Brandon

Anthony Thomas is 30 years old and was barely hanging onto an NFL career when the Bills knocked on his door a year ago. There's no hurry to re-sign him as there is quite likely little to no demand for him. The odds are very good that he'll be available should the Bills run out of better options and have to re-sign him. In the meantime, they're better off attempting to find better replacements.

Teams usually shy away from players with a long injury history in the top half of round 1. With his injury history, I think its certainly possible that he could fall to the Bills at 12, though I still consider it unlikely. Still, if the right teams (mainly Houston and Cleveland) feel that he represents too great of an injury risk, he could easily fall out of the top 10 in this draft.

Actually, Peterson did play in seven games last year, including Oklahoma's Bowl game and rushed for 1,012 yards and 12 TDs on the season.

The MLB is probably the single most important player in a Tampa 2 defense. That player has to not only be capable of the traditional MLB role of aggressively taking on blockers and attacking the run from sideline to sideline, but must also be capable of dropping into the deep middle third of the field like a safety on passing plays. If the MLB is deficient in either area, the Tampa 2 will be vulnerable to runs or passes over the middle.

His stats really don't tell me anything. Consider that Kenneth Davis rushed for over 600 yards in both 1991 and 1992. I'll willingly concede that he could be an excellent RB who just needs a chance to start. However, I wonder just how much he benefits from Tomlinson and the Chargers OL kicking the crap out of the opposing defense on 400 plays a season.

Its close, but I would go with Lynch based upon versatility and durability.

While the Bills have a stated interest in using a RB by committee approach, those types of situations usually do have a lead RB that gets the majority of the carries. My guess is that Dillon wants to be that lead RB and the Bills intend to draft a RB to take over that role sooner rather than later.

I don't know if its really fair to call Lynch a 'part time' player. I guess its technically true, but he did have over 250 combined carries and receptions. That's not significantly less than any of the other RBs expected to go high in the draft (I think Tony Hunt had the most at around 310). It could also be considered a positive. His college team didn't run him into the ground.

If you believe this board, there is absolutely no reason for Green Bay to make any trade up for Lynch. If the Bills can so easily find a quality RB in R2 or 3, so can Green Bay.

Jri111, that's a misconception about the Pac-10. The run defenses actually played pretty well this year. In fact, if you do a comparison, you'll find that on average, Marshawn Lynch faced the 53rd ranked run D in Division 1. Tony Hunt? This may suprise you: 64th. Each had one game against a non-division 1 foe tossed out (I do not have data for those teams, nor do I particularly care about how each performed against them). Note that this is on a yards-per-game basis. I have not done a comparison of the rankings on yardage allowed on a per-carry basis, but a quick scan reveals nothing out of the ordinary and no reason to believe the results won't be similar. You can find these numbers here: http://web1.ncaa.org/d1mfb/natlRank.jsp?div=4&site=org

For more than a single 3rd round pick, I'd probably pass. Maybe he's worth more than that, but I'm not too keen on making major investments in backup RBs.

Chris Henry is probably a workout warrior. In his best season at Arizona, he ran for 500 yards and averaged 3.5 ypc. If they're going to wait until R2, I'd rather see them draft Kenny Irons, Antonio Pittman, Lorenzo Booker or even Brian Leonard. None are ideal #1 RBs, but I think they'll all develop into solid contributors. No argument about Chris Brown. He's a good RB if (a big if) he's healthy.

And the rest of the story: http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/sports/index.php?ntid=120393

That's good to know. You're welcome to form your own opinion on the matter. BTW, I do appreciate the insult in the final paragraph.

I like it, with the exception of the trade up. They need all of their first day picks this year.

I'd consider picking him if he were available at 12, but I would not trade up for him. The Bills have too many areas to address to be trading away higher round picks for anyone. Peterson's injury history also scares me a little and I'd probably just sit back and select Lynch at 12, who I feel is a better fit anyway.

And that's all the McGahee selection was ever about. Tom Donahoe wasn't so much trying to improve the team as he was trying to make himself look like a genius. I don't think it worked out too well for him.

The pick of Mike Williams was certainly a mistake in hindsight, but the Bills also desperately needed OL at the time. He was generally expected to go in the top 15 picks, so while Donahoe reached at 4, he still should have turned into a very good player. I can't fault him a whole lot for that one.

IMO, drafting McGahee was Donahoe's biggest mistake. When you consider the situation at the time and the investment the Bills made in him, there's no question in my mind that he was a bust. McGahee has never come close to his supposed potential. In fact, I don't think he's quite as good as Travis Henry even now. It was a terrible use of the 23rd overall pick.

1) Draft Marshawn Lynch 2) Sign Chris Brown 3) Late Draft choice or inexpensive FA

Very nice. Two first day picks, plus a late rounder out of an average player with one year left on his contract. Great, great work by the Bills front office.

I'd much rather have Ravens' picks. There are usually three tiers of players in a draft: 1) The top 8-12 prospects 2) The next 50-75 3) Everyone else The Ravens' 2nd round pick is more likely to net a player from tier 2 than the Titans 3rd rounder, while the difference between a 4th and 5th round player usually isn't much.

They're not tipping their hand at all. I doubt anyone in the NFL actually believes that the Bills would go into the 2007 with Shaud Williams and Fred Jackson as their RBs. Everyone knows they're going to have to sign/draft a couple of RBs if McGahee is traded.

Actually, the reason I would pick him there is due to his versatility. He's not an ideal blocking FB, but he's adequate and can fill the Bills need for a 2nd RB as well. If they were to draft a pure blocker, they'd probably need to pick up a backup RB at some point in the draft. I'd rather not have to use that extra pick. Its also possible that the Bills could sign a veteran FA in the meantime to fill either the FB or backup RB position, but until it happens, both are still needs.

Yep. Not all of us agreed with selecting McGahee, nor did we all agree with trading Henry. Four years later, it looks like the Bills gave up the 23rd overall pick and a good RB in exchange for an average RB and a 3rd round pick. Great job, Tom Donahoe, as well as to the Bills fans who bought the hype.