Orton's Arm

Haplo's choice of words was not poor. He is exactly right: if you want a good, solid OG, you can often find one in the second or third round. If you pick a guy 8th overall, that guy needs to be a game changer. Warmack is a very talented football player. But an OG will have fewer opportunities to make game-changing plays than will players at some other positions. Compare Warmack to a hypothetical, solid OG taken in the third round. On passing plays, how often will that third round OG's man be the first to reach the QB? How often would that third round OG's man reach the QB that much sooner than some other pass rusher? Even if Warmack totally eliminated his man on every single pass play, it's not like he'd necessarily be buying the QB a lot of extra time in the pocket. Certainly not enough extra time to justify the difference between a third round pick and 8th overall. If Warmack was going to be taken 8th overall, most of the justification for that would have to come on running plays. The Bills could run most of their running plays to Warmack's side of the field, to take maximum advantage of his run blocking. An improvement like that in the running game would be nice--but not necessarily 8th overall nice. Even if Warmack obliterated the run defender across from him on every single play, defensive coordinators could respond by sending other defenders around Warmack. I realize there were plays in college when Warmack blocked multiple people on the same play. He will still make plays like that in the NFL--but less frequently. If it's a running play, and if Warmack succeeds in blocking multiple people, and if that play results in a significant gain, then you could say Warmack was a difference-maker on that particular play. But plays like that will probably be a relatively small percentage of the total offensive plays run.

I would have no objection to taking a WR in the second round instead of the DL. Then the draft would become: 1. Barkley 2. WR 3. OG If your initial premise is correct--that Barkley is significantly less impressive than the QBs available in next year's draft--then I'd agree with your conclusion as well. What aspects of Barkley's game do you feel will hold him back from playing at or near a franchise level?

My approach to the draft would be as follows: 1. Barkley, QB 2. DL 3. OG 4. LB I have several reasons for wanting Barkley at 8th overall. a) The 8th overall pick represents the second-highest pick the Bills have had in the last 25 years. If you can't fill a hole at QB with a pick like that, when can you fill the hole? b) Most draft analysts agree that Barkley has the accuracy and intangibles you want. The question with him is arm strength. Both Montana and Brady had mediocre arms and great accuracy and intangibles. While there's no guarantee Barkley will be the next Montana or Brady, I can live with his mediocre arm. So much so that I'd be happy to change my screen name! As for the DL--my understanding is that this draft is rich with talent and depth along both the OL and DL. It would be a shame not to come away with part of that treasure trove. The Bills are set along most OL positions; and a good DL can be more valuable than a good OG. If the Bills were to use their second round pick on a rock-solid NT (3-4), then that would free up guys like Dareus and Kyle Williams to play DE (3-4). While I don't anticipate the Bills being in a 3-4 alignment all the time, it would be nice to have the right personnel to be in that defense some of the time. Not to mention that it's good to add good young talent to your DL on principle. The OG in the third would be to replace Levitre, keep Barkley upright, and to once again tap into the silver lode of OL/DL talent in this draft. I'm not necessarily wedded to picks 2 - 4. If (for example) there's a WR available in the second round who's much more talented than the best NT, it would be foolish to take the NT over the receiver. But I am wedded to the Barkley pick. It's much easier to win a Super Bowl with a franchise QB than without one. Barkley may be our best chance to obtain that franchise QB any time soon.

Good post. I agree with what you've written, including the importance of getting the QB you want without worrying about whether you're taking him "too early." If you take a guy like Barkley at 8th overall, and if he becomes a stronger armed Chad Pennington, you've gotten excellent value out of the pick.

What are your thoughts on Barkley? From what I've read, he has the accuracy and intangibles you'd want. Where he's lacking is arm strength. I can live with that. The main reason Joe Montana lasted until the third round was because he didn't have the world's strongest arm. Tom Brady doesn't exactly have a rocket launcher attacked to his shoulder. My sense is that Barkley's level of arm strength is a lot closer to the level of those two guys than it would be to, say, Holcomb's arm strength. The million dollar question is obviously whether Barkley's accuracy and intangibles compare to Montana's or Brady's.

I agree with 95% of what you've written. If there's a QB that you think can be The Guy, you take him. You don't worry about whether there's some non-QB with a slightly higher grade, or if there's a gaping hole at LG or LB or wherever. Get the QB while the getting is good, and worry about the other stuff later in the draft, or in free agency. If after the dust settles you still have a hole or two, you can deal with the holes next year. If the QB turns out to be The Guy, you'll have a good ten year window with which to surround him with the high quality supporting cast necessary to achieve a Super Bowl win. If you don't get The Guy, there will be no window and no Super Bowl win. But if there isn't a QB with The Guy potential available at 8th overall, then you start looking to fill other premium positions. That explicitly rules out taking an interior OL, non-pass-rushing LB, or RB. It also should rule out taking any kind of safety, unless the safety is truly an elite coverage talent--the kind of guy who can more or less shut down Gronkowski in one-on-one coverage. But it would be exceedingly rare for it to make sense to take a safety that early; and when in doubt it's best to err on the side of not taking the safety so early. The absolute last thing this team needs is another Whitner! Regardless of who the Bills select with the 8th overall pick, the plan has to be to hold onto him if he meets or exceeds expectations. Traditionally, the Bills have allowed their DBs with the best combination of youth + proven accomplishment to go first contract and out. Unless they change that pattern, every first round pick used on a DB will be at least partially wasted; even if the player himself has an outstanding career. Antoine Winfield, for example, would have been a great use of a first round pick, if the Bills had held onto him throughout his career. As it was, the Bills got only a few years out of him before he waved goodbye. It's been a few years since I watched any college ball. But based on the reports I've read, Barkley is the QB most likely to meet the Bills' needs.

The only way to settle this is to find out whatever logos Howard University may have been using in the '20s - early '60s. I did some research on that question, but didn't come up with anything. I did, however, find the following.

> Taking Whitner sent me over the edge.The A. Williams selection was the most angry I have been since then. This surprises me. I would have thought you'd have been angrier about the Leodis McKelvin pick (11th overall) than Aaron Williams ( early 2nd round). > Fluker is stronger, in better condition, and a MUCH harder worker. The kid can take over a game. I trust your abiility to evaluate OL. However, I think it would be worse than useless to take Bray in the 2nd round. Bray will never become The Guy, and there's a chance that if the Bills took him, they would spend the next several years not using high draft picks on QBs. Of the QBs in this year's draft class, I feel the most comfortable with Barkley, and the second-most comfortable with Nassib.

What I don't understand is why someone who feels that technology = sissification is posting such thoughts on an Internet discussion board.

Negative. This was a Band Aid solution. That said, the Bills' front office is privy to information we as fans don't have. If the Kolb contract is far saner than the $6 million a year figure currently being bandied about, and if the Bills are fully committed to drafting a first round QB in this year's or next year's draft, then that would make my opinion of the Kolb signing less unfavorable. A Band Aid solution that's used in addition to a real solution is less bad than a Band Aid solution instead of a real solution.

You are 100% correct. He is much better than many of the QBs already in the Hall.

> You don't instantly become a SB contender from the bottom of the pit. It is a process where you build > up the roster on both sides of the ball and go from there. You have to string together a few high quality drafts . . . I'll agree with that up to a point. Just as I'm sure you'd agree that a franchise cannot add a franchise QB little by little. It's not like you can draft 1/3 of a franchise QB one year, 1/4 the next year, and so on, only to somehow combine the fractions at the end into a complete franchise QB. A franchise QB must be added in one big python lump--or not at all. > Even when that caliber of qb is in the draft that doesn't mean that you will be in position to draft those gems. If someone were to employ the all-or-nothing strategy I'd suggested earlier, the intention would be to gain the draft position necessary to take an Andrew Luck. If your starting QB is determined by a competition between Tyler Thigpen and Craig Nall, odds are that few if any teams will draft ahead of you. > So what do you do? You don't do what this stupid organization has done. Not bothering to draft a > qb prospect unless you are absolutely sure about the unknown result is not going to advance the team at all. I completely agree. This organization is very good at finding reasons to not draft QBs. Over the last 40 years, the Bills have used 25% of their first picks of the draft on RBs. During that same span, they've used only 3.5% of their first picks of the draft on QBs. Picking the wrong QB can hurt you doubly, if you let it. The first way it hurts you is the loss of the draft pick. Nothing you can do about that. But the second way is because it lulls you into thinking that you need not invest more resources at the QB position, until you've given your current QB of the future a chance. Back in 2006, the Bills eschewed Cutler at 8th overall, and went with Whitner instead! I think the reason they did this was because they didn't want to invest significant new resources into the QB position until they'd given Losman his chance. Losman's presence on the roster also prevented us from drafting Aaron Rodgers back in 2005; both because of Losman using up the pick which should have been used to take Rodgers, and because Losman's presence on the roster caused TD to believe the Bills were "set" at QB. Had Losman retired before the 2005 draft, TD might have tried trading into the first round for a QB like Rodgers.

Over the course of his career, Trent Edwards compiled a yards per pass attempt stat of 6.5. Losman's is 6.6. As you pointed out, Kolb's was 6.4. Kolb played behind a bad offensive line, which is also something one could say of Edwards and (often) of Losman. On the other hand, neither Edwards nor Losman had Larry Fitzgerald. Back in the day, Jim Kelly was paid about $1.5 million per season. Kolb's contract is structured to potentially allow him to make $6 million a season or more. I'm sure Jim Kelly finds that contrast hilarious!

If the OP is fixated on the QB position, he has every reason to be. I would gladly trade the next three years' worth of draft picks for a young top-5 QB. Yes, I'd still be stuck with all the other needs you mentioned. But that QB would elevate the team a lot, and would help attract free agents to fill some of those holes. Besides that, the QB would likely play at an elite level for 12+ years; giving me plenty of chances to put together a relatively complete team and win a Super Bowl. On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that the Packers used a second round pick on Brian Brohm. They did this because, several years into Aaron Rodgers' career, they weren't sure if he'd be a good successor to Favre. They wanted a Plan B in case things with Rodgers didn't work out. If several years of Rodgers sitting behind Favre weren't enough to make the Packers realize they had a future Hall of Fame player on their hands, then how are the Bills supposed to properly evaluate three QBs--and presumably get rid of one of them--before the final roster cuts? My own personal preference would be for the Bills to use the 8th overall pick on a QB like Barkley; and then to use some pick in rounds 3 - 7 on a dark horse QB. Both those QBs would make the final roster; which would entail getting rid of Kolb or Jackson. While we're at it, we should also get rid of Brad Smith.

> If you can't acquire an elite qb you don't bypass a quality qb that will at least make your product watcheable. I strongly agree with all of your post except for the above sentence. If you want to win the Super Bowl--if you want it so bad you can taste it--one approach is to go all or nothing at QB. Either you have The Guy at QB, or you don't. If you don't, you need to do whatever it takes to get The Guy. Until you do, you're just spinning your wheels as far as a Super Bowl win is concerned. Sometimes, the best QBs are chosen at the top of the draft. Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck come to mind. If you have a QB who's good enough to be credible but not good enough to be The Guy, odds are very strong you won't be picking early enough in the draft to get one of the small handful of QBs that everyone wants. You don't have to have a top-5 pick to get The Guy. The Green Bay Packers showed us this when they took Aaron Rodgers after about 20 other teams had passed him over. But you are much more likely to get The Guy if you're picking first overall than if you're constantly going 6-10 or 7-9.

Great OP! Your son seems to have a good head on his shoulders, and a strong grasp of football. I tend to agree with his analyses.

Good post!

> We need ARMS! Here I am!

> I have to do all my exercising at car dealerships. Nothing else is heavy enough. Wimp. Real men do their exercising at railway yards!

An excellent point. When the New York Times conducted their regression analysis, their goal was to use as few variables as possible to explain as much of the observed variation as possible. The dependent variable in this case was a team's number of wins over the course of the season. They found that by using just six variables, they were able to explain 80% of the variation. The six variables they used were yards per pass attempt, yards per rush, INT percentage, and the defensive analogs thereof. Yards per pass attempt was three times as important as yards per rush; while INT percentage was as important as yards per rush. By that I mean that a 1 SD improvement in yards per pass attempt would result in three times as many additional wins as would a 1 SD improvement in yards per rushing attempt. Another publication conducted a study in which Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson were the main subjects. They looked at plays when each OL won his individual battle; and compared them against plays when just one OL lost his battle. The difference was dramatic: an OL losing his battle would cost the RB about half the yards he would otherwise have gained. Assume there are five battles being fought along the OL. If each OL has a 90% chance of winning his battle, then on 59% of running plays, all five OL will win their battles. But if each OL has an 80% chance of winning his battle, then all five OL will win their battles on only 33% of running plays. This is a rather long way of saying that, unless you have Barry Sanders in the backfield, good run blocking is probably much more important to the success of your running game than a good RB. Bill from NYC made a similar point; and (unlike me) managed to do so without making people's eyes glaze over. It is reasonable to conclude that a QB is even more important to the passing game than a RB is to the running game. Given that the passing game is four times as important as the running game, a GM who was aware of the New York Times' analysis would place at least four times as much importance on a good QB as on a good RB. Looking at past drafts, it does seem as though QB is more strongly emphasized in the top-10 than RB. But the difference in emphasis between the two positions is not nearly as strong as one would expect, had GMs been aware of the New York Times' conclusions. There are teams--such as the Bills--which have generally emphasized RB much more strongly than QB. Over the last 40 years, fully 25% of our first picks of the draft have been used on RBs. Less than 4% of our first picks of the draft have been used on QBs. Nothing about that track record remotely suggests the Bills are aware that the passing game is four times as important as the running game.

Unless I was in love with one of the QBs in this year's draft, I'd do that trade in a heartbeat.

> #1 - Baseball lends itself to mathematical analysis in a way that football never will Never say never! I'll grant that a Moneyball-like analysis of football would be much more difficult than for baseball. A football-like analysis would involve watching a ton of film, to gather far more information than is currently being gathered. For example, you could watch an entire game, timing how long it took for the DE to get past the LT on each and every play. Then you could rinse and repeat for the other offensive line positions. This kind of technique could potentially get you much more raw data than we currently have. Once the raw data have been obtained, it would then be a question of building a sound mathematical model. A project like that would be incredibly labor-intensive, and therefore expensive. In the meantime, we should make good use of the somewhat simpler (but still effective) statistical tools we do have. > #2 - If we're having a competition between algebra and one of the most knowledgeable posters in the history of this forum, I know which dog I'm picking every time. It's not his level of knowledge which concerns me. It's his arrogant attitude. Nothing about his posting style makes me want to get to know him more, or interact with him any more frequently than absolutely necessary.

In any business endeavor, quantifying something almost always leads to more knowledge and insight than mere instinct, guesswork, or gut feeling. In large manufacturing operations, there are typically quantitatively-based quality control measures. Other quantitative measures are used to track the flow of products through the factory, to determine where the bottlenecks are. Quantitative tools have also been used to increase agricultural yields, increase engine performance, and perform a host of other tasks. You, for whatever reason, seem hostile to the notion of using quantitative techniques in a football setting. I'm reminded of the movie Moneyball, in which the man who'd created a way of quantitatively measuring baseball players' impact on winning was shunned by older front office personnel. They were people just like you: they thought they already "knew baseball" and didn't need any sort of statistical analysis. If you feel that you, personally, have nothing to learn from the New York Times' regression analysis, or from any other statistical analysis, fine. Don't learn anything. But do not expect me to join in your evident disdain for quantitative analysis. There are at least two possible approaches to any discussion: 1) To explain why you believe what you believe. The goal here is partially to persuade. But it's also to enlighten: to cause people to more deeply understand the subject, and your own thought process about it. 2) To demand that your audience adopt your opinions because you tell them to. No explanation is given, because the goal isn't to inform or enlighten. The goal is to increase one's own social status by dictating to others. You consistently choose this second persuasive technique. Do not use that technique with me in the future, ever. If (as I expect) you respond to this message with some variation of that second technique, I will not respond. If you use the first technique, I will. In the unlikely event that you decide to use the first technique, please answer a simple question. You claim that the New York Times analysis broke no new ground. If that's true, then that would imply that even before the Times performed the analysis, most front office people were already vaguely aware that the passing game is four times as important as the running game. What evidence can you give us that such a consensus existed?

While Barkley may not have elite arm strength, his arm is stronger than Fitz's. But the biggest difference between the two is that Barkley throws accurately.

> There are those that know the game, it's [sic] players, and the paramaters [sic] in which they play and those that don't. In other words, neither you personally, nor front office personnel generally, were in any position to learn from the regression analysis; because you and they already knew everything worth knowing.