Orton's Arm

> my problem with your system would be that it puts TOO much power in the hands of rookies. Exactly right. A highly touted rookie--especially someone at a premium position like QB--would be immediately able to start a bidding war for his services. He'd pit teams against each other; making them compete to see which one would offer him the most guaranteed money, the longest contract, the richest contract, etc. In an earlier thread, I pointed out that as a percentage of profits, Jamarcus Russell was more highly paid than the best paid CEO in America. That situation was completely absurd; and is why the draft + rookie salary cap makes sense. But if Russell had come into the NFL under the OP's system, one supposes the bidding for him would have been even higher. That's just way too much money going to a player who produced exactly nothing of value. Every dollar you give to an undeserving player has to come from somewhere. If undeserving players are collectively going to start receiving more money, then one of three things has to happen: 1) the owners will have to make do with less money, 2) the fans will have to pay more, or 3) deserving players will have to receive less money. As for 1), the owners are unlikely to agree to decrease their share of the pie in order to implement the OP's plan. As for 2), most owners are already milking fans for everything they can. Therefore, the money for the plan will have to come from source 3)--that is, out of the pockets of deserving players. There are a number of problems with that; in addition to the obvious one of fairness. If a team locks itself into a long-term deal with a Jamarcus Russell--with large amounts of guaranteed money paid out--it could take years to recover from that. Let's say a team realizes, a year into his contract, that he's not going to work out. They also realize that they simply can't release him, because then their salary cap would get hit with the entirety of his bonus in one gigantic lump. Or, if they were to release him that year, they'd have to release a lot of other players too; in order to make room for all that dead cap space. On the other hand, every additional year they keep him around represents large amounts of new money getting paid to a player they no longer want. The OP's proposal would make the above-described problems worse than they've ever been before. That said, I take my hat off to him for thinking outside the box. Even though I disagree with this particular idea of his, I'm sure if he keeps at it he'll come up with some other new idea with which I'd agree.

Good post and I agree. For what it's worth, I heard that Ponder was fairly mediocre for most of his second season. The exception being the last four games of the season, where he picked up his play a great deal. Even assuming that's true, there's always a chance those four games are a fluke. We as Bills fans are no strangers to QBs who play well for eight games, or even the entire 1998 season, only to quickly fade into mediocrity. Then again, there's also the chance those four games represent the start of something more. Ponder and Drew Brees have a lot in common. They were both considered good pocket passers at the college level. Neither has overwhelming physical tools. Brees was picked 32nd overall, which is about where Ponder had been expected to be taken. Both had their careers get off to a slow start. None of this is any guarantee Ponder will become the next Brees. In fact, I'd argue it's very premature to pass judgment on Ponder one way or the other. Going into the 2001 draft, TD eschewed using an early pick on a QB, in large part because he thought Rob Johnson could be the answer. In the 2006 draft, Marv passed up QBs like Cutler in order to give Losman his chance to shine. The fact the Vikings aren't currently trying to replace Ponder may be indicative of a Johnson/Losman situation, or of a Drew Brees situation. Only time will tell.

Your thoughts are similar to mine, especially WRT Barkley. I like his touch, his accuracy, his decision-making, his field vision. I'd like to know a little more about his arm strength and his ability to hit receivers in stride. But assuming those things are where they need to be, I'd have absolutely no problem with the Bills taking Barkley 8th overall.

A good article! Skip Bayless is a far more insightful writer than I might have expected from this song. I hadn't realized that Wannestedt had basically been Jimmy Johnson's Curtis Modkins right up until he turned that into a head coaching gig with Chicago.

I don't like that logic at all. Letting a player go first-contract-and-out, only to use the 8th overall pick to replace him, is just treading water. What happens when Warmack's first contract ends? Do the Bills let him go first-contract-and-out too, only to use another first round pick to replace him? The main objective for a first or second round pick should never be to save money on the salary cap! The objective should be to acquire building block football players, and to retain them for the duration of their careers, even though retaining them will use up a lot of the cap! If you save a few bucks on a player during his first few years in the league, that's a nice bonus. But it should never be more than a tertiary consideration--especially not with a first round pick!

This.

As outsiders, there's no way for us to know what advice Wanny gave to Edwards, or how much of that advice was followed. There may have been philosophical differences between the two. Edwards wanted to run a 3-4, whereas it's clear the only scheme with which Wanny is comfortable is a specific type of 4-3. It's quite possible that whatever advice Wanny had to offer started with, "Line up in a 4-3, rush four, and drop seven back into coverage." On those plays when that advice was actually followed, it may have produced good results. Not because of any intrinsic superiority of Wanny's scheme, but because offenses had probably spent more time preparing for Edwards' 3-4 than Wanny's 4-3. The correct yardstick for Wanny is not how well or badly he may have performed in the role of defensive advisor back in 2011. It's how well he did as defensive coordinator in his various stints around the league. If you have superior athletes, you can mask the flaws of a simple and unimaginative scheme. That's why Wannestedt enjoyed success in Dallas. To evaluate his performance as a defensive coordinator, you'd need to dig deeper than defensive stats. You'd need to watch a lot of film, while critically evaluating the level of creativity, mental flexibility, ingenuity, and competence that his play calling seemed to reveal.

A person without a desire to commit murder can be entrusted with firearms. Once the desire to commit murder appears, then not only firearms, but also knives, poisons, and anything else which might be used to deadly effect become lethal weapons in his hands. On the other hand, it is impossible for a very drunk person to drive a vehicle, without endangering his own life and the lives of everyone else with whom he shares the road.

All's well that ends well. I'm glad to hear that two posters, both of whom I think highly of, are now on good terms.

Going into the 1998 draft, there was a debate about whether Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf was the better quarterback. Manning was described as being more "polished," and was seen as an appropriate pick for a team which needed a QB right away. Leaf was considered more of a long-term project, but supposedly had the higher "upside" due to his higher level of arm strength. I'll take a "polished" QB over a strong-armed QB every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

The other week one of my acquaintances told me that he'd been married, but his wife was killed by a drunk driver. The next time I see him, I'll be sure to pass your post onto him. I'm sure he could really benefit from your words of wisdom.

San Jose Bills Fan is one of the most intelligent and logical posters here. The same could be said of you, and I wish the two of you wouldn't quarrel. San Jose Bills Fan believes--correctly--that every decision should be made on the basis of information available at the time. Suppose you're considering how to invest $1000. Option A has a 90% chance to grow to 10X your investment, and a 10% chance to fall to zero. Option B has a 10% chance to grow to 10X, and a 90% to fall to zero. Based on the information available at the time, Option A is the better of the two choices. It would be a mistake for anyone to try to use 20/20 hindsight to try to argue that B was equal to or better than A. When a decision works out poorly, it's reasonable to ask whether there had been information available at the time which could have served as a warning. Maybe the person in charge thought that Option A had a 90% chance of succeeding, when the reality was only a 15% chance. When that's the case, it's good to look back on where one went wrong in the evaluation process, to avoid a repeat of such mistakes. My own thought was that Wannestedt was going to be solid but not brilliant as a defensive coordinator. I was wrong: he had all the solidity of a piece of cotton candy. My guess is that if I'd dug deeply into his work as defensive coordinator, I would have encountered warning signs. Indications he was not nearly as "solid" as my surface examination of his work might seem to indicate. I think that's what your arguing as well: that the warning signs for Wannestedt were there; visible to those prepared to do the work necessary to find them.

> Do we want a guy who arm strength is, per your work, inconclusive? I would hope the Bills have researched Barkley more thoroughly than I have. For example: in their meeting with him (or private workout, or whatever it was), they should have handed him a football, and told him to throw it as far as he could. If the ball travels 70 yards, there's nothing to worry about. If it travels 35 yards, you worry. > Wouldn't we want a guy who we KNOW has a good arm? Depends. If there was a QB without any question marks, then sure, you take him. Unfortunately, there isn't a QB like that in this draft. And if there were, he'd be long gone by the time the Bills' pick came up. Anything the Bills do will be a risk. There are serious concerns about Geno Smith's decision-making and information processing speed. In addition, he is not nearly as accurate as his gaudy stats would seem to suggest. I'm more pro-Nassib than most, but even with a guy like him there are concerns about his lack of touch on short passes. A number of people have said that none of the QBs in this class are worth taking, and that the Bills should wait until next year to get their guy. That strategy also involves risk. What if the Bills go 9-7 or even 10-6? What if they don't have the draft position needed to take one of the elite prospects people are coveting? If Barkley fails in the NFL, it probably won't be due to a lack of touch, accuracy, or decision-making. That right there takes a lot of would-be risks off the table. If he's available at 8th overall, then you don't have to worry about whether your draft position in 2014 will be good enough to get the QB you want. The only risk left is arm strength. Reddogblitz saw Barkley throw a completion which traveled 45 yards in the air. If that represents the very limit of Barkley's strength, then that's a concern. But if he had an extra 10 yards of range in reserve, then that would be enough, considering his other qualities, to justify pulling the trigger.

I'll agree with K-9 up to a point. Some of the defensive starters didn't provide starter-caliber play. Wanny had problems not of his own making. On offense, Gailey also had a less than optimal player mix. There was no one at QB, only one real WR, injuries on the OL, injuries at RB, etc. Gailey used creativity and ingenuity to deal with those problems. He squeezed a lot more production out of that offense than its talent level warranted. Were there lost opportunities for Wannestedt to do the same on defense? I multi-quoted the above two posts because they represent clear thinking about the kinds of opportunities Wannestedt should have--but did not--take advantage of.

> Just remember that Pettine has already purged and/or re-arranged a good portion of the defense moving forward. There's a difference between purging and rearranging. Last year, there was no one to stop Wanny from rearranging to his heart's content. > So if we DO end up pleasantly surprising everybody with improvement, it won't be with the same cast of losers that Wanny had. If my understanding is correct, the Bills have thus far added two starters to their defense. It's quite possible they'll add to that total between now and opening day. But that doesn't mean that any defensive improvement will be due solely to swapping around players. I fully expect Pettine to be significantly more competent and creative than Wanny. I also expect that added competence to produce solid results on the field.

You may well be right about his arm strength. The game I watched didn't provide any data on the subject, one way or the other. If a QB's arm strength falls below a certain minimum threshold level, then you have to pay a lot of attention to it. If a QB's arm strength is above that minimum threshold, then it's not as big an issue. If I were the Bills, I would have used some of my time with Barkley to have him make a series of increasingly difficult throws. (Difficult from the perspective of arm strength, that is.) If he did well on a test like that, the correct response would be to draft him 8th overall. If he did poorly, then you have to evaluate how much of that poor performance is the result of lingering effects of the injury/incomplete rehab, and decide what to do from there.

Agreed. A defensive coordinator should always be alert for opportunities to do something the other side isn't expecting. To use a combination of intelligence, creativity, and mental discipline to outsmart the other team's offensive coordinator. I didn't see any of that from Wanny. In fact, if you'd fired Wanny mid-season, and replaced him with a high school coach chosen more or less at random, I don't think you'd have seen a huge difference in the quality or style of defensive coaching. It's not exactly as though Wanny had been noted for his brilliant creativity elsewhere, but through player ineptitude was forced into being vanilla with the Bills. Wanny was vanilla with the Cowboys, but looked good because he had insanely good defensive talent. He was vanilla with the Dolphins, but still often looked respectable on defense because they had good, solid player talent. K-9 pointed out that the players were a big part of the problem on defense, and I agreed with him. But then he went further, making it seem like the players were the only problem on defense. That's going way too far! If the Bills had had a defensive coordinator the caliber of Wade Philips or Bill Belichick, that coordinator would have gotten a lot more out of that defense than what Wanny got.

> First of all... 2011 isn't exactly "what have you done for me lately". Perhaps not. But this discussion is about arm strength, and I doubt Barkley's arm is weaker now than it was in 2011. (Unless he's recovering from an injury.) I also doubt he's become less accurate or worse at making decisions now than he was then. The reason you want to draft a multi-year starter is because that guy can give you a large sample size of his work. Not because an accurate throw in 2011 is somehow less indicative of accuracy than an accurate throw in 2012. > Secondly, USC routinely sends one or two Offensive linemen to the pros every year... usually in the first 3 rounds. When I watched the game, I was focusing on Barkley, not on individual offensive linemen. Maybe there were one or two guys on that line who dominated their respective man. But the line as a whole was consistently dominated by Stanford from the very first snap. > Barkely has absoulutuely no excuse as far as supporting cast. Others disagree with you, and have made the case that Barkley's supporting cast in 2012 was consistently dominated by its opponents. (Especially his OL.) One of the reasons for watching the 2011 games instead was because that's when his OL still had some semblance of credibility. But not as much of a semblance as I would have liked--at least not in the Stanford game. > If they don't look good, it's their own fault. And, if they do, you have to question is it them or the supporting cast? That's a very pessimistic view. To me, it looked like Barkley was making good, fast decisions to cause the offense to be productive despite a lack of pass protection. Also, most of his throws looked accurate--often very accurate. Stanford's DBs didn't look over-matched against USC's WRs. On the other hand, Stanford's pass rush was so good that the DBs didn't have to stay in coverage very long at all.

Thanks for the link to the videos. I just watched Barkley's game against Stanford in 2011. The thing which stood out to me in that game was the lack of pass protection! He almost never had a clean pocket to step into. Most of his throws were short--but there was almost always at least one defender applying pass pressure when he threw the ball. I'm not saying the pass protection was a complete failure. I don't recall any cases in which a defender rushed untouched to the quarterback. The OL gave him a little time--but not much time at all! Under the circumstances, he looked to me like a quarterback responding appropriately to a lack of pass protection. I saw few if any wasted opportunities for him to wait for deeper throws to open up. Had he waited much longer on just about any of those plays, they would have resulted in sacks. As it was, I don't recall him taking any sacks, despite the fact his OL was greatly over-matched. I saw a small number of intermediate throws in that game. It didn't look like he had much chance to step into those throws, due to an abundance of defensive pressure on the quarterback. Most of his intermediate throws looked very accurate. I didn't see any deep throws. But neither did I see a single legitimate opportunity for him to throw deep. Not one! His OL was getting dominated that badly. That game didn't allow me to conclude anything--either positive or negative--about his arm strength.

Agreed. I remember the days when Wade Philips designed the Bills' defense. We had a few stars, like Ted Washington, Bryce Paup, Antoine Winfield, and an aging Bruce Smith. The other seven guys on defense ranged between mediocre and solid. But that defense as a whole was one of the very best in the NFL. Unlike Jerry Gray's defenses--which looked amazing when facing bad offenses, but crumbled when facing anyone good--this defense looked good no matter who it faced! I loved that defense. The very first major decision TD made was to disassemble that defense by hiring a defensive minded head coach to instill a new scheme. When he was hiring his first head coach, the final four candidates were all from the defensive side of the ball. That late '90s defense was a lot like what Kelly the Dog had described in his post. A lot of middle of the road players, a few stars mixed in, and a defensive scheme brilliantly designed to put players in a position to succeed. The Bills' defense this past season had less talent than those mid '90s defenses had. But as important as that talent difference is, I think the difference in coaching is even more important.

Last year's defense was bad enough that there's plenty of blame to go around. I remember we set a record for most yards surrendered over a two game stretch. (Or something to that effect.) You are absolutely correct to point out that Wannestedt did less than nothing to put his players in a position to succeed. Just as K-9 is correct to point out that players often failed to make plays they were in a position to make.

I'm not interested in adding Tebow to the Bills. But at least the Tebow Song is entertaining!

I've been very pro-Barkley. But I'm deeply concerned with what you've had to say about his arm strength. If you're right, then that would make me lean more toward a guy like Nassib, or perhaps waiting until the 2014 draft to take a QB.

This.

You are right, and I stand corrected. I like your thinking. Barkley at #8, a very good TE in the 2nd, and a solid addition to the LB corps in the third would make a ton of sense. I agree with the meta-message of your post. If a QB's arm strength falls below a certain minimum threshold, then all his other positive attributes become progressively less relevant. Holcomb is a good example of that. My sense is that Barkley's arm is considerably stronger than Holcomb's. But I agree with you that this is something they need to pay attention to.