SoTier

Since a poster seemed to think the Bills got so much for the guys who are gone, I thought I'd check them out ... what the Bills got and didn't get. Thanks to the OP for his work on the original list. The reality is that the guys who weren't busts (and the Bills are about average on busts with the rest of the NFL) mostly left in FA and the Bills got nothing for them. IMO, they only had 2 positive trades: Sheppard for Hughes and Alonso for McCoy. Keep in mind that these are only draft picks from rounds 1-3 and not other good/decent players that the Bills acquired and then sent packing like Zach Brown, Mike Gillislee, Chris Hogan, Nigel Bradham, and many others making themselves useful on likely playoff teams. 2009 1 Aaron Maybin – GONE - BUST 2009 1 Eric Wood – Starter 2009 2 Jairus Byrd – GONE 2009 2 Andy Levitre – GONE - ATLANTA - starter 2010 1 C.J. Spiller – GONE - retired I think 2010 2 Torell Troup – GONE - injury 2010 3 Alex Carrington – GONE 2011 1 Marcell Dareus – GONE - JAX - 2018 6th round pick, possibly 5th (late) 2011 2 Aaron Williams – GONE - injury 2011 3 Kelvin Sheppard – GONE - Jerry Hughes 2012 1 Stephon Gilmore – GONE - NE - starter 2012 2 Cordy Glenn – Starter 2012 3 T.J. Graham – GONE - BUST 2013 1 EJ Manuel – GONE - BUST - OAKLAND 2013 2 Robert Woods – GONE - LAR - starter 2013 2 Kiko Alonso – GONE - MIAMI - starter - Shady McCoy 2013 3 Marquise Goodwin – GONE - 49ERS - starter 2014 1 Sammy Watkins – GONE - LAR - starter - 2018 2nd round pick (late) + EJ Gaines 2014 2 Cyrus Kouandjio – GONE - back up -- not sure what team 2014 3 Preston Brown – Starter 2015 1 NONE 2015 2 Ronald Darby – GONE - PHILLY -starter, out with injury until last week when he had an INT - Jordan Matthews 2015 3 John Miller – NOT EVEN ACTIVE - he's still on the Bills; he backs up Vlad Ducasse at LG 2016 1 Shaq Lawson – Starter 2016 2 Reggie Ragland – GONE -KC 2019 4th 2016 3 Adolphus Washington – Starter

This is my take on the rest of the season. Either the Bills D keeps it close against KC or it's all over except to speculate whether McDermott gets fired during the off season or sometime next season.

I agree he's a top QB, but in reality, he's done squat on that team for years except roll up passing stats and throw up untimely INTs when his team needed TDs. SD hasn't made the playoffs since 2009 when they snuck in as the 2nd WC at 9-7 when they finished 3rd in the AFCW. They won 5 games in 2016 and 4 games in 2015. Moral of the story: a "franchise QB" is not going to make a difference if the coaching sucks any more than it's going to make a big difference if the talent's not there.

TBD's resident genius has spoken! In order to progress, a 7-9 Bills team that was 8-8 the year before needs to be stripped of its talent so that its HC and his pet GM can fill the team with players that "buy into" taking the team back to the future circa 1985. That, according to Mr Brilliance here, is supposed to be progress although the the team is playing infinitely worse now than it was at the beginning of the season when it was at least competitive when it lost. It's "bold" and "forward looking". Uh-huh ... Meanwhile, a SD team that was 5-11 in 2016 and 4-12 in 2015 hires as their new HC a former Bills OC whom the Bills rejected. He took the players he inherited and has them all playing better, so that even when they've lost, they've been competitive, and as they've blossomed under Lynn's coaching, they're starting to win games instead of losing them by a couple of points. They're on a roll. They demolished the Bills in LA, and then they went to Dallas and demolished the Cowpies. They're getting better as the season progresses ... but according to Mr Brilliance, fans now questioning the Bills hiring McDermott over Lynn are "risk averse and backward looking". In the perverse universe Mr Brilliance occupies losing is better than winning. Well, with McDermott and Beane in charge, maybe even Mr Brilliance will get his fill.

^^^ I'm SO crushed by your insult! BOO HOO! it doesn't change the fact that McDermott and Beane suck.

There might be something to your idea, OP. There were certainly negative vibes in the media -- including radio call-in shows and electronic media like this MB -- about Watkins, Dareus, and Taylor, and two of them were traded while Taylor was benched. Fans whined about Taylor being too conservative, so they had Peterman try to throw downfield like he was a veteran QB.

I got a better idea: get rid of McDermott and Beane.

37-21, 46-10, and 54-24 constitute the worst three game span in the Bills history. It constitutes a collapse, and it will be a moral victory for the Bills if they can at least be competitive against the Chiefs and Pats in the next two games. Don't bet more than you'd like to lose on them doing that, though.

This was a "middling" team last season. McDermott and Beane have fixed that. They've turned it into an expansion team. Maybe they win 1 more but I wouldn't bet money on it.

NFL Sunday Ticket so I can watch decent teams play good football rather than get stuck watching the Bills get butt-whooped with regularity ...

Belichick never coached a team that got butt-whipped as badly as consistently as McDermott's Bills, either. Hey, ya never can tell ... he might be running last, but if there's a late race caution and everybody's gotta pit for gas but him so they're all a lap down ... It must be something in the water in Allegany County ...

Who the hell cares what media "draft experts" claim within a few hours or days of the NFL draft? Their evaluations signify nothing because they are only based on criteria that are important to media "draft experts" and fans who buy what they're selling. The real proof of how good or bad a team's draft is depends upon how well the draftees actually play on the field in games. In the Bills case, through 10 games, individually and as a group, they are certainly not outstanding. White has played decently for a rookie but Jones hasn't been good at all. That doesn't mean he won't turn out to be a good WR but he's not there yet. Dawkins has had good games and bad games, but many teams would have had him sit for while, perhaps the entire season. White and Jones have been starters simply because Stephon Gilmore and all of the Bills starting WRs left either in FA or by trade. Dawkins has played LT when Glenn's not been able to go but Jordan Mills has started every game at RT. Milano and Peterman are 5th rounders and Vallejo is a 6th rounder. McDermott (the player) was a 6th round pick cut by NE. Elston, Ferguson, Lacey, Towbridge, and Yarbrough are all UDFAs. Milano and Yarbrough have played some. We saw last week that Peterman is not nearly as "NFL ready" as his gushing fanboys claimed. The rest have only played ST I believe although they may very well have gotten in on a few regular snaps. I think I've seen Vallejo in on some regular snaps, too. Feel free to try to prove that the Bills' rookies are significantly better than other teams' rookies if you want.

I stand corrected. It wasn't in his bio.

Who would that be? Just because they've been employed in some capacity by football teams for several years doesn't necessarily make them "FOOTBALL people". Beane's experience is in team administration, mostly in personnel (salaries/benies/insurance) and operations (logistics). He had 1 year of experience as an assistant GM. McDermott has been a defensive coordinator on two teams for about 7 years, again. Neither has had more than some peripheral participation in player evaluation and selection, and certainly no responsibility for it.

If the players come to believe that McDermott is not playing to win games this season, then he'll lose the locker room if he hasn't already lost it. Those weren't just losses, they were butt-whippings, each worse than the last.

I was being sarcastic, which is why I put in the part about extending the drought. I have seen nothing from these two yet that sugges that either one is competent to hold their current position beyond this season, at least not with control over player personnel.

The Bills hired this pair, so they must be worthy of at least 5 years' opportunity to extend the drought beyond its current length.

That presupposes McDermott and Beane have a plan, and that plan is a viable and logical blueprint for moving forward. Neither McDermott nor Beane have demonstrated that their plan consists of anything beyond gutting the team of talent and stocking up on draft picks and scrub FAs ... and making sure that Taylor had virtually no chance at success. McDermott's draft was nothing special, simply drafting to fill holes created by letting starters walk away in FA. If they were going to sabotage Taylor, the least they could have done was found a more talented QB than Peterman to replace him. Oh, so because you need to have your chimney repointed, a new roof put on', and the dry-rotted front porch replaced, you should tear down your house and rebuild it from scratch?

If you think that signing Kirk Cousins and drafting a guard and 2 DTs is going to solve the Bills problems on both sides of the ball, you're delusional. The Bills pretty much need an entirely new front 7 on defense unless they do something drastic like fire McDermott. As with the OL, the DLers and LBs who were at least serviceable in last couple of years are struggling. I doubt that the Bills FO wants to do start over so soon, but if McDermott's lost/loses the locker room, which is a real possibility, then they may have to.

Contend for what? The overall #1 pick? The Bills haven't had one of those since 1985, so they're due. It may be pointless but it looks to be the new "Bills way" which is apparently even stupider than the old "Bills way" of previous regimes. They'll probably trade him for a 4th or a 6th that could become a 5th. Watch Clay and Glenn go, too, for bargain basement prices. All the "Whaley's Mistakes" gotta go -- they make McDermott's scrubs look bad. Ducasse has failed everywhere else he's been, even as a backup OG. After 8 or 9 years in the league, he didn't "blossom". That he could possibly be rated as the best OLer on the field even for one game is an indictment of Castillo the OL coach and Dennison's zone blocking system. It doesn't fit the guys they've got, and the OL is too important to just throw away decent OLers because the OC/OL coach aren't bright enough to adapt to the players they have on the roster. I totally agree about Cordy Glenn. Ankle/foot injuries are always problematic because both are complex structures that take a lot of stress, and usually take a long time to heal. Unfortunately, I think that Glenn's be sent packing because, well, there's a consensus among the personnel mavens on TBD, sports talk radio, and at sports bars that he IS accident prone ... and he's a hold over from the Whaley era ... and he makes a lot of money that he's not earning because he's hurt "all the time". How, exactly, do you figure it's possible to get "a lot of the guys we need next year"? I believe that the bust rate for players taken in the first three rounds of the draft is about 50%. The success rate for players taken in rounds 4-7 is maybe 20 percent, and a lot of that "success" will be as STers and backups. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that players that fill the Bills needs will be available when they draft ... of course, at the rate the Bills are making holes in their roster, just about any position will fill a need by the draft. Oh, and that's assuming the Bills don't send a truckload of draft picks to take a shot at a top five QB.

What a crock! The Bills have been "involved in a major rebuild" for 17 years, and are further from achieving any kind of success today than they were January 1, 2017 thanks to McDermott, Beane, and the Bills FO.

I'm 67 years old and have been a Bills fan since 1963 ... what do you expect?

This is the kind of BS that causes observers and black players to raise accusations of racism. It uses the same phrase ("the chosen one") used repeatedly by race-baiting bigots against Obama. Of course, we all know you don't hate Taylor because he's black, you just hate him because he's not Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, right? Bigotry is never personal. He was "okay" with a loss under Peterman but he "wants" losses under Taylor. I think that speaks for itself.

At least the Browns are competitive. You can't say that about the Bills in the last three games ... and likely not into the future, either. What good would the #1 pick do the Bills? They would probably draft a DB or RB or trade back to the middle of first round for a couple of thirds and a sixth that could become a fifth.

Don't confuse True Believers with FACTS! If they believe the situations with Prescott and Peterman were the same, then they were the same.