SoTier

For the first 25 of the last 30 years the Bills stunk because Ralph Wilson and his hand-picked successor, Russ Brandon, put maximizing profits ahead of winning football games. The Bills did not start prioritizing winning over maximizing profits until 2018 because Pegula kept Brandon in power after he purchased the team. It was only after Russ Brandon got the boot and Beane was given real GM power (including setting budgets for coaches, scouting, etc) did the Bills start putting winning ahead of profits. Once the salary cap was instituted in 1994, the Bills didn't give many of their first round draft picks second contracts not just RBs but also DBs whom they traded out with regularity. 1994 - Jeff Burris DB 1994-1998 1995 - Ruben Brown G 1995-2003 9 times Pro Bowler, 8 times with the Bills, 1 time with Bears 1996 - Eric Moulds WR 1996-2005 3 times Pro Bowler for Bills 1997 - Antowain Smith RB 1997-2000 won 2 SB rings with New England in 2001 and 2003 1998 - no first round pick 1999 - Antoine Winfield CB 1999-2003 3 times Pro Bowler for the Vikings 2000- Erik Flowers DE 2000-2001 2001 - Nate Clements DB 2001-2006 Pro Bowler for the Bills 2002 - Mike Williams OT 2002-2005 2003 - Willis McGahee RB 2003-2006 Pro Bowler with both Ravens and Broncos 2004 - Lee Evans WR 2004 -2010 2004 - JP Losman QB 2004-2008 2005 - no first round pick 2006 - Donte Whitner S 2006-2010 Pro Bowler for 49ers and Browns 2006 - John McCargo DT 2006-2010 2007 - Marshawn Lynch RB 2007-2010 Pro Bowler for Bills, 4 times Pro Bowler and 1 time All Pro for Seahawks won SB with Seahawks in 2014 2008 - Leotis McKelvin DB 2008-2015 2009 - Aaron Maybin DE 2009-2010 2009 - Eric Wood 0C 2009-2017 2010 - CJ Spiller RB 2010-2014 Pro Bowler for Bills 2011 - Marcell Dareus DT 2011-2017 2 time Pro Bowler, 1 time All Pro for Bills 2012 - Stephon Gilmore CB 2012-2016 1 time Pro Bowler for Bills, 3 times Pro Bowler and 2 time All Pro for Patriots, 1 time Pro Bowler for Panthers 2013 - EJ Manuel QB 2013-2016 2014 - Sammy Watkins WR 2014-2016 2015 - no first round pick 2016 - Shaq Lawson DE 2016-2019 2017 - Tre'Davious White 2017-present 2 times Pro Bowler for Bills Brown, Moulds, and Dareus were the only outstanding first round players at their positions that the Bills signed to second contracts until Beane re-signed Tre White. Brown, Winfield, McGahee, Whitner, Lynch, and Gilmore were all named to Pro Bowls after the Bills either released them, declined to re-sign them or traded them. Lynch and Gilmore were also named All Pros after leaving the Bills. Both also won Super Bowl rings as did Antowain Smith. Ruben Brown also played in a Super Bowl with Bears while the Bills didn't even play in the post season from 2000 until 2017. The Bills failed to draft particularly well in the first round for most of the last 30 years, and they compounded their problems by sending most of the best players they developed packing rather than paying them. For most of the 2000s, the Bills were irrelevant to the NFL except as a farm club for other teams. It wasn't drafting McGahee, Spiller and Lynch that caused that any more than it was drafting Winfield, Clements, Whitner and Gilmore. They were all good players. The Bills were a dysfunctional franchise for most of the last 30 years.

Then the Bills should take Zion Johnson or Ryan Linderbaum if one of them is on the board at #25.

This is exactly why I support improving the running game. I don't care exactly how the Bills do it -- drafting a top IOL prospect (Johnson or Linderbaum) or the top RB prospect (Hall) in this draft -- but they need to protect Allen by giving him a more diverse offense so that his designed runs are much fewer and so that the Bills can run the ball down other teams' throats if weather conditions (like the NE game) or defensive scheme makes passing difficult. I don't want the Bills to turn into a 50/50 pass/run team and I certainly don't want them to morph into a run first team, but I want them to be able to have a good enough run game for the RBs to regularly run for 4-6 yards a crack with the threat of one of them breaking a long gainer on the ground ever present. Love the sarcasm!!!!

I understand that but using White as an example was a poor choice, especially when the Bills pre-Beane gave us sooooooo many examples.

Soooo ... you don't think Hall is worth an early pick but you assume that some professional NFL talent evaluator will take him before the Bills get to draft him in Round 3?

Why is Hall a "reach"? He's considered the best RB in this draft class and a first round talent. I don't want the Bills to reach for a player at any position. Don't try to rewrite history. White might have been a reach at #10 but wasn't considered one at #24 or #25 where the Bills took him. The controversy with White was that the Bills traded out of the #10 pick when they needed a QB and 2 excellent prospects, Mahomes and Watson, were available. Taking White also seemed to be part of the same old, same old Bills management pattern under Ralph Wilson/Russ Brandon regime during the salary cap era: allowing good/great players to walk rather than give them a second contract and using the draft to fill the hole left in the roster. The Bills passed on a QB to draft a DB because they had allowed Stephon Gilmore to leave in FA earlier. I'm a ZJ fan myself and would definitely want the Bills to take him over Hall if both were available. However, most of the posters arguing against Hall also don't want a first round IOLer. They simply don't want RBs because of their short "shelf lives" and they don't want IOLers because they're "too expensive" if teams exercise fifth year options. Neither is a particularly compelling reason, especially when few, if any, of the posters in this thread arguing against the Bills taking Hall at #25 have actually named a WR or CB that they'd like the Bills to take. It seems to me that if you don't want the Bills to take Hall, then you ought to offer the name of a specific alternative, ie, an actual prospect not a generic WR or CB.

I agree with this view of Beane. I was very skeptical about him early on but he's proven that he's not only all about building a winning team but really good at it, so I'm good with whomever he takes in the first round although my personal preference would be IOLers Zion Johnson or Tyler Linderbaum if they're available. As for the fifth year option argument, I think it's overblown. With first round draft picks expected to start contributing as rookies, teams generally know what they have in a player well before they have to make a decision on a fifth year option.

Agree with all this, especially the interior OL positions. I have always been a BPA advocate, but I think that in this draft with the Bills draft position, BPA and need may very well coincide, especially in the first round. #25 is an excellent spot to find a top quality center or guard, and drafting one that could start in September could be the best way to improve the running game even if the Bills don't add a RB early. That's not even considering how much improved protection could help the passing game.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.

If Linderbaum or Johnson are on the board when the Bills get their turn, they should definitely take him for exactly the reasons you list plus the fact that it's likely he'll be a significant upgrade over Morse who's a decent but not outstanding center. Moreover, both of them can play guard IIRC, so that's a big bonus.

Unfortunately, there's no respect for OLers, including Linderbaum and Johnson, because the draft gurus here don't think IOLers are "valuable" enough to be drafted in the first round. IOLers are never appreciated until you don't good ones and your QB pays the price.

No under-sized "one hit wonders" on the DL or at LB.

I voted for Zion Johnson, Boston College. The Bills need a computer nerd on the OL!

Agree. The Beatles themselves started out as simply a band seeking commercial success, and the Stones started out in the mid-Sixties as just another British Invasion Beatles imitator band seeking commercial success like Herman's Hermits or Jerry and the Pacemakers. The Stones matured like the Beatles did, but they were followers of trends rather than creative geniuses ala the Beatles led by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

I'm old ... I've mellowed.

I think that if there's a push for an international team, it will be Mexico City rather than London simply for logistical reasons.

After decades of being on the receiving end of manure from Pats, Fins, and Jests fans because this franchise was so hopeless for so long, I revel in knowing that we have one of the very best organizations in the NFL that found a generational talent at QB. I don't get my jollies rubbing other teams' proverbial noses in poop on a MB. The Bills kicking butt during the season and playoffs is sweet enough revenge. Totally agree. IMO, Belichick wanted Jones because he thinks he can coach him into a facsimile of Brady. Maybe he can but he probably won't, but certainly Brady and Brees are examples of guys without rocket arms who are going to Canton on the first ballot. Unfortunately, QBs like Rodgers or Mahomes or Allen don't come along that often. That's why they're "generational talents". Mostly, the best a team can realistically hope for is getting a Russell Wilson or a Ben Roethlisberger or Drew Brees. They're great QBs but a team that finds a Rodgers, Mahomes or Allen has a horseshoe up its butt. For a team to get into the position to draft a top QB prospect when it needs one usually means having several circumstances to fall their way. The best QB in a draft class may very well not be the #1 overall pick. Rodgers (#24), Mahomes(#10) or Allen(#7) weren't the first QBs taken in their draft classes.

This "conversation" is simply a poor attempt to dump on Jones (and the Pats) and pretend it's not by making generalized statements about physical traits being supreme. That's nonsense. What makes Allen an elite NFL QB isn't his arm strength but all his "intangibles", especially his drive, his processing ability, his decision making. He came with the drive but he's had to work on his mechanics to improve his accuracy, he had to learn to read/recognize defenses, and he had to improve his decision making based on his experience. Guess what, most QBs who have come into the NFL with great arms have never improved nearly as much as Allen has, which is, again, why he's special. If Jones has as much drive and other intangibles as Allen, based off of his rookie season, Jones may very well become a successful NFL QB if he continues to work on his game. He won't be in Allen's level but there aren't many QBs who are.

Physical tools don't mean much without the ability to process information quickly and make good decisions. The history of the NFL is filled with highly drafted QBs with "elite physical tools" who crashed and burned on their inability to master the mental nuances of the pro game. Conversely, there are QBs with lesser tools who have successful careers because their ability to make plays because they make good decisions. Andy Dalton, Joe Flacco, Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, and Jimmy Garappolo are all examples of not the greatest physical tools that have been successful. If elite physical tools were so "huge", so many QBs with elite arms wouldn't fail in the NFL.

Agree with both main thoughts here. Jones reminds me of Brady as a first year starter in 2001. He wasn't that impressive except that he tended to make good decisions, especially for a QB with such limited experience (the game after Bledsoe got injured was his first NFL start). For several years after 2001, there were always debates on the old BBMB over whether Brady was a "system QB" or "a franchise QB". I guess we all found out he was for real. It wasn't Brady's arm strength that made him the GOAT any more than it's lack of arm strength that has sent Carson Wentz from Philly to Indy to Washington, DC. It's a combination of traits, but more than anything, it's decision making -- knowing when and where to throw the ball. Mahomes and Allen have shown they're truly special. Mahomes has shown that since his first game in 2017. Allen took a couple of years to develop because he was so raw when he came into the league. I think that the most likely candidates to join them on the podium are Watson, Herbert and Burrow although it's likely that not all of them -- or possibly none of them -- actually achieve the same status.

The premise of this thread is silly. Arm strength is only one factor that contributes to making a great QB just like speed is only one factor that makes a great WR. If arm strength was the most important thing, Jeff George would be in the HOF just as if speed was the key to making a great WR, none of the track stars drafted into the NFL over the last two decades would have crashed and burned instead of being rarities.

IMO, the posts related to this particular topic are a runaway April Fool's Day joke. That's why I didn't respond to the original post on Friday and I'm not responding to Poleshifter's preposterous postings in this thread since.

My point was simply that rising crime isn't unique to NYC as some posters seem to be claiming but a growing problem all over the country, and certainly violence isn't restricted to large cities or metros.

On the current Bills roster, "legitimate starters" have to be pretty good, especially on offense. This regime isn't going to draft a guard -- or WR or CB -- in the first round to be a JAG. They're looking for players, whatever their position, who are better than what they've got on the roster now and have the potential to be among the top players in the league at their position. Maybe there's nobody that's that caliber available when they pick, so they have to make the best of it. What I sure don't want to do is to pass on a super talented guard to take a lesser talented player at a supposed "more important" position. Yeah ... guards seldom actually change games until some gem like Ross Tucker or Bennie Anderson whiffs on a block and your QB leaves on a cart, maybe for the season.

Woodstock, Kingston, Saugerties are about 2 hours from NYC, not "an hour or so". There have always been people commuting to NYC from these areas but probably not as many as there are now. Again, this kind of thing is happening all around the country outside major cities. All of Northern Virginia has become a Washington, DC suburb, out as far as Fredericksburg into the horse country beyond. The outer suburbs of cities like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, and Chicago stretch out 50-100 miles from these cities. Commutes are even worse in California. Remote work since the pandemic has exacerbated the transition of exurbia into suburbia. Your claim that recently soaring property values have increased taxes for long time property owners is not accurate. In NYS, recent price increases are not going to impact long time residents' tax bills until there's a general property reassessment or unless the owners did remodeling. It's more likely that new home buyers would see their taxes raised because they paid more for their properties than they would have last year. Technically, local assessors in NYS aren't supposed to do that but sometimes they do. An increase in population and demands for new or improved services (example might be establishing a municipal water system to replace private wells or paving more roads) can increase taxes for long time owners, but that's because tax rates increase and it applies to all taxpayers. This is something that happens whenever there's large scale new development in a formerly largely rural area -- from the Catskills to the South Carolina Low Country to small towns outside Nashville. Six people were killed and twelve more were wounded in downtown Sacramento, CA yesterday. Last week, a twelve year old kid in South Carolina shot a classmate. Violence ain't just a NYC problem. Spoken like somebody who thinks he is exempt from having his rights violated by the police or by some government entity just because he's never had his civil rights violated. FYI, it can happen to you even if it's a minor thing and you are the most upstanding citizen.