First, I'd like to discuss who was available at the time. I dont feel comfortable with Bunkley or Ngata. I feel that Justice is a huge gamble and i would not want to grab him with #8 money.
What i wanted the Bills to do was trade down. I felt that one of the DT's being taken by us was the wrong pick. The only problem with trading down was the players available. The Eagles and Broncos were said to be the 2 teams interested in trading with us. I also did not feel comfortable with any of the players that were supposed to be available around those picks either even though we would be picking up another pick. Maybe Whitner would be there, maybe he wouldnt, but as I've said before, if you like a player draft him, dont take a chance on him being there when you trade down.
If you think the Bills didnt want to trade down and pick up Whitner your nuts. They were clearly on the phone but something wasnt right. Who knows what it was, BUT, if the Bills could have moved down they would have.
As many of you know, i was an advocate of taking Michael Huff with our pick. I think that Matt Bowen and Coy Wire suck, Troy Vincent is like 100 years old, and we have no depth behind these players.
Now the player. Coming straight from thehuddlereport.com the writeup on Whitner says, "Donte is one of the better tacklers in this draft. He is a head up, wrap up, squeeze and drive tackler. He has really good speed, size and shows an excellent burst to the ball. He has good hands to go for the interception and shows impressive overall instincts for his position." The even more impressive thing i found in there was, "If you want a safety set to go for a two-deep zone coverage defense, don’t think twice about drafting Donte. That is the system that he can handle right away and impact for you."
Bottom line: we needed a player like this on our defense, we should have traded down and we tried but it obviously wasnt a good situation. I dont care that we took him with the number 8 pick because the only difference between taking him then or later is money, and obviously the Bills feel comfortable enough paying him. One of the other choices at this spot would not have been good. Thank God matt bowen or coy wire doesnt have to start.