken until the third round, none went in the second at all. I think there was a big drop off after McCargo so if we didn't get him, we were going to be stuck with a project kind of player at a critical and hopelessly undermanned position on our defense. As it is, we took the best SS and the best DT on the board when we took them. Both positions were critical needs for us. As for the trade down possibilities, that always entails risk. I think there was certainly a chance that Whitner would have been taken by Detroit since they took a SS in the second. Not only that, but if we trade down to Denver's spot, we lose Bunkley to Philly who was picking one slot ahead of Denver. A trade down might have cost us both Bunkley and Whitner. Then there would be no one left even close to being worth a first round pick at either SS or DT. Look at the people taken from 15-32 in the first round. No SS's, no DT's, no OT's, no one at a position of need for us other than maybe Davin Joseph, the G from Oaklahoma. Can you imagine the carping hereabouts if we took Joseph in the first round at 15? Same thing if we had taken McCargo there. All told, we got the second best SS in the draft and had not real shot at the #1 SS. We also got the third rated DT in the draft and since Ngata isn't suited to our knew defense, we probably got the second best DT in the draft for our purposes. The alternative was to get the #1 DT in Bunkley and a distant #3 or 4 SS. We could have traded down and ended up with neither Bunkley nor Whitner but, at best, McCargo and Bullock/Mannning/Pollard along with an extra pick. I may disagree with their selection of the top needs for this team. I might disagree with the choice of Whitner & McCargo over Bunkely & Bullock or, in a trade down, McCargo & Bullock/Manning/Pollard + extra pick. Nevertheless, I don't think what they did was "stupid". It was rational, reasonable and, I am willing to admit, maybe even the best choice despite my qualms over it.

Actually, we are not a running team, we are a "run the ball without success" team.

We can only guess as to whether either of these guys would have still been on the board had we moved down or pursued some other strategy. There was a huge drop off after Whitner at SS and after McCargo at DT. If we had taken Bunkley, Whitner would have been gone and we would have ended up with Manning or Pollard in the second, both of whom run closer to 4.6 than 4.5 compared to Whitner at 4.38. Neither was probably doable given the Tampa 2 we are going to play. That means they had to take Whitner or 8 unless a trade down was available and we don't know if one was let alone one that would have let us still get Whitner. As it is, we took the best SS on the board at the time and in doing so, filled a critical need. Did we pick a guy at 8 we might have got at 13? Maybe but if we didn't have that option, I think the right decision was made. Not flashy mind you but the right decision. Our next priority was DT and the best DT on the board when we took him was McCArgo. The next DT after him was taken in the 3rd round so if we didn't trade up, good chance he was gone before our 2nd rd. pick and that alternative we would have been left with was a mediocre nobody. There was a huge drop in talent after McCargo. Again, if there was a way to move up just a litttle in the second and gamble that he would have lasted, fine, but was there? The DT taken in the third was Wroten with the 4th pick in the round. If McCargo had been there at the 4th pick in the second, I think its reasonable he would have been taken there and we would have been stuck with Wroten. I think that we just didn't have a good enough trade down situation so we stuck to our plan to fill two huge needs, DT and SS and we did just that. Both were the best available at those positions when we took them so I don't think we reallyoverreached that much.

Accuracy is supposedly his strong suit. Seems like all anyone wants with QB's these days are quick feet. We seem to have forgot that the main thing a QB needs to do is to throw the ball accurately.

Brad Butler = Conrad Dobler?

Anybody like Matua with the next pick?

Bottom line is that we needed a SS and a DT and at the time we took him, Whitner was the best SS on the board and at the time we took McCargo, he was the best DT still on the board and likely wouldn't have been there had we sat and waited. Really, is the combo of Bunkley + Manning so clearly superior to the combo of Whitner + McCargo that it justifes excoriating Marv and Modrak? I don't care if we took them "too high" whatever that means. Can they play? That is the question and that is what we will grade this draft on.

Maybe they decided that in the Tampa 2, it was more important to upgrade SS where we were facing a choice between Wire and a mediocre FA than it was to upgrade at DT over Anderson and Tripplet especially since they liked McCargo and figured they could get him. If they went with Bunkley, then they would have had to go SS in the second. Certainly, Whitner would have been gone by then and Detroit, who picked ahead of us in the second, took SS Bullock from Nebraska. The next SS taken in the draft was Daniel Manning by Chicago with the pick they go from us and after him, Bernard Pollard from Nebraska who was taken at 22 in the second. If the Bills were targeting SS and DT as the biggest needs, then, as it turned out, their choices were Whitner followed by McCargo or Bunkley followed by Manning/Pollard. I think if we had gone with the second choice, plenty here would be grousing that we reached on Manning. As for McCargo, the next DT taken in the draft after him was Claude Wroten in the third. If he were gone before our pick in the second, there was a huge drop in talent before the next DT. You might not agree that SS and DT should have been the priorities but since they were, what they did was certainly understandable. Given how critical the SS is in the Tampa 2, I see no problem in ranking the need we had at that position higher than DT so that explains why we went for Whitner over Bunkley. McCargo was the best DT still on the board when we took him by light years. At that point it was either trade up to get him or ditch drafting a DT at all and instead trading up for Justice. I am upset that the OL is going to be cobbled together with chewing gum and duct tape once again but we can only fix so much so fast. If they had targeted guard or an OT as our top need, then they would have drafted differently. That is really where the argument is, should they have assessed our needs differently? Update: The SS prospects after Whitner (Pollard and Manning) are pretty slow. Pollard runs a 4.59 and Manning a 4.55 while Whitner runs a 4.38. Pretty big drop off in speed if you ask me.

The Tampa 2 needs a solid safety and all we had was Coy Wire and a mediocre FA so I have no problem with going for Whitner. We certainly needed a DT and if we missed on McCargo, there was a huge drop in quality to the next guy. I know a lot of people think he would have been there for us in the second but that is pure speculation. The guy is a player, every bit as good as Bunkley and Ngata with probably more upside than either of them. I think there was a good chance he would have been gone. I am disappointed we are letting the OL fester for another year (unless we get lucky with the FA's we signed) but you can't fix everything all at once. We absolutely needed a DT and a SS and we got two very good prospects. As for the CB in the third, I guess they don't think much of King or Greer for that matter. I really don't get that pick but the first two were solid enough.

Yes, for who would forgive missing out on a modern day Pat Haden? I don't want Leinhart. I'd rather take Omar Jacobs.

I'd love to get Davin Joseph in the second but boy, we need to get lucky for that to happen. I have a feeling he might go late in the first round.

Reed, hands down, with no disrespect meant to Moulds. I have a mental video clip I can run in my head of notable drops and fumbles by Moulds. I can hardly think of any such plays involving Reed. Moulds could make more spectacular catches here and there but he would also flub a few.

That would be sweeeeeeeeeeet. Never happen though unless we sabotage someone's helmet phone.

Mario Williams. Pressuring the QB is the name of the game in the NFL. We can't protect ours and look how we've done on offense. You can build a defense around that guy.

I don't disagree but I would add one consideration: Marv loves CB's and the best one we have on the roster might be a hold out and is out of here next year. I think that means we may very well take a CB with one of our first day picks. It wouldn't even shock me if we went with Huff instead of Bunkley or Haloti.