The Red King

If he doesn't grossly overpay to move up, expect a good number of "Fire McBeane" threads tomorrow. >.<

The only way they would know this is via mind reading and/or wiretapping. This is speculation. That being said, I certainly hope it's true.

Same reason they gave up a ludicrous number of draft picks to move up. Buffalo's move up to #12 sent them into full panic mode, so they pulled the trigger early and grossly overpaid. The Jets acted on panicked impulse, the Bills are acting with a plan and composure.

Were it me, I'd walk up to The Imperial March from Star Wars, turn to the commish and Force Choke him.

I needed this right now.

I can't see a trap game. Last time Rodgers played Buffalo, he didn't just have a bad game, he was outright humiliated, like national exposure humiliated. I think Rodgers brings his "A" game to this one no matter what.

I'm curious, what two wins did the Bills "luck into" last season?

Lol! Never. My father ingrained in my head that you stay with your team, even back in the 2-14 years.

As I noted earlier, Beane is willing to take short-term losses if they lead to bigger long-term gains. Reminds me of how another AFC East team conducts business.

It's easy to say this draft is drawing more excitement out of Bills fans then any in a long, long time. I think it's because we have something we have not recently. Hope. True hope. The feeling that we are on the precipice of potential greatness again, finally. And with it comes fear. We know how fragile that hope is, and how key to it this draft is, and while QB is the hot topic, the other picks are still quietly crux. If Beane nails this draft the Bills could be a powerhouse, and quickly, too. Of course, if he doesn't nail it...that dreaded mediocrity that has plagued us from 2000 up until last season...that mediocrity we are all paralyzed with fear over. And if he botches the draft, well, top pick in 2019, here we come. What impresses me about Beane is, that playoff drought was killer and it left him with a very touchy, very volatile fan base. One bad season, two? It's easy to get fans to just sit tight, be patient, trust the process and let a GM do their job. Seventeen? We want results. Immediate results. Any single move a GM makes that doesn't look like it immediately makes us better gets scorched on talk shows and message boards. I mean, look at these boards. There are already a couple people that want Beane gone after he "allowed" the Jets to trade up to #3. The pressure on a NFL GM has to be brutal, but the pressure on a Bills GM has to be soul-crushing. It would be far easier to make flashy moves without direction, to grab sexy players to appease and excite the fans, to placate them and put bodies in the seats. That is what we had for a long time, and that is what kept us mired in the muck. It would have been easy for Beane to do the same, but he didn't. He sat down and came up with a long-term plan. Since taking over he has been making moves based on what he believes will help the team instead of basing them on how he thinks Bills' fans will react. Getting rid of players like Watkins and Darius took a serious pair of stones and the backlash from fans was almighty. I remember discussions of tanking the season, and I remember Beane standing up there telling me they were most certainly not tanking the season. I rolled my eyes, as most of us did. Of course he'd say that, and a GM lying to Bills fans would be nothing new. But then we starting winning. The team started gelling, developing chemistry, culture. The started overachieving, producing a playoff run that was inconceivable before the season started. All of a sudden the moves were making sense and the Darius trade showed that Beane was willing to take a short-term hit for a long-term gain. This wasn't throwing darts at a board. There was a plan here, a real plan, and we were already seeing benefits. And even after the season ended, the moves continued. But these weren't random strikes, it was a methodical plan. He moved Taylor, added to draft capital, and when other teams were breaking the bank overpaying for mediocre free agent QBs, Beane waited, remained patient, and nabbed AJ for the equivalent of pocket change all while still moving withing striking range of a top QB prospect. It's too early to tell how good a GM Beane will be. But I like what I've seen. Whether it works or not, we finally have a GM with a fully detailed long-term plan already in place. He is willing to do what he feels he has to in following that plan and makes moves not to make the fans happy, but rather to make the team better. He's willing to endure upsetting our touchy little fan base because he knows if his plan works, in a year or three the Bills will be an elite team again and the fan base will worship him. Will it work? I don't know. But the fact that we actually have such a plan and a GM committed to it has me far more optimistic for this team's future then I've been in a long, long time.

Amen. This thread has drift off-topic, reigniting the Johnson/Flutie debate and drifting into TT commentary, and yes I was guilty of helping derail it, too. Regardless of opinions on Flutie or Tyrod, Johnson's comments referred to by the OP were distasteful and says a lot about him. Even after 20 years he has not come to terms with what happened and still wants to put blame anywhere but himself. He didn't ride the bench his whole career. He got out onto the field. He played. He started. And in the end he simply didn't perform well enough to keep the starting job. That's on him, not on Flutie, not on Flutie's son. C'mon Rob, man up and take a little responsibility.

I love how some people say Buffalo had a bad team, backed into the playoffs and didn't deserve to be there. Remembber, Buffalo made it instead of the Ravens because of the strength of victory tie-breaker. Their nine victories were over teams with a combined better win-loss record. Then they play their first playoff game in the 21st century on the road, losing by only seven points to a team that went on to beat Pitt at Pitt and then almost beat NE at NE. Yeah, they really showed they didn't belong, right? As for prime time, Buffalo has no storylines atm. What is the pull? The national draw? Recently, and especially last year, our storyline was The Drought. That was the national draw. Were the hard-knock Bills finally going to break the longest playoff drought in pro sports? A lot of people were keeping an eye on the Bills nationally by Week 17, rooting for the underdog, hoping those poor slobs made it in. And they did, of course. But what now? The Drought is over. From a national standpoint, from an outsider standpoint, what is currently compelling about the Bills? What will attract viewers? No big-name QB, no high-octane offense, the only real (one-sided) rivalry got a MNF game this year. Also, keep in mind Buffalo has been terrible in prime time. Factor all of that in and tell me, if you worked for the NFL, would you give the Bills more then one prime time game this year?

The crux is, when the Bills needed 4th quarter comebacks, Flutie was able to deliver. Tyrod couldn't. That's the difference between them. Crunch time came, Flutie doubled down and looked sharp. TT on the other hand looked lost every time he had to run the two-minute drill with the game on the line. ...and I still have my 1st and 2nd edition unopened boxes of Flutie Flakes in the kitchen.

"He's not dead, he's drafting." "Drafting?!?" ...I say we must one up this. For our pick a live buffalo must walk up to the podium and poop out paper with the pick's name on it. Less gimmicks, more substance please NFL.

The Jets payed an obscene amount of picks to move up just three spots in a deal that took place not during, but well before the draft. Precious little else would surprise me now this draft.

I'd be fine removing the Free Kick. Safeties are a rare thing and you're already rewarded 2 points for it. Replace the Free Kick with the team scoring the safety getting 2 points and the ball on their own 40. Free Kicks can't be kicked onside anyway. As for kickoffs, I'd really hate to see them go. They can be game-changers, especially onside kicks. How many times have we watched the end of a game thinking "Team <x> is out of time outs, twenty seconds left on the clock. They better hope for a good runback!"? Who can forget The Music City Miracle (as much as we try. XD)? The Bills kicking the suicide onside during The Comeback? Kickoffs may seem trivial for most of the game, but during the last couple minutes of a game they can become critical. There has to be a better way then just axing them.

Many here already are (for example the thread "Beane Cost us the 3rd overall pick."). I must have mistook some other responses on this thread as yours and apologize for that.

At the same time, Foles will never be worth more in trade-bait then he is right now. The Eagles might strike while the iron is hot. Depends on the offer, I suppose. This is why GMs get paid the big bucks, so many different ways to handle each situation, half of it requires dilligant number-crunching, half of it relies on pure gut instinct. I'm sure these guys are chugging Tums and chasing it down with Pepto on a daily basis this time of year.

This was actually a thing awhile back. Trying to remember details, think it was on HBO. They made a virtual league, pulling from great teams of the past...though no Bills team. Each week a computer would simulate the games, then they spliced and edited actual footage of the teams to make game highlight clips. Was quite creative actually, but only lasted one season. Was a decade or two ahead of its time.

Time will tell. If the Bills manage to trade up on Draft Day, we may never know. If they don't/can't, I suppose we'll see.

Imagine if he won the bid on the Bills back when that was a terrifying possibility. I'm guessing he'd have built a domed stadium and made the NFC pay for it.

As I said prior, if Buffalo cannot feasibly trade up to get the QB they want, they may take a different QB without trading up, then trade for Foles as an insurance plan. The rookie gets to sit on the bench a year and learn, AJ and Foles battle for the starter role, and Peterman gets released. If Buffalo can trade up for the QB they want, they will likely no longer have the picks needed to trade for Foles, which is why there hasn't and won't be a trade for Foles until Draft Day rolls around.

And yet, without knowing exactly what the Bills would have paid to move up, you're already saying Beane blew it. And if we don't move up when the draft finally arrives, again with no idea what the cost will be, you're ready to label him a failure. Beane has a threshold. He will not overpay to move up. You're already calling that threshold unreasonable without even knowing what it actually is...and yet your above reply suggests that even you would have an acceptable threshold. You have absolutely no idea how much Beane is willing to spend, and no idea what he was asked to spend. All we know is the asking price, whatever it was, exceeded the threshold, whatever that was.