Rampant Buffalo

Okay fair enough. That said . . . Michael Jordan was drafted 3rd overall. While I know next to nothing about the NBA, I'm guessing he must have shown something at the college level, to have been taken with such an early pick. If I think of guys who were better as professionals than they'd been in college, one of the first names which comes to mind is Kurt Warner. No one drafted him. He tried out for the Green Bay Packers, but didn't make the final roster cut. Then he got a job stocking shelves for a grocery store. After he'd worked that job a bit, the St. Louis Rams called, and the rest is history.

Yeah, that could be. But McConkey went one pick after Coleman, so there might be other front offices out there who see it differently. I'm guessing that one of the factors which led to Coleman over McConkey is that the Bills were looking for an X receiver, such as Coleman, rather than a Z receiver, such as McConkey. I value route running more than most. A lot of people look at a WR and think, he has good physical tools. He can always learn good route running later. But you look at the WRs who have been in the league a number of years. Looking just at those guys, you'll see a fairly wide spectrum of route running ability. If two players show a difference in route running ability at the college level, it's not necessarily the case that difference goes away in the NFL. The gap could persist or widen. One of Ladd McConkey's best attributes is his route running. The Bills front office evidently saw opportunity for Coleman to improve upon his route running and his ability to gain separation. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they're right.

Let's wait until Coleman plays at least one NFL snap, before comparing him to Michael Jordan.

Reread my post for an answer to your question.

I disagree with your assertion of a low ceiling for McConkey. Good hands, decent size, a 4.3 40, excellent route running, excellent separation. There have been WRs with worse attributes than those, who have gone on to have high ceiling careers.

You make a solid point. That said . . . when I watched some of Josh Allen's college footage, I saw special throws. Throws deep downfield, into tight windows. Big boy throws that most NFL QBs can't make. That wasn't enough for me to make a prediction for or against Allen. I was on the fence about him after the draft, and for his first two years in the NFL. But there was enough there for me to say that he was flashing elite attributes at the college level. I never got that sense with Coleman. I'm open to the possibility that Coleman's play improves over what he did in college. But I will need to see that improvement actually happen, before I get the anointing oil out for him.

I mean, yeah. That's one way of looking at it. However, I watched every pass target Coleman received in 2023. He seemed maybe a little above average for a college receiver, but nothing special. Nothing on the tape which indicated a career at the next level, at least not to me. So when some random sports writer described him as a "stone cold killer," yeah, that makes us happy because it's exactly what we want to hear. But it's not what I saw on the tape. Does that perspective make me miserable? Am I "invading" this thread by failing to join in the sportswriter's celebration of Coleman? I remember back when Bill Parcells was a head coach. If one of his players had a good game, he'd describe the player as a one game wonder. He's also say things like, "It's not time to get the anointing oil out just yet." You do what you want, but I personally intend to wait until Coleman has had at least some success at the NFL level before getting too excited about him.

Statistical data are useless unless you know how to interpret them. During Allen's first year, he had arguably the worst OL in franchise history. Kelvin Benjamin and Andre Holmes were the worst pair of starting WRs I've ever seen, on any NFL team. Zay Jones wasn't much better. During the offseason, the starter's reps had been given to Nate Peterman, not Josh Allen. Anything you could possibly think of to set a QB up to fail, the Bills did to Allen. What effect do you think all that had on Allen's rookie stats? When I watched Manuel's college highlight reel, there was nothing special there. The throws he made were throws I'd expect of any average college QB. Allen's college highlight reel was cut from an entirely different cloth. Manuel was the same guy in the NFL as he was in college. He was the same guy in year 4 or 5 of his NFL career as he'd been as a rookie.

I'm not going to take the time to look this up, but I recall a thread from a few weeks or months ago. According to it, Josh Allen had the second-most clutch drives from 2020 to today. I'm pretty sure Mahomes had the most. People would be tempted to give Mahomes' name as an answer to your question, because they've seen him succeed in clutch situations even more often than Allen. During the early and middle parts of this past season, Mahomes' supporting cast didn't do a particularly good job. And guess what? Mahomes looked ordinary. Not special. Later in the season, as well as the postseason, the supporting cast improved its play, and Mahomes looked like he'd returned back to his old self. There was a time in Allen's career when, briefly, he was set up for success, at least on offense. His OC was Daboll. His OL wasn't much for run blocking, but at least it was reasonably good at pass protection. Singletary at RB, Knox at TE, Diggs, Beasley, Davis, and Brown at WR. With that supporting cast, he achieved the highest QB rating in NFL postseason history. That includes scoring the go ahead points in a postseason game against the Chiefs, with 13 seconds left. Was that performance by Allen an outlier, or was it typical of what he'd do if set up to succeed on offense? It's hard to know the answer to that without more data. I can't think of any other times in Allen's career when he was set up to succeed nearly as well as that. At this point, any comparison between Mahomes and Allen risks being apples to oranges. Almost all the data we have involves Mahomes having a good/reliable supporting cast, and Allen having an inferior/unreliable supporting cast.

Interesting, in the sense of the ancient Chinese curse. "May you live in interesting times."

Think about the playoff drought. I wasn't impressed with the Gregg Williams/Jerry Gray blitz happy scheme. It was great at bullying teams vulnerable to blitzing. But if a team was good at blitz pickup, and if their QB (Tom Brady) got the ball out quickly, blitzing isn't really what you want to do. I'd say our best drought era defensive coaching came during Doug Marrone's time as HC. Marrone himself wasn't much of a coach, but he sure knew how to pick good defensive coordinators. Pettine's defense was good against the pass but below-average against the run. A good defense overall. Schwartz's defense was also good against the pass, and noticeably better than Pettine's against the run. If I was hiring a defensive coordinator, I'd take either of those two over Sean McDermott. Why? Because Sean McDermott is a very good DC a lot of the time. But other times, he's a terrible DC (soft zone/prevent defense). Pettine and Schwartz provided greater consistency in their efforts, rather than McDermott's binary oscillation between very good and completely terrible. As for offensive coordinators: during the drought, the only OC who accomplished much was Chan Gailey. Gailey was the anti-Marrone: he was a good coach himself, but terrible at hiring defensive coordinators (Dave Wannestadt). Like the OP, I credit Gailey for doing a great job of setting Fitzpatrick up for success. Ted Marchibroda left the team in the early '90s. I think of all the OCs we've had since then. The two which stand out are Gailey and Daboll, if your goal is to build around a passing QB. And Greg Roman, if you want to build your offense around a running QB. If I could cherry pick from the playoff drought, I'd take Gailey as OC and Pettine or Schwartz as DC. You're getting better performance at OC and DC than what we received this past season. Then, I'd take the OL we put in front of Tyrod Taylor. My RBs would be Fred Jackson and either Spiller or Lynch. I'd take the defensive cast we had while Pettine/Schwartz were around. Lee Evans is one of my WRs. I'd love to have Eric Moulds as my other WR, as long as I can get a reasonably young version of him. If not, I'd take Stevie Johnson as a poor man's Moulds. The playoff drought teams didn't exactly have a lot of great players at WR. But put Josh Allen in at QB, and the team I just described would be a very serious contender for the Super Bowl.

Hmm. Take a guy like Alex Smith. He was a reasonably good QB for the 49ers. A respectable starter. Then he found his way to Kansas City. In his last year with the Chiefs, he averaged 8.0 yards per attempt. That's better than normal for Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers. Did Smith suddenly start playing a lot better than he had with the 49ers? Well, maybe. But if he did, it didn't last long. In his next two years, he was QB for Football Team. His yards per attempt was 6.6, then 6.3. Another, perhaps more likely explanation was that everything in KC was set up for the QB to look good. Great offensive coaching, in the form of Andy Reid. Scheming guys open, so that the QB has ridiculously easy throws. One of the top three TEs ever, in the form of Kelce. Good overall offensive supporting cast. Pat Mahomes inherited all that when he became the starting QB for the Chiefs. Compare that to Josh Allen. The offensive line he had his rookie year may well have been the very worst in franchise history. His two starting WRs were even worse than the OL: Kelvin Benjamin and Andre Holmes. For most of his career, his OL has been decent at best. In the most recent playoff loss to the Chiefs, Bills receivers had 160 yards of dropped passes. The last time he had an OC who schemed guys open, Daboll hadn't yet sat down with the NY Giants. Then there's the fact that Allen's defense has never generated more than 2 stops in a postseason game against the Chiefs or the Bengals. Several other defenses have generated 6 or even 7 stops in postseason games against the Chiefs. The Chiefs have done everything they could to set Mahomes up to succeed. The Bills have done a lot to set Allen up to fail: dropped passes, failing to scheme guys open, and a defensive collapse literally every postseason game against the Chiefs or Bengals. Despite all this, Allen has kept the postseason games against the Chiefs close. Take Pat Mahomes away from the Chiefs and give them Alex Smith. Take Josh Allen away from the Bills, and give us another Alex Smith. You do that, and the Chiefs are steamrolling the Bills in the playoffs. It's not remotely close at all.

Suppose you were to make a list of the successful draft picks they had prior to 2015. Then ask yourself, are there any guys on that list, who would have been unsuccessful in a post-2015 NFL? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who'd fit that description. But, your suggestion about the league changing could be correct in other, perhaps more subtle ways. Perhaps there was something they were looking for in players which became less common. Or maybe there was something they should have been looking for in players but weren't, which became more common. If I had to guess, I would guess that there may have been at least some changes in their front office, which may have influenced the quality of their results on draft day.

I still have a certain amount of hope left for Elam. He was affected by injuries this past season. Is it likely he'll be the player they hoped he'd be when they were drafting him? Perhaps not. But if healthy, I could see him giving the Bills' secondary some quality depth. He'd get beat more often than one of our starting CBs would have, but he'll also have the occasional moment when he reminds us why he was drafted in the first round. At the end of his rookie contract, we risk losing him to some other team who plays man more often than we do. (And hence would be willing to pay him more.)

My understanding is that Doug Whaley came from the pro personnel side, not from the drafting side. When I ask myself which Doug Whaley draft pick had the best career, the two names which come to mind are Sammy Watkins and Nickell Robey. Maybe Shaq Lawson. That's an extremely disappointing draft record. But if you look at his free agent signings, those guys worked out reasonably well. He did a better job in the area where he had experience, than the area where he didn't.

Not sure why you'd say that. I made an error, and he corrected it. Do I really want to be the type of person who spreads erroneous claims around? No, I don't. When someone correctly points out a mistake I've made, they help me be a better person.

Thank you for correcting an error I had made.

I just reread the speech. He didn't mention the LGBTQ community, or sexual orientation, or anything else pertaining to that subject. If you don't believe me, the transcript of the speech is here. https://www.ncregister.com/news/harrison-butker-speech-at-benedictine Please don't spread misinformation.

Whether his comments were "bad" towards women depends on the POV of the woman. If a particular young woman wanted to put all her energy into her career, and forego having children in order to do so, then maybe a woman like that would be annoyed by Butker's comments. If however a different young woman wanted to have kids, and saw her future children as more important than her future career, I'm guessing she wouldn't have any problem with Butker's comments at all. Why would she, when he's described her accurately? Of those two types of women, which do you think is more likely to choose to attend a Catholic university?

That speech was on the longer side! Most of it was about Catholicism. He even went so far as to endorse the traditional Latin mass! 😮 There was some discussion about abortion, and Butker's position was anti-abortion. I think that the two most controversial parts of his speech were the anti-abortion part and the part the OP quoted. "Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world." A comment like that makes me ask myself some questions. Was my own mother more excited about her career, or about motherhood? Would my siblings and I have been better or worse off if she'd shifted her priorities in that regard?

I'd like to suggest a modification to the thread title. Instead of "Bills visit with Gable Stevenson," it should be, "Brandon Beane and a star-struck Sean McDermott visit with Gable Stevenson."

Back in the '90s, there were several elite WRs. Jerry Rice. Michael Irvin. Andre Reed. Herman Moore. Also Sterling Sharpe, of the Green Bay Packers. When Sharpe went down with a career-ending injury, it was felt that it would hurt Brett Favre considerably. It didn't. If anything Favre improved, by spreading the ball out more, instead of forcing it to a triple-covered Sharpe. That could be seen as an example of the point you're making, albeit an example from several decades ago. Hypothetically, let's say there's truth to what you wrote in the quoted post, and that teams are or soon will be seeking to have several good receivers, instead of a perceived #1. A situation like that wouldn't make WRs into the next RBs, at least not for me. Instead, they'd be like offensive linemen. Imagine two OLs: one with 5 good players who work together, the other with a star LT and then a bunch of scrubs. Which OL do you think will be more effective? To me it's obvious that the OL with five good players will be more effective, even though none of its players are elite. To continue the metaphor: if you have an OL of good players, adding an elite LT to that mix can definitely help. That's why the best LTs get drafted high, and why the best LTs get paid. If you have a group of good WRs, adding an elite WR can make a significant improvement. There are more WRs who are merely good, than there are WRs who are elite. But merely good WRs are not the norm, as demonstrated with the Bills' experience with the WR position. If you have 3 - 4 guys at WR who are good but not great, you're doing better than most teams.

I'm curious to hear your thought process behind that remark.

I think you and I are seeing this differently. Here's how I see it. Suppose a GM says the following: "You know something? The guys we have at RB are okay. Not great. Just okay. You know something else? If we had a top 5 RB, I'd bet he'd get a full yard per carry more than the guys we've got now." So that GM goes out and drafts a top 5 RB. They give him 20 - 25 carries per game; causing that team to generate an additional 20 - 25 yards of offense per game. Now look at the Bills' recent playoff loss to the Chiefs. Bills receivers had 160 yards of drops. If the Bills had had the exact same WRs they'd had, except with better hands, that's an additional 160 yards of offense. Moreover, Bills' receivers had great difficulty gaining separation. If they could have done a better job there, that's additional offensive yardage you're adding, over and above the 160. At least in that game, improving the WR position would have generated an order of magnitude greater yardage than you'd typically expect from improving the RB position. I realize that most games aren't like this. But if reasonably good receivers are a dime a dozen, I'll gladly donate one of my own dimes to avoid a nightmarish collapse at the WR position, such as the one we just endured. I have a dime right here, and I'm looking at it right now.

When I watched Barry Sanders play, it was clear to me that he was a significantly better RB than Emmitt Smith. The stats bear that out. Sanders averaged 5 yards per carry, versus 4.2 for Smith, and 4.2 for Thurman Thomas. Barry Sanders was the best RB of his time. Putting the blame for a team's losses at the feet of its first ballot Hall of Fame RB is an atypical approach to analyzing a team's W/L record. When I think about why Detroit didn't win more games, the first thought which comes to my mind is that their QB was Scott Mitchell. Also, the NFC East teams were brutally tough back then, making it difficult for other teams to go very far in the playoffs. Comparing Barry Sanders to OJ Simpson: Simpson averaged 4.7 yards per attempt. That's better than the 4.2 for Thomas or Emmitt Smith, but not as good as the 5.0 for Barry Sanders. Simpson had five 1000 yard seasons, compared to ten such seasons for Sanders. Adjusting for the 14 game season doesn't help Simpson here: it's still five for him, ten for Sanders. Longevity clearly favors Sanders over Simpson. But what if you threw that out, and just looked at the two best seasons for both RBs? (Including Simpson's 2000 yard season)? Simpson's two best years: 1973, 1975 Sander's two best years: 1997, 1994 Total rushing yards for their two best seasons Simpson: 2003, 1817 Sanders: 2053, 1883 Yards per game (two best seasons) Simpson: 143, 130 Sanders: 128, 118 Yards per carry (two best seasons) Simpson: 6.0, 5.5 Sanders: 6.1, 5.7 If you looked just at each RB's two best seasons, which one did the better job? Sanders was a little better in terms of yards per carry. Simpson got a few more carries per game, and therefore had a few more yards per game.