Brandon

If he was never charged, never arrested, and the prosecutor (a specialist in domestic violence cases, I might add) cited 'grave inconsistencies' in the story of the accuser, can Lynch fairly be accused of having character issues over this? At least in this case, it appears Marshawn Lynch is guilty until he proves himself innocent.

On average, Marshawn Lynch ran against the 53rd ranked run defense in Division 1 last year, with the average Pac-10 team ranked 47th. That doesn't sound too great at first, but by comparison, Tony Hunt, in that great defensive conference known as the Big 10, on average faced a defense ranked 64th last year, with the average Big 10 D he faced ranked 57th against the run. The Pac-10s run D seems to be bad only by reputation.

Lynch's character 'issues' keep coming up because people are parroting what they've read on a draft site without doing any research.

As good as he is, I think 3 picks would be too much to give up for him. I'd rather take Brandon Siler or David Harris in the 2nd and still have the ability to add two more good prospects in the 3rd.

Strictly on an immediate needs basis, I agree completely. I think you can get by with an '06 type draft once every few years, but you can run into trouble if you do it even a couple of years in a row. With the average career of an NFL player being only four or five years, plus the possibility of FA and injuries, you need to constantly be cycling new talent onto both sides of the roster. If not, it can come back to bite you a few years down the road. That's one big reason why we had to sign Dockery and Walker. The Bills made practically no investment of mid-round picks in their OL over the years. We're also now suffering from a lack of mid-round draft investment at RB and to a lesser extent, LB.

This is just my opinion, but Willis McGahee always reminded me of a slightly better version of Antowain Smith.

The suprise won't be the particular position, but that Marv will draft more heavily on the offensive side of the ball than expected. They used 6 of their first 7 picks defensively a year ago, including all of their first 5. There seem to be a lot of fans who expect a similar approach this year, but I don't see that happening. I think we will see the Bills utilize a much more balanced draft strategy this year.

Most: Jim Kelly Least: Doug Flutie

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.