TigerJ

I hope not. The Bills need significant contributions from Epenesa and Moss at least.

As soon as I saw the news I told myself there would be a thread on this subject on TSW.

He at least has this season, but the handwriting is on the wall. I understand that Green Bay's head coach, Matt LaFleur tends to prefer disciplined play from his QB, and Aaron Rodgers is something of a free lancer. He's uber talented, but marches to a different drummer. At 37 years old, LaFleur probably figures he's not going to change Rodgers at this point in his career, and if he is going to mold the team in his image, it's going to be with a young QB who will do what he's told. Rodgers has this year (assuming Rodgers doesn't react too badly to the drafting of Love and demand a trade or else) and then he's out the door in favor of Love. He gets the year because Love is a somewhat raw prospect and could use some time on the bench to learn the system and stay close to the coach on the sideline.

With a 4.83 40 he was a slow safety. Now he's a slow and underweight linebacker. If you're slow you'll have a challenge to make a competitive NFL team like the Bills. If you're slow and underweight, you need to be looking for a new line of work.

Wasn't Chris Collins the congressman from Buffalo that got convicted for insider trading in the stock market? Is he producing these skits while he waits for his sentence to start?

It's true that Beane didn't reach for a single pick. He got good value (Zack Moss?), great value (AJ Epenesa?) or ridiculous value (Jake Fromm State Farm?) in every single pick. Some of that is luck at the way the draft fell, but Beane is so consistent in his selections that you have to say it's mostly a self discipline to stay with the philosophy/strategy.

That is as plausible as any roster projection. The thing is, there is always a chance, even a likelihood that a fringe member or two of the training camp roster - a late round draft pick or a UDFA will come in and simply demand to be given consideration for a roster spot. Is it Dane Jackson who comes in and out plays Taron Johnson? Dane has the flexibility to play outside too. Is it Vedvik who pushes Bojorquez off the roster. Maybe Trey Adams (any relation?) demonstrates that he's past his injury woes and playing with all the promise he showed three years ago. The challenge with doing any projection is it's impossible to identify who is going to beat the odds, so you end up either following the odds all the way down the list, or spicing it up with a wild guess or two. Good luck on your predictions in any case.

I wonder how much Trey and the Bills can do with respect to strength and conditioning to help Trey prevent a recurrence of his back injury issues. The injury issue is the major obstacle that could prevent him from having a nice NFL career.

New England is in Salary Cap Prison right now and Aaron Rodgers is a well paid QB. New England already lacks good veteran pieces for a complete team. The numbers just don't add up for a trade.

The guy the signed is a shade under 6'1." That means it's unlikely they view him as a pure tight end. Another clue might be the fact that he's listed as a FB/TE. More than likely this is a message to Patrick DiMarco that the Bills are looking for options. If the UDFA comes in and shows well in training camp, it might give Buffalo a position flexible player they can move around and get more use from than a pure fullback. To put it in simpler terms, the signing of Gilliam says more about DiMarco than it does about the tight ends.

I agree, that the Bills are giving the impression of confidence in Ford as their right tackle. I suppose training camp could change that, but it seems to be the reason there was little apparent urgency to draft a tackle.

Antonio Williams is 5'10" and weighs 215 lbs. He ran a 4.52 at his pro day. Ike Brown is 6'1" and 185 lbs. He runs in the 4.4 range.

As I learned from another poster, Moss was dealing with a hamstring at the combine which slowed him considerably. He later ran a 4.52 in a private workout. That is somewhat reassuring.

UDFA last year. I think he came from Iowa or some Midwest school. He is 5'11" I think, and an outstanding route runner. Pure slot receiver. If Beasley can give the Bills anpther productive year or two, Easley might be able to come in and give Buffalo the same kind of receiver. He's got 4 inches on Beasley, but otherwise they are very similar. As far as Hodgins and Davis are concerned, Davis has better speed while Hodgins is a better route runner with better hands. Davis has been pretty much a pure deep receiver. He'll have to do more than that to carve out a role for himself in the NFL. Davis is a little more rugged. Hodgins is going to need to add 10 - 15 lbs of muscle and toughen up a bit. The reliability of his hands is a big plus. Neither one is going to get a lot of reps this year. 2020 will be about working to alleviate deficiencies.

Hunter Bryant has lots of shortcomings as a tight end, but I wonder if he could be effective in the backfield as a H-back/fullback type. If he can do that, and do it well, he would give a team a lot of flexibility rather than waste a roster spot on a pure fullback who is going to get maybe 5 - 10 reps in a game. He can get a handful of reps at fullback, and supplement it with a few where he lines up wide as a receiver, and a few more as a blocker in a double TE formation.

When everybody was saying Beane will trade up, or trade back into the first, because this is what he does, I was thinking, the sample size is too small to say he's going to do the same thing every year.

Thanks. That helps.

Defensive line. There is plenty of depth and competition right now, and Buffalo is unlikely to find anybody on the D-line who has the potential to crack the lineup, to say nothing of making a difference.

My general thoughts: With no first round pick, it becomes a little harder to get excited about second and third round picks. I understand that Stephon Diggs is Buffalo's "first round pick" and any overall assessment of this draft has to take into account the trade to acquire Diggs. However, the first two picks in the draft have planted a seed of concern in my mind - team speed. I know that in any assessment of an individual player's ability/potential, speed is not the only concern, and generally not the most important one. Players who lack excellent speed can be highly productive. One need look no further than Devin Singletary to see evidence of that. However, overall team speed is an issue that can affect a team's success. Epenesa and Moss are both among the slowest players in their respective position groups. I get that both "play faster than their timed speeds, but when a GM builds his team without respect to team speed, it eventually becomes an issue. Right now, Buffalo has good speed at WR, thanks mostly to Brown and Diggs. Dawson Knox is among the faster tight ends if he can address the issue of drops. The Bills are slow and RB, and pretty slow at CB. Tre White has OK speed, but that's about it. On the defensive line, Ed Oliver has excellent timed speed for his size and position. I don't know how Jerry Hughes timed when he came out of college, but it was probably pretty good. He's depended a great deal on his explosive first step and an array of moves over the years. He's probably lost a step over time, and he's much closer to the end of his career than the start. That's about it for the D-line. At linebacker, Buffalo does have very good speed. Edmunds is a freak as we know. Milano, while not freakish, is plenty fast enough. There's some speed in the linebacker depth too. At safety, I don't think it stands out either way. Poyer and Hyde are probably not blazing fast, but they seem to have plenty of speed for what they do. I'm mainly saying that Beane needs to be careful, and keep an eye on team speed going forward, or it could bite him in the behind down the road.

I think Epenesa may have a nice career for Buffalo, but as Hughes and Addison reach the end of their careers, Buffalo will be looking for an explosive edge rusher, and that may happen sooner rather than later.

High floor, not a real high ceiling. He's thought of as strong, but interestingly at the combine, his bench press was tied for the worst in the group. Most already know his 40 time and 10 yard split were pretty poor. I think he has some ability to get stronger and to become more explosive with strength and conditioning work. He'll be a solid player, but I don't expect him to0 become any kind of a star. We'll see.

I knew it was a long shot, but I was looking in particular for teams that reached for players who would not even be a great value at #54. The theory is, the more teams reach, the more value falls to later picks. Damon Arnette was a nice reach by the Raidahs. Jordyn Brooks was another one - to Seattle at #27. I was not especially a fan of Buffalo picking Edwards-Helaire, so, I'm not unhappy that he is off the board - to KC at 32 (with all due respect to TSW Mock Draft #3 participants).

Nope.

I watched the whole thing.

If the OP's point is that both players benefitted from a strong supporting cast, the point is valid. That's about the only thing they have in common though. Oh yeah, they're also short.