SoTier

There's a big difference between drafting a first round QB (at #24 IIRC) when your great QB is 10 or 12 years into a career and using the #1 pick in the draft to take a QB when you took a QB with the #10 pick in the previous year's draft. Actually, the Pats have not "always drafted decent QB's" .... 2000: starter - Drew Bledsoe 6th round pick - Tom Brady 2002: starter - Tom Brady 4th round pick - Rohan Davey 2003: starter - Tom Brady 6th round pick - Kliff Kingsbury 2005: starter - Tom Brady 7th round pick - Matt Cassel 2008: starter - Tom Brady 3rd round pick - Kevin O'Connell 2009: starter - Tom Brady UDFA - Brian Hoyer 2010: starter - Tom Brady 7th round pick - Zac Robinson 2011: starter - Tom Brady 3rd round pick - Ryan Mallett 2014: starter - Tom Brady 2nd round pick - Jimmy Garoppollo 2016: starter - Tom Brady 3rd round pick - Jacoby Brisette 2018: starter - Tom Brady 7th round pick - Danny Eting The myth of NE ' always drafting QBs well" is just that, a myth. It's been fueled by Tom Brady coming out of nowhere in 2001 and by 1 good season by 1 of their backup QBs. In 2008, Matt Cassel started 15 games and led NE to an 11-5 record (but not the playoffs) after Brady suffered a season ending injury in the first game of the season. NFL GMs/owners like fans apparently have bought into the myth because they've been willing to ante up picks for NE's cast offs. Cassell was traded for a first or second round pick after 2008 but he never was particularly good as a starter in several stops around the NFL. Hoyer has been a bottom level starter at times. Garoppollo and Brisette were decent backup QBs in short stints for the Pats, but Brisette is at best a backup and Garoppollo had an impressive short stint in SF as the end-of-the-season starter but was injured early on in 2018. I think Belichick even got a pick from somebody for Ryan Mallett. It's a good thing Belichick found Brady because that's the only QB he's hit on in NE. Arizona won't get much for Rosen because by using the #1 pick on another QB the very next year, they've declared Rosen to be a bust. Even if a team likes Rosen, they'll play hard ball, figuring that the Cards will cut him eventually. Teams aren't going to spend a 2nd or 3rd round pick on any player whose current team thinks will be a bust -- and an expensive one at that since former first round QBs have rookie salaries upwards of $5/6 million.

I think that Caspian is pretty much a gender neutral name like Bailey, Cody, Casey, Harper, etc. So many more children have unusual names these days than in the past that kids don't care much about their classmates'/friends' unusual names -- unless they have Neanderthal parent(s) who stupidly make a big deal about other kids' names.

Okay, dude, what did you do that was so bad that you had to do a penance this bad?????

After the pitiful display the Sabres put on at the season's end, there's no way Housley could have been retained.

We'll have to see if the Bills current regime turns out better than past regimes. The personnel moves made in 2017, unfortunately, resembled typical Bills moves -- most notably letting Gilmore and Woods walk away rather than re-signing them and filling the holes with first and second round rookies. Maybe with Brandon gone, that pattern has changed but we won't know if that's true until some of Beane's players become eligible for FA.

Then you get better if the rookie is truly a stud -- and you can trade the higher paid vet for a draft pick or let one walk in FA. With rookie contracts only lasting 3-5 years, smart GMs are always looking to have young guys in the wings to step in. That's how teams that are perennial playoff contenders stay on top season after season while poor teams like the Bills are constantly using the draft to fill immediate holes, either because they don't prepare for player movement or they're constantly spinning their wheels trying to please new HCs who don't fit the players currently on the team.

Maybe YOU should take your own advice and put those posters with whom you constantly disagree with on ignore instead of continually insulting them.

As a corollary, if the corner and wr are rated about the same, then you can pick for need, but to pass on a great player at one position to take a decent one because you have a hole at a particular position, is a plan for mediocrity at best.

I understand the difference perfectly well but I'm not going to constantly delineate it when that difference is irrelevant to the idea I was presenting. You're being a "definition nazi" here as opposed to a "grammar nazi". Actually, what loses credibility is your accusation that I'm always criticizing Allen. I really have not. He's a rookie who has a lot to learn. Hopefully he can learn it, and be successful but I won't be surprised if he doesn't. About half of the QBs drafted in the first round who are not the #1 pick in their draft year fail to become franchise QBs. That's not criticism, that;s borne out by the numbers -- and those failures are not always spectacular like with Manziel but more like Bortles or Tannehill. What I have criticized -- and will continue to do so until I see differently -- is the Bills organization for their handling of the QB situation. The team invested a huge amount of talent and draft capital in a very green QB and then failed to give him the support he needed: an unqualified QB coach (no NFL QB coaching experience while his collegiate QB experience as a player and coach was 30+ years ago); no NFL caliber veteran to provide, at worse, a decent example of how a starting QB does his job, and to allow Allen to sit and learn for at least a few games; waiting a month for Derek Anderson to finish his golf tourney before signing him while wasting a roster spot on Peterman; an OL that couldn't pass protect and couldn't run block, which would have given Allen many more options than doing everything himself; a WR corps devoid of speed until the very end of the season with too many serious candidates for an All-NFL poor hands team; The Bills are damned lucky Allen escaped last season physically and psychologically unharmed. Apparently, Beane thinks so, too, because he has taken steps to try to remedy all those deficiencies. The regular season will tell whether his moves were successful.

I think teams that want to be successful should ALWAYS be on the look out for OL talent because linemen on both sides of the ball are always getting hurt, often times just minor "nicks" but sometimes catastrophic injuries, and having a functional OL is the best insurance for the team's QB. Last year, the Bills OL wasn't functional as either a pass or run blocking unit, and it showed.

Whoopty-do. Semantics. Last season Allen depended entirely too much on his ability to run for him to be successful long term as a NFL QB. Partly, that was because he was a rookie. Partly that was because of the crappy team the Bills' supposedly "top 5 GM" put around him. Partly that was because of the inexperienced QB coach the supposedly "great HC" hired. Saying that Allen needs to develop his passing game isn't a snarky criticism of Allen, it's a fact. Even much more polished passers than Allen coming out of college like Goff, Wentz, and Mahomes had to get better as passers in order to have success in the NFL. Mayfield, Darnold, Rosen, and Jackson will all have to significantly up their passing games if any of them are to have long term success, too -- and there's absolutely no guarantee that any of the 2018 rookie QBs will actually become outstanding NFL QBs long term.

I hate to rain on your parade and keep you and the OP tossing and turning with worry but there's a whole lot more to building a successful OL than just collecting a bunch of big guys. I'm sure you'd find the OLers from last season's team are about the same size. That said, they should be better than last year's group simply because last year's group was so lacking in talent, ie blocking ability, agility, strength etc Furthermore, no matter how great an OL a team has, a QB can still get hurt even if he is primarily a pocket QB. Running QBs are in even more danger. Unless Allen can develop as a good passer, his running ability isn't going to scare any opponents "to death".

My list is "just crazy wrong" only in the minds of Bills apologists and cheerleaders like yourself. If by "the kinds of moves that Beane made" you mean trading away Taylor and Glenn, trading for Benjamin and Matthews and signing Bodine, Murphy, McCarron, and Anderson, then yeah, 6 wins is "impressive". However, those "kinds of moves" are more fitting for a bottom 5 GM than a top 5 GM but carry on with your silliness.

And Nathan Peterman could get the job done AT ALL???? A team that is interested in winning football games does NOT trade away their starting QB with nobody on the roster except an uninspiring option as Peterman was and then dithers through much of the FA period before finally signing a FA QB who was a marginally decent backup QB with very little actually PT. You can spin it however you want to, but the timeline and the quality of the supposed "veteran" QBs the Bills had are facts. You can also add to the evidence of Beane being either incompetent in handling QBs or disinterested in putting a competitive team on the field that the Bills waited a month during the regular season before they bothered to add another backup QB after they traded McCarron -- and the guy they pulled off the golf course played in all of 2 games before being injured.

Most of the FA OLers the Bills signed would be depth on good NFL offensive teams, so there's plenty of room to upgrade through the draft.

Point A -- the Bills won six games last season, most of their games were snoozefests except maybe when Allen was in, and half of their losses were by 20 or more points. It's not going to take much to be "much improved" without winning enough games to even sniff the playoffs. Point B -- if the Bills fail to "contend for a Super Bowl in 2020" I'm sure you'll simply see 2020 as another "stepping stone". Point C --I don't care if Hockensen is the best TE in the draft because that may mean nothing -- like Manuel being the best QB in the 2013 draft. I want the Bills to draft the BPA who's on the board at #9. The only positions they shouldn't consider at #9 are QB, kicker, and punter. They could use upgrades everywhere else, including at MLB so they could move Edmunds to the outside which may be a better fit for his skill set.

I like GMs who are good talent scouts because having a good eye for talent is irreplaceable, and honing that eye only comes with years of experience. All NFL teams have cap experts to "manage the cap", but having the intuitive sense to know which players to pay and which players to let walk in FA only comes from GMs who know and understand football personnel -- and it's priceless as long as the ownership is committed to winning football games rather than only the bottom line. Bellichick has always had an eye for talent and for how to get the best out that talent, and when he paired up with an owner with a commitment to winning, well, as they say, "the rest is history". As I said in 2017 when Beane was hired and started replacing scouts, there's no guarantee that change is going to result in improvement. Yes, the Bills in 2019 are a lot different than in 2016. However, are they really a better team???? I think the defensive coaching is better. I think that the offensive coaching may be about the same or slightly worse. The overall talent level on the team is significantly less than in 2016 though, and certainly the offense remains a dumpster fire until/unless last year's rookies and this year's FA crop prove otherwise. Moreover, while the McDermott/Beane win-lost record doesn't seem too bad at 15-17, the fact that 9 of the Bills 32 games under "McBeane" were 20+ point losses (28%) is appalling. I knew which football organizations I liked best and I knew some of the GMs like Newsome, Belichick, Snead, Roseman, Dorsey, etc but I looked up the GMs that I didn't know by name. The football team on the field is never going to consistently outperform the quality of the front office that identifies/acquires/retains the personnel on the field. That's, of course, why the Bills have sucked pretty much since John Butler and AJ Smith said 'adios' and flew out to San Diego in 2000.

The only reason to get rid of Taylor was to clear out all the competition so that the first round rookie QB the Bills had yet to draft would be guaranteed to start early on in the season. That's why Peterman and McCarron were the two "veterans"on the roster -- and that's a very "Brandonesque" move as he did pretty something very similar in 2013 before they drafted Manuel. The scenario that Taylor would have caused division in the locker room has always been utter fantasy. Taylor started for the Browns, and accepted being replaced by Mayfield with the grace and dignity he has always displayed, including when he was foolishly replaced by Peterman in 2017. Moreover, he would have provided Allen with a real mentor, especially given David Culley's lack of experience as a QB coach. In fact, the handling of the QB situation in 2018, demonstrated serious incompetence on the entire Bills organization from the owner down to the coaches. If Allen is not a success -- and QBs drafted outside the #1 draft position have only turned out to be successes about half the time since 2000 -- how much of that is because of the poor coaching that the Bills gave him. I don't know if Brandon was on his way out in the spring of 2018 or not because he was fired for personal misconduct rather than for how he ran either the football or hockey team, but Beane is pretty much a younger version of Brandon in that his background is on the administrative/business side of football ops rather in player personnel. While McDermott may have had input into the choice of a new GM, he didn't select Beane. That decision came from either Brandon or, more likely, the Pegulas.

What FormerlyofCtown can't seem to understand -- or deliberately misunderstands -- is that while Brandon and/or Whaley could give recommendations on the coaching hires, the final decision on who to hire belonged to the Pegulas, and their preferences trumped -- and will continue to trump -- all. Ryan was a big name HC looking for a new gig in 2015 who expressed interest in the Bills job, so neither Brandon nor Whaley could keep him off their final list of candidates. Unfortunately, Ryan impressed the Pegulas. Blame for the Ryan hiring rests solely on the ownership. The credit or blame for the McDermott hiring will also rest solely on the Pegulas, not their staff.

Actually, I'm skeptical. I want to see Beane actually do SOMETHING genuinely impressive before I consider him "good" much less "great", and so far, he's simply hasn't been here long enough to do that. That Russ Brandon had a significant hand in his select definitely counts against him. FTR, for any team to win the Lombardi trophy in any given year is sheer luck. The organization has to select a good HC, and he's got to put together a good staff, and that staff has to stay together to give some continuity (which hard for winning teams to do because their assistants continually get poached by other teams). Then the team has to put together a quality roster of veterans and younger talent, and key players have to stay healthy while unproven youngsters have to step up and fill holes when they occur. Finally, a team has to avoid fluke plays, terrible calls, and other impossible-to-anticipate situations as in the Music City Miracle in 2000, the Minneapolis Miracle in 2017, and the phantom PI call against the Saints last season.

Really????? He's had exactly 1 draft, and none of the those rookies would have been regular starters until late in the season if there had been any veterans with reasonable talent on the team at the positions that they played. That includes both Allen and Edmunds as neither the QB nor the MLB positions had NFL quality veterans in 2018. Lack of competition makes it hard to evaluate if these young players are really good -- or if the alternatives are just so bad. Oh, because the Bills will win the off-season ... again??? Teams were interested in the Bills "castoffs" in 2017 and 2018 because McDermott and Beane shed players with actual NFL talent (Gilmore, Wood, Goodwin, Watkins, Taylor, Brown, Darby, Dareus, etc) rather than ST caliber players who only started because there was nobody better on the roster? Why is it "pivotal"? That Pegula is still contemplating firing Phil Housley as Sabres coach suggests that he's exceptionally tolerant of incompetence, so Beane doesn't have much to worry about, especially if Pegula can add in arena/in stadium gaming to his revenue stream in the near future.

Well, if Kelvin Benjamin was "part of the plan" then maybe the plan is seriously flawed. How is a big, slow WR with bad knees, mediocre hands, and a questionable attitude of much use on any team????? I can name at least 8 ... 8. John Dorsey of the Browns 7. Brett Veach with Andy Reid of the Chiefs. 6. Mickey Loomis of the Saints 1 SB 5. John Schneider with Pete Carrol of the Seahawks 1 SB 4. Howie Roseman of the Eagles 1 SB 3. Les Snead of the Rams 2. Kevin Colbert of the Steelers 1 losing season since 2000, 2 SBs 1. Bill Belichick of the Patriots 1 losing season since 2000, 6 SBs I'd would also have added Ozzie Newsome of the Baltimore Ravens with 2 SB wins but he retired in 2018. Maybe you should expand your horizons beyond Buffalo and WNY. Well, actually, the Bills need to win a few more games than 6 with a Beane assembled team before their fans can talk playoffs much less playoff wins. The 2017 team was mostly still players brought in by Whaley with a few contributions from the Nix era and from McDermott. Beane's contributions to the 2017 playoff team were Kelvin Benjamin and Jordan Matthews IIRC. Don't pee on the OP's Cheerios by bringing up facts! Excellent post. Your last paragraph pretty much explains why I am not very optimistic about the Bills future. As long as the Pegulas hire the HCs, then the Bills will pretty much operate the same way that they have since 2006 with the GM simply being a facilitator for the HC. It hasn't worked so far, primarily because the head coaching selections have been so bad -- and every new HC has to bring in "his guys" of course, so good players leave and the team starts all over again ... and again ... and again. Terry Pegula's tenure as the Sabres owner and his hiring of Rex Ryan hardly inspires confidence that his hiring choices for coaches can even be reach "average" much less "great". If something magical happens --- Beane, McDermott and Allen have to have HOF worthy careers while with the Bills -- maybe the Bills will become perennial playoff contenders and possibly win a SB despite Pegula's ownership but realistically, the odds of winning a million dollars in a lottery are probably about the same. As QBs like Phillip Rivers and Matthew Stafford demonstrate, a franchise QB isn't a guarantee that a team will win games with regularity. A great coach can be a loser if the organization he's with can't/won't provide him with the personnel he needs as Bill Belichick's career demonstrates.

OP, maybe the reason that there isn't more serious discussion on TSW is because many posters who disagree with "the company line" -- that the Bills winning the Super Bowl under the current regime is fore-ordained -- don't post here much because they don't wish to be continually insulted by the team cheerleaders who defend every move the Bills make, no matter how egregarious, even to the point of making up wild stories (like the one that Beane actually ran the Bills 2017 draft despite being a member of the Carolina Panthers organization).

Peterman's play in 2017 should have been a red flag to Beane ... and apparently it wasn't. McCarron "wasn't who they thought he was" because either Beane was too ignorant to realize that McCarron was looking for a real shot at a starting gig or realized that but didn't care and misled McCarron to get him to sign. Rather than signing another backup QB immediately after McCarron was traded, Beane waited around for a month while Anderson finished his golf tourney. As for Benjamin, he had played poorly in Carolina prior to his trade, supposedly because of injuries, and had already been supplanted there by Funchess. Well, according to the Beane cheerleaders on TSW, Beane had input into the Bills 2017 draft despite being an assistant GM for the Panthers. In that scenario, then, passing on Mahomes would have to count against Beane. The McBeane bot army can't have it both ways.

"Team culture" is almost always an excuse to mask an organization/HC's inability to identify/acquire/retain an effective blend of talent on the field/sidelines to win games with regularity. The only NFL team that seems to really have a "team culture" is the Patriots but even their success seems to be dependent upon Brady's ability to adapt to continual changes in his offensive personnel and Belichick's genius in creating defenses that maximize the effectiveness of whatever defensive talent he has. All the other teams that have been regular playoff teams over the last 20 years have been much more successful when they've fielded teams filled with talent and much less successful when their talent has been limited. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Philadelphia, KC, New Orleans, and Seattle are all examples of this. Just having a franchise QB isn't enough as San Diego and Detroit have repeatedly demonstrated.