Ozymandius

Just because someone spends $30,000 on producing a film doesn't mean they'll end up with Clerks (or insert your own favorite low budget flick). And just because a team goes cheap on the line doesn't mean they'll end up having the success of the Patriots. Usually you just end up with what you pay for: crap. Like the Blair Witch Project. Like you said, though, we'll wait and see. But right now I'm gagging at any comparison between us and the Patriots.

I hope he stays. If the Patriots win the Super Bowl this season, Flutie getting a ring would be the only silver lining for me.

I was actually worried that Miami was going to win a Super Bowl soon under Saban's leadership until he went out and got Culpepper, who I feel is very shaky and will never lead a team deep into the playoffs. And now we hear Saban's trying to trade for Joey Harrington? Yikes. I think highly of Saban but he's going to have to improve his quarterback judgement before he ever wins anything substantial. For our sake, I hope he never learns.

Sabres in 6.

Media reports are VERY reliable when they're positive about the Bills draft.

I think Ottawa blows us out in Game 5, say, 4-1 and we come back and win Game 6.

Realistically, the Sabres have only two chances to end this series because it'll be extremely difficult psychologically to win a game 7 in Ottawa after having blown a 3-0 lead.

Yes, King must've conveniently decided to ignore that. Hmmm, that or IT NEVER HAPPENED (or King never heard about it, but most likely, it just never happened). No coach or GM is going to publicly state that he didn't draft his first choice.

This is all your idle speculation. Who are these 6-7 "second tier" players that are so much better than those "third tier" players that they get their own tier? And I'd like to see you point out any pre-draft articles/posts mentioning this second tier of players and Donte Whitner's place in it. Again, I think this is just after the fact re-writing of history to conveniently fit and rationalize what the Bills did. I think I would rather people just say, "hey we picked Whitner at #8, live with it, and shut up about it" instead of making stuff up. FWIW, I think Davin Joseph would kick your second tier players' asses despite being "third tier". Let's see how big a reach Davin Joseph would be when the interior of our line collapses in the face of our QB again and again this year. Certainly no more of a reach than taking a safety in the top 10. Why would you call Joseph a reach at 15? Because the draft experts didn't have him ranked there, right? So looks like Whitner is a major reach, right? Besides, it's not just Davin Joseph. It's Joseph + Darryl Tapp or Claude Wroten (second rounder) + Ryan O'Callaghan or Anthony Montgomery (fourth rounder). And that's just assuming Whitner wouldn't be there at 15, which he probably would have been.

We don't really know that at all, though, for the same reason that we didn't know Whitner was going to be the pick. I actually think the Bills probably had McCargo as the top DT on their board. There would still have been good players available at 15. I would have been very pleased with Davin Joseph at that pick, for example.

If Denver didn't offer a 2nd and 4th, then Marv would have denied it in his interview with King...

I think it's very fair to say that Losman has more pure physical talent than Nall. While we don't know much about these two players, we can't deny all knowledge of everything. From personal viewing experience, Losman has wheels and he sets very, very quickly and he has a strong arm. Nall can't match all of those qualities. He might have better mental potential, however.

I agree. The coaches will probably have different expectations of performance in mind for each of these QBs to win the job. Holcomb probably doesn't have a realistc shot at the job and won't win it unless he completes like 90% of his passes in camp, for example. I do think the expectations will be very similar for Losman and Nall, however, and I think Losman will have to play well to win the job.

I don't really have a dog in this fight, as I think our QB of the future is not currently a part of this roster. Nall, Losman, Holcomb. Bleh. I don't disagree with your analysis (except perhaps with the contention that Losman has #1 pick talent; he certainly was DRAFTED in the first round, but I don't think he has the natural touch and accuracy on his passes of a true #1 talent). The part of your post that I don't consider to be true is the one about the QB competition being a ruse. I think that would be the case under the old regime, but I think the new regime is serious about the competition and have no attachment to Losman and no reason to just hand him the starting job. I think a true competition can't hurt. If you look at recent Super Bowl winning quarterbacks, which one of these guys would have lost a competition to Craig Nall and Kelly Holcomb in their third season in the league? My guess is not a single one of them. Losman will sink or swim, but he will do so beginning with this competition. Ben Roethlisberger Tom Brady Brad Johnson Trent Dilfer Kurt Warner John Elway Brett Favre Troy Aikman

I think this would be more true if the old regime, the people who actually made the investment in JP, were still around. For all we know, Marv and Dick might not like his game and how it fits with the new offense, his potential based on college film and the limited pro action he's seen, his personality and leadership style, or any combination of these or other factors.

It's a prediction/opinion. I think we're going to suck in the running game this year, which will lead to other problems, but I could be wrong (doubtful).

Nall 50% Losman 45% Holcomb 5% Nall is the new regime's hand-picked QB and therefore the favorite. Losman is close because of his potential. Holcomb probably doesn't stand a chance because we are looking at this year as a rebuilding year, a system implementation year, and that means we are going to choose a "QB of the future" and have him learn on the job.

That's because we keep drafting second day o-linemen, which we did AGAIN in this draft. In the past 8 Bills drafts, we've spent a total of TWO first day picks on offensive linemen. Two!!! One was Jonas Jennings, who turned out to be terrific value for a third rounder, even if injury prone. And Mike Williams, who was lazy and injured a lot but still showed potential when he was on the field, including half a season of dominating runblocking a few years back. Our lesson here is NOT that we shouldn't draft o-linemen, it's that we need to pay more attention to a player's injury/weight history. We should've spent more than two first day draft picks on o-linemen in the past 8 years, and it was a mistake not to do so. Actually, offensive tackle is a position with a tremendous success rate in drafts, especially when you're dealing with top 10 picks like the ones you mentioned. Check the history. We got unlucky/stupid with Mike Williams. But that has more to do with our stupidity for giving an overweight player lots of money instead of a problem with the position itself.

Well, I don't care about what Kiper and others would say. Joseph was the best guard in this draft and to me would be excellent value at 15 for a team that can't runblock. I don't care about the experts. I care about the second and fourth rounder we passed up.

I don't think you would have had to endure seeing Bowen at SS even if the Bills had ended up with Joseph instead of Whitner. I think, in hindsight, we signed Bowen primarily because he is a special teams demon and will make the team because of that, but we had planned to use a day 1 pick for a starter at SS all along. There were several strong safeties in this draft that are better than Matt Bowen and odds are we would have ended up with one of them even if we didn't draft Whitner.

I disagree with the notion of a "top 13 impact players." First, even IF Whitner had been chosen before 15, I would still have looked at my extra second and fourth round picks in a deep draft and been happy. I would have tried to trade down again from 15, but failing that, I would have gone ahead and taken Davin Joseph there. Joseph would be an immediate starter and immediately the best runblocker in our starting lineup. I'm sure that's impactful enough for a team that will really struggle to runblock as things stand right now. But like I said before, I think Whitner would have been there for our taking at 15 anyway. Regardless, I don't think there was an elite 13 or so players. I think it was more like an elite 6 or 7. That's why the pre-draft talk for the Bills was all about trading down for more picks since we picked at 8. I would like to see a link to any pre-draft article or post that talked about an elite 13 players AND that included Donte Whitner in that group. I doubt you'll be able to find one because I think this elite 13 talk is after-the-fact rewriting of history. I think the true cutoff for elite players was after 6 or 7, not 13, and I think that "impact players" that could help us immensely like Joseph were still available at 15. I like Donte Whitner a lot. I'm probably one of the very few posters that is on record pre-draft as liking the idea of the Bills trading down and drafting him in the mid first round. But I don't like him enough to pass up an extra second and fourth rounder and to take him at #8 overall just because there was a chance he wouldn't be available at 15. I don't consider him to be a once in a generation safety prospect that NEEDED to be taken in the top 10. He wasn't even the first safety off the board. I'm also nervous about how the health of a 205-lb strong safety in a physical division is going to hold up over the long haul. I would have taken the chance that he would be available at 15, and if he wasn't, then life goes on. I'll just have to "settle" for seeing Davin Joseph knocking division d-linemen on their ass.

This is a minor point but Miami wouldn't have known to leapfrog the Bills for Whitner. He was our big pre-draft secret that we kept very well... I've just seen it repeated several times now that the Dolphins would've tried to jump ahead of the Bills... they may very well have tried to move up a few spots just to ensure they had a better chance at him, but they wouldn't have known to do so because Buffalo was the major threat to take Whitner.

We will not be able to run the ball at all this year because our offensive line can't runblock. There will plenty of third and longs and lots of sacks and hurries and hits on our quarterback.

The key to success is the same for every team. Excellent personnel management/acquisition and excellent coaching.

I agree that Whitner very likely would have been available at 15. Where we picked him is probably the highest the second safety off the board has ever gone, and even if there were some teams in the 9 to 16 area that really liked him, they all probably figured they could trade down a little bit and still get him. Still, what's done is done, and if Whitner becomes an All-Pro, then he will have validated his selection in the top 10, and if Marv hits on McCargo, Youboty, Simpson, and Williams, then this becomes a great draft regardless of his mistake of not acquiring more picks. It's still fun to think about the extra players we could have gotten, though. By not making the trade with Denver, we probably cost ourselves a guard like Charles Spencer, a better tackle prospect than Brad Butler like Ryan O'Callaghan, a passrush prospect like Mark Anderson, and the ability to experiment a bit in the 7th round like with Charlton Keith. 1. Donte Whitner 1. John McCargo 2. Charles Spencer (or Darryl Tapp or Claude Wroten) 3. Ashton Youboty 4. Ko Simpson 4. Kyle Williams (would've taken Anthony Montgomery myself) 5. Ryan O'Callaghan 5. Mark Anderson 6. Keith Ellison 7. Terrance Pennington 7. Charlton Keith