SoTier

Realistically, that's not happening. QBs, DTs , and OTs are positions that generally take 2-3 seasons for the prospects to become decent, and probably another year for the good ones to separate themselves from the pack. These are much more complex positions in the pros than in college, and all involve learning about the quirks of individual opposition players, so the learning curve is longer than other positions. If these guys aren't taken in the first or second rounds, it will likely take them longer to come up to speed. LBer is really the only one of those positions that could be expected to be filled adequately by a talented rookie. More importantly, how many positions can be filled, theoretically at least, through the draft and through FA depends upon who's available. The number and quality of players at specific positions vary. Some drafts produce more OLers or WRs than others. The same with FA. Teams that are perennial winners like NE, Pitt, GB, Philly, Minnesota, and KC tend to draft for talent at the top of the draft and more for need in the middle of the draft. They try to maintain a pool of talented younger players around a core of key veterans. The Bills are too busy shuffling their rosters to please their latest HC du jour to worry about building up either a core of key veterans or a pool of talented younger players. They're all scrambling to fill holes they've created themselves.

Yeah, we know ... the Bills only got rid of scrubs and kept the diamonds in the rough. Tell that to Marcel Dareus, Ronald Darby, Mike Gillislee, Stephon Gilmore, Sammy Watkins, and Robert Woods who all look to be playoff bound. Time has already told. They reduced a modestly talented team to an expansion franchise in 11 months. That's probably some kind of record.

The Bills do not have an NFL caliber roster period. McDermott and Beane have seen to that by getting rid of virtually all of the Bills young talent since they arrived on the scene.

Get a clue. I criticized your lame attempt to absolve McDermott of the responsibility for his poor decision, not McDermott himself. I'm not even sure it really was his decision, but as HC, falling on his sword to protect his superiors' butts when they do something stupid is part of his job description, so he has to own the decision and face the consequences. The decision was wrong for several reasons, not the least of which was that it told the players that the coaching staff had given up on the season themselves. Inserting a rookie QB as starter is something that teams do when they have no hope of having a winning season not when they're sitting as the sixth seed in the playoff races.

McDermott is not that much of a noobie. My guess is that Tyrod has likely decided that the Bills aren't good enough for him, either. You can bet that guys like Gillislee, Gilmore, Woods, Watkins, Dareus, and Darby are all ecstatic that they were lucky enough to escape. They didn't "inherit" a tire fire, they created it. Zach Brown, Ronald Darby, Marcel Dareus, Mike Gillislee, Stephon Gilmore, Marquise Goodwin, Sammy Watkins, and Robert Woods all left, via trade or FA, on their watch. If the decision to start Peterson was truly McDermott's and not somebody higher up the corporate food chain, then it was truly bizarre. NFL HCs don't give up shots to win games or make the playoffs; it's not in their DNA. Even ol' Dick Jauron would put winning ahead of auditioning a QB when a team was 5-4 and was holding a playoff spot.

I disagree. This team has been much worse than any Bills team has ever been over the course of any three games in its history -- and that history includes some pretty terrible teams, and no, this wasn't the team that "we thought we'd have at the start of the year". Most fans thought that the Bills would at least be competitive with most teams even if they didn't win a lot. This team is uncompetitive, and it's uncompetitive because it's been deliberately stripped of almost all its younger talent in a matter of months, and that talent has been replaced by rookies and scrubs. A poster yesterday stated that the team was the equivalent of an expansion team, and that seems about right. It's going to take a whole lot longer than a couple of years just to bring the talent level up to where it was when McDermott and Beane came on the scene, especially if they're the ones doing the talent selection.

This is nonsense. The Bills got the crap beat out of them three straight games. With his team holding the sixth seed and with a record of 5-4, McDermott changed from his veteran qb to a rookie qb who had never started an NFL game before. That rookie qb was unprepared to start an NFL game and had a horrendous game, throwing 5 ints in just the first half, and you think McDermott being criticized by the press is an "odd crucifixion"???? In what universe do you reside? Why the hell shouldn't a professional football coach be held accountable when his team plays terribly or when he throws an unprepared player out on the field for any reason other than dire necessity like injury?

McDermott and Beane have stripped the team of talent the way Jauron did. Chan inherited Jauron's expansion team and actually added some talent. Whaley added more ... and McDermott and Beane have remedied that in short order.

Why are both teams "talent starved"? Oh, yeah! Because those "serious professionals" jettisoned almost all of the best and youngest talent on the teams in order to fill them with scrubs. Those "serious professionals" are simply playing money ball.

Ummm ... Marrone was hired before the Pegulas bought the team. The Pegulas have nobody but themselves to blame for Rex Ryan and his clown show since they wanted him even though Whaley wanted somebody else, supposedly Hue Jackson. I believe that the Bills used a search committee to select McDermott, and that Beane was hired after him, after the draft, possibly with McDermott's input. Nice revisionist history, though.

Watkins would have been here this year, and he never said he wouldn't have re-signed with the Bills. He's a WR drafted high in the draft ... they are ALL prima donnas, and they complain all the time. It's more than likely that the Bills weren't interested in re-signing him at the market rate for WRs. And Dareus wasn't a distraction. There was never any whisper about him causing any kind of trouble in the locker room. Somebody on the Bills wanted him gone, and since the Bills had been trying to peddle him even before OTAs, I doubt it had anything at all to do with whether he "bought in" to McDermott's system. My guess is that Dareus realized that he wasn't wanted on the Bills, and that affected his attitude or his work ethic. Obviously, he feels wanted in Jacksonville.

The Bills needed bodies to fill holes, so they took what they could get, especially since they didn't want to pay too much for them. Except for Benjamin, I don't think the other two had much, if any, recent injury history. Players get hurt, especially DBs and WRs since they tend to be somewhat smaller than many of the guys hitting them. If the Bills got duped, it's because they essentially swapped their late mode well equipped Subarus and Toyotas for older model stripped down Fords and Dodges simply because they were cheaper.

I think Frazier is likely to be the scapegoat and get the axe. IMO, Frazier did a really good job masking the Bills defensive deficiencies, primarily lack of talent, as long as he had Dareus to plug the middle on obvious running downs, but he simply doesn't have the talent now. I don't know if there's more to it, such as Williams and Alexander getting old. As on the OL, there may have been scheme changes that these guys are struggling to adapt to. Certainly Preston Brown played better when he had more talented players around him and a better DL rotation. If Glenn were healthy, I think there would be enough talent on the OL for it to function decently but the players, except for Ducasse, have simply not adapted well to Dennison's zone blocking scheme. Maybe it's not all the players but only 1 or 2 who are struggling but that's more than enough to derail plays with regularity. Certainly, Ducasse doesn't help. He's a scrub who has been a bust on every team he's ever been on as a pro.

Jacksonville.

You noticed that, too? Apparently talent is not part of the "skill set" that the Bills regime are seeking since they've managed to strip the Bills of so much of it in such a short time, and apparently without any regard to the consequences to the product they put on the field. The Bills -- I don't just include McDermott and Beane here because I think they are taking orders from higher up the corporate food chain by those focused only on the bottom line -- have displayed a really callous disdain for their fans and their fans' loyalty IMO. I don't know how else to describe the personnel moves that they've made since just before the trade deadline. There was a real chance that the Bills might have made the playoffs this year simply because of how bad the AFC is, but apparently saving a few million dollars on Dareus' salary was much more important than breaking the 17 year playoff drought. That's how much the Bills -- not the Bills players -- care about winning football games because to the suits in OBD, it's all about maximizing profit. Money ball.

Why are you amazed by what Bills fans continue to justify from OBD after all these years of their putting crappy teams on the field? Any excuse that OBD comes up with to shipping out a player who has supposedly "transgressed" (which lately apparently means making more than the league veteran minimum salary) gets instantly slurped up and regurgitated by the brainwashed legion. Sometimes OBD doesn't have to come with excuses; they just get rid of the player and let the True Believers make up lies to blame the players ... The True Believers will never hear a bad word about the Bills. Every move they make is brilliant. They still stubbornly cling to the myths that trading Jason Peters and Marshawn Lynch were good moves. They're not going to admit that trading Dareus was probably at least as bad, especially if Dareus goes on to have success in Jacksonville.

It doesn't matter. The Bills don't really care about the cap except when they can use it as an excuse to not re-sign their own players. They care about actual $$$ they spend. Taylor is due a bonus of several million at the beginning of the new league year, so he'll be cut before that date. Since the entire NFL knows how the Bills operate, nobody will offer them anything. Money ball.

Why don't they have better options? Oh, yeah, they opted to go with STers and PS refugees on the DL ... and then they traded away their best DLer for a 6th rounder supposedly because he didn't "buy into" the new system although the Bills were trying to peddle Dareus since before the first OTA.

If they do that, how are they going to package those draft picks to move up and draft their Yet-To-Be-Named Savior Franchise QB? After all, if they don't have their franchise QB, what's the whole point of building up the team since they won't be able to win the SB without one.

Jim Kelly never won a SB in 4 tries, either.

Have the Bills suddenly fixed their defense while the fans and the media were focused on the QB change? Of course not, so there's no more hope today than there was 6 days ago. Exchanging one active roster scrub for a practice squad scrub isn't going to do much to improve a defense that gave up nearly 500 yards and 9 TDs on the ground in 2 games.

There's a whole lot of whistling past the graveyard in this thread.

IOW, almighty McDermott lied with a sincere smile plastered on his face when he claimed they were trying to win games while rebuilding. That sounds about right. Con artists are great actors.

I agree with Alphadog's thoughts on Eli, too. I think the most notable aspect of Eli is his streakiness. That has stood out about him since he was a rookie. All QBs can have hot and cold streaks, but Eli's have been spectacular at times and seem to last longer than simply a handful of games. When he's "on", he not only can carry a team, he seemingly makes miraculous plays, but then there's "bad Eli" who becomes a turn over machine.

That's right, and the Bills' business model is to keep actual current payroll as low as possible while keeping ticket/merchandise sales as high as possible to maximize profits. Winning is totally irrelevant as they've demonstrated this season.