JohnC

If I'm not mistaken didn't we take Kujo in a round earlier than the Redskins taking OT Moses? The Kujo miss hurts especially because he wasn't even on a number of boards due to knee concerns.

Holy shiiit! That is really scary stuff. Your comment asking "why I hate this country" is lunatic talk. You need to get back into the bunker before the government assault begins. WOW!

Gotham Bill, You and I usually are in sync. Not on this issue. If the Bills believe that when their turn comes up and there is a good qb prospect on the board they need to take action. Whether it is Trubisky/Watson/Mahommes/Kiser/Webb or whoever it is it would be a lost opportunity that we will regret. I'm not against trade downs. But not to the extent that we will risk losing one of our higher rated qbs. The Bills are not a playoff team this year. If by luck they claw their way in it will not be sustaining. There are good qbs in this draft. Waiting another year with the hope of being in a more favorable position to get a legitimate franchise qb the next year is chasing a mirage. Once the qb issue is resolved on a long term basis this organization will have more flexibility to rebuild this mediocre roster.

If you were a miner and got black lung disease your medical bills would be paid for including disability payments. If you were a policeman and got shot you would be taken care of. If you were a fireman and got seriously hurt doing your job would be taken care of. If you were a construction worker and got hurt on the job your medical bills would be taken care of and if necessary workmen's comp would take effect. If you were a soldier and got injured in battle you would be taken care of. In all of the above jobs the people were aware of the risks associated with the job. And yet they were all taken care of because of injuries associated with their jobs. Your logic and argument don't hold to the standard of the real work world. In all

The Rex story is over with. In a short period of time that hiring mistake did a lot of damage. To the owner's credit he immediately saw the chaos on the field and with the staff. I get the sense that Whaley is next to be dispatched. Until recently I have been a supporter but by any measure his work product is average at best. This owner is new to the business. He has made mistakes. But he is the type of person who is not going to be passive and tolerate mediocrity. He'willing to spend money to support the cause, sometimes not very judiciously, but what comes with the financial support is accountability. We are fortunate to have him as an owner.

Whaley's problem as I stated in the prior post is that he doesn't have a core that he is going to hold to. In my opinion he is a collaborator to a fault. If Pegula was intrigued with the barnstorming fired coach he is not the type of person who is going to tell the boss that he is wrong. Let's face it he is far from being a Wild Bill Polian who has strongly held convictions and was going to forcefully hold to his positions. Whaley has the opposite personality. He is mellow to the point of being invisible. With respect to the highlighted area I won't go so far as to say he is a lackey but he is far from being forceful in promoting and sticking to his beliefs. He is a person who to a fault is too willing to adapt. You ask why is he still the GM? Maybe his unimpressive stint is soon coming to an end? Let's face it his work product is not going to impress an owner who is impatient and wants to win sooner rather than later. In my opinion if Whaley is let go it will have little to do with the Rex story and more to do with his own job rating. You don't earn an A for a lackluster performance.

WEO, I appreciate your research on this topic but I still don't believe that Rex was his favorite candidate. It makes no sense. Rex was a known quantity to the people inside of the business. There was little about his record that was appealing. A better way of characterizing Whaley's involvement in this saga is that Whaley is not the type of person who is going to face up and tell the new owner, who he never had a relationship with, that he is wrong. That is one of Whaley's faults. He is a go along type of person who is reluctant to assert himself when it is required. That's the problem with Whaley. He doesn't have a core so he constantly adjusts his approach to accommodate who he is working with. Instead of asserting himself he avoids confrontation and adjusts to the underling. Whaley wanted Hue, a person he had had an association with. That was widely reported. He never worked with Rex or had an association with him. However, he and everyone in the business were very familiar with his record and his crass self-promoting tendencies and his obnoxious circus act. Did Whaley make comments saying that he was on board with the hire? Of course he did. What else is going to do? Say the owner was an idiot? If you want to believe that Whaley was more instrumental in the hire than I do, that is fine. But the bottom line is that the owner had plenty of resources and outlets outside of the organization to get more information on Rex and other candidates. I still contend that this was primarily an owner's decision.

The Rex hire was an owner hire. Whether Brandon was encouraging him to hire the vociferous coach is not the decisive factor in his hiring. Terry P paid $1.4B for his new high profile company. He had the ability to consult with people inside the organization and outside the organization before selecting this fool coach. The person he hired to become his HC, his first major hire, was fired from his previous job with the Jets and let that team in shambles. That certainly wasn't a secret. Terry P could have made a phone call to Bill Polian and ask him what does he think? He could have called any of the owners or any of the former GMs who were still involved in the business through their media and consulting work and ask them what were their thoughts? If he would have been more diligent in examining the candidate's record it is doubtful that Rex would have been his first high profile hire. I don't care what Brandon told the naive owner who had little knowledge about his new endeavor. He didn't do the proper due diligence and it came back to haunt him. Before the first season was over he knew that the decision he made was a disaster. So let's not pass the buck on who was responsible for this stupendous boondoggle. It was the owner. If he was unduly influenced by a marketing employee then the onus is still on him because he made the selection. To Pegula's credit he is not afraid to admit mistakes and acknowledge that something isn't working. He wasn't going to continue and allow his outlandish mistake to linger longer than it needed to be because he was the reason why it happened. He without much delay fired the fraud and went on to a better path. Although he was the cause of this ridiculous saga he stepped in and corrected the problem. I salute him for that while still blaming him for the fiasco.

TT took a cut and the duration of his contract was sliced.

It was no secret that Whaley wanted nothing to do with TT. He not only wanted to replace him last year as a starter, even before the last game where he was forced out but prior to it. Understandably, Ryan was against that extended benching. The loquacious HC was adamant that he didn't want him benched in the last game. Whaley was not going to accept the option on TT. But the owner determined that the new coaching staff should review the tape and have the say on whether to retain TT or not. McDermott and the offensive staff wanted to keep him because they felt it was their best option. Can I conclusively prove that Whaley was going to select a qb with a high round? No. But how Whaley reacted toward TT clearly indicates to me that he was going to go in another direction.

I'm not a Mike Schopp fan. Never have been. He's a smart guy but also a dilettante. I consider him a faker who really isn't interested in many of the sports he covers. But what I will say in his and WGR's defense is that it has to be depressing and spirit killing to cover these pro franchises that have been not only generational failures but even worse un-entertaining. How depressing must it be to cover these pathetic pro teams over such an extended period of time? You don't have to be intimately knowledgeable about the particular sports to recognize that the franchises are second-rate organizations run by mediocre people. Following sports is a diversion and supposed to be fun. The cycle of sports is supposed to be down and up and down and up. But following Buffalo teams is an exercise in futility that yearly gets repeated. That's where the frustration mounts. It's the same garbage over and over without much of an up cycle. The owner giving the wrestler football HC the authority to be in essence the GM is an absurdity. The problem with the owner is that he becomes too captivated with how a candidate interviews instead of doing more due diligence outside of the interview room. The shame of this situation is that I firmly believe that Whaley was totally invested in drafting a qb in the first round. When the new coaching regime came in he was undercut. In my view Whaley has made many mistakes but on the TT issue his judgment was on the mark. Being adequate is simply not good enough.

I'm very sure that I'm going to come away from this upcoming draft very disappointed. This is a franchise that has miserably failed for a full generation in a system designed for parity. So what is the strategy to change the course of this bedraggled franchise? Do the same thing that always has been done. I say this with sadness and enormous confidence: There is a number of good qb prospects in this draft who we will bypass to the benefit of other teams. It makes no freaking sense!

Any way you look at the situation it is a tough situation especially for the person purported to being dispatched. When you are in a high profile job and in the public eye it simply is part of the job environment. When the owner came out and stated that the HC was going to be the spokesman for the organization and the GM was not going to appear at an annual draft appearance it was pretty clear that he was being pushed aside. That had to be humiliating for him. What I can say is that although Whaley is mostly invisible to the public he has conducted himself with class and dignity. He's been in the business long enough to know that there are tough aspects to his job that can't be avoided.

With respect to the highlighted paragraph let me start with the Carr scenario. What the Bills should have done is not trade up after the first round but trade down in the first round and then acquire Carr and pocketing additional pick/s. With respect to Dak it was reported that Whaley rated him higher than Cardale. Instead he took a DT who was not known for his work habits and effort. My point in the prior post is that when an organization has a desperate need to upgrade a position that has been inadequately staffed for more than two full decades then it should exhibit far more urgency in addressing the issue. The real issue is not debating who is the better prospect as much as it is my criticism that this organization has not made it a priority to resolve the qb void. Dithering doesn't solve a problem---it makes it worse.

What do you want them to say? If they tell the truth it not only would be humiliating for Whaley but portray the organization as being more chaotic than it already is. Most often acting with dignity, class and diplomatically is more important than being brutally honest. There is a time and place. Telling new parents that their baby is ugly might be true but it isn't the right thing to say.

What's the difference between choosing to leave and agreeing to leave? Whaley's job as a GM has been diminished and his authority has been eroded while the HC's authority has increased beyond the normal HCing duties. When the balance of authority/power shifts to the point that the HC has the final say then in essence the GM is not acting as a GM. Whaley knows how this industry works. He knows very well that whenever there is new ownership that the organization is going to be reviewed and assessed with new eyes. That's the standard course of action with a changing of the guard. The problem for Whaley is that his record is less than average to average at best. He lost influence because his performance didn't entitle him to be so valued. As you say the fans are not entitled to an explanation. There's no need for it. If one watches what has been going on and has a penny's worth of common sense the fans can figure out things out. What's obvious is obvious. The new owner has made some big blunders as an owner most notably the hiring of Rex. But what is evident is that he's more impressed with outcomes and not very tolerant of excuses.

The point I made on Wilson was that he was available for us in the third round. Nix moved up in the third round to acquire a track receiver who didn't come close to working out. It was rumored that Nix was going to take a qb, maybe Cousins, but Washington beat us out in the round. In addition, the Bills could have drafted Carr or Bridgewater with trade downs in the first but this stolid organization didn't seize the opportunity to acquire a qb. It was also reported that Whaley ranked Prescott higher than Cardale and waited until the fourth round pick to take a qb. Instead of taking Prescott in the third, who he was interested in, he instead took a raw and lazy DT from Ohio State. The point in listing the above qbs is highlighting the fact that this organization has had plenty of opportunities to select good prospects at reasonable spots in the draft. This organization that hasn't had a legitimate franchise qb in over twenty years didn't act with any sense of urgency resulting in an inadequate staffing at the most important position. Now there are loud rumblings that Whaley's job is in jeopardy. His job is in jeopardy because based on his lackluster performance it should be in jeopardy.

Russell Wilson and Cousins were there to be had for us in that draft year but Nix dithered. It was a disastrous decision that has had lasting repercussions on this troubled franchise. Nix commented after that particular draft that he was eyeing a qb that was taken just before us in the fourth round. I believe it was Cousins while some say it was Wilson. I never believed it was Wilson because Nix had the old school bias of a preference for prospects to meet a physical profile.

His zone blocking and running schemes have always worked. One of the first thinks that Mike S does when he takes over a team is get blockers who are capable of executing his blocking schemes.

Kyle covets Cousins. And Cousins covets Kyle. So that attraction is still in play. Unquestionably Cousins is in tune with Kyles complicated schemes and required multi-reads. Griffin was never going to grasp the intricacies of Kyle's system. And neither would a qb such as TT. (Not making a criticism but observation.) In fact, Matt Ryan often clashed with Kyle in their first year working together. It took an offseason of peace making before they came to an understanding and accommodation to dealing with one another. While acknowledging his fertile mind in designing plays my one complaint with coaches such as Kyle is that too often they are unable to adjust their complicated systems and tone it done to people who are not ready to grasp the totality of what they are offering. More often than not steadily parceling out your playbook in manageable bites instead of throwing the book at the besieged and uncomprehending player is a better way to go.

I have no doubt that some rating groups rated RGIII highly. He was a physical phenomenon. It was the owner driving the bus on the selection. From what was written post Shanahan (revisionism) the former HC did not want to pay the exorbitant price to get the deal done. The owner insisted on it. In hindsight, if the owner would have followed Shanahan's advice and used the traded picks to address more needs the team would have been better off. And the tiresome and lingering Griffin drama would have been avoided. It must also be remembered that it was Shanahan's keen eye for qb prospects that resulted in the selection of Cousins in the same draft in the fourth round. The second qb selection understandably resulted in a lot of criticism but deep down it probably was a hedge against what he knew could happen with the first qb selection. It's not provable because people skew the truth to make themselves look good or not look bad but I really believe that Shanahan was right on his assessment on Griffin and his assessment on Cousins. At least that's how it looks to me. What's really aggravating is that Russell Wilson and Cousins were there for the taking. Nix declined the opportunity and the rest is history. We're still having an extended discussion on the qb prospects.

The person who didn't rate RGIII as high as most was Mike Shanahan, the coach of the Redskins. It was the owner who was in love with him. Much of the infatuation had to do with the marketing potential of the star player. It was the marketing inclination of the owner who demanded the selection. Shanahan told the owner before the draft that it would take at least three years of training before he would be ready to play in the NFL. The owner wasn't interested in hearing what the HC had to say. RGIII had a good rookie year. Much of it due to his physical abilities and little to do with his mental grasp of the game. When the battered RGIII had to rely on his mental talents for the game instead of his physical abilities he was sunk as a player. The same deficiency that still plagues him. Mike Shanahan has taken a lot of unfair criticism for the way he handled RGIII. The problem wasn't the coach for this diva player's stupendous failure. It was the hard headed player who was too intoxicated with himself to listen to anyone who might be critical of this heaven sent gift to the NFL. The person who knew the scoop about Griffin along with the HC was Kyle Shanahan, the son, who was the OC. Kyle outright detested Griffin not because he couldn't grasp what he was trying to teach him but because he was not receptive to what he was trying to teach him to the point of being dismissive. It didn't take long for the Shanahans, father and son, to recognize that Cousins was ultimately going to be the better qb. They were right.

There is no doubt that Rex was an albatross and weighed Whaley down. That's unfortunate but the owner gave him half a rope and kept him on the job after firing the clown coach because he knew that he handcuffed the franchise with his weird hiring. But regarding the highlighted segment of your comments you in essence fairly described the overview of his tenure. There is little to distinguish it. The Bills overall roster is mediocre at best. DW has been subjected to a lot of staff churning that wasn't his fault that forced him to reset his roster. But what is his fault is that his body of work is a reflection of where the team is i.e. stuck in the middle of the pack with no quick solutions to breaking out of that morass of mediocrity. It's apparent to me that the owner has shifted the power balance in the organization. The HC now has more authority than the GM. The GM has lost influence not because of any bias against him. He lost influence with the owner because his work in general lacked the production that would have enhanced his influence. The owner doesn't possess much guile. He is plain spoken and his verbiage isn't flowery. His comments at the press conference he gave for the Sabres describing why he fired staff also apply to the football operation. To put it mildly Whaley is in a precarious position.

With respect to calling out Kirby what is wrong with that? I do it often. He can handle it. He's Cajun tough. It's my god given right to call him out until he agrees with me on the qb issue. Until then I will be unyielding! With your next point that I consider the Gillis move a great move because it was done by BB is well off the mark. I don't consider it a great move but I do consider it a good move. As I said before I have no criticism for Buffalo's decision, and have no criticism for the Pats decision. Each organization has to make their own calculation for what is right for them. It's as simple as that. In addition, am I going to give the most successful organization in the modern era of football the benefit of the doubt on their transactions? Absolutely!

The Pats are in a good financial situation where paying more than what other teams would for Gillis has little negative repercussions for what they want to do with their roster. They wanted this particular player and they got him, just as they wanted Cook and also got him. They made their own calculations and analysis and then executed their plan. There isn't a team in the league that is more exacting when making a financial decision on contracts. They are brutally cold blooded when making a cap decision. So again, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on Gillis and his contract. With respect to the Chandler deal I don't care what others have said about him going to New England. There are people who believe that TT is the second coming of Steve Young. The Chandler deal was a marginal deal for them for a marginal player. You know that as well as I do regardless of what some of the doomsday fanatics proclaim. As far as the Pats making mistakes---yes they do make plenty of mistakes. I don't know of a franchise that doesn't make many. I have said it before and I will say it again I have nothing but admiration for how the Pats operate. In a system designed for parity where winners are supposed to be penalized for the benefit of losers they have had a remarkable run. And the flip side is Buffalo. A record that is embarrassing and humiliating. The Pats will utilize Gillislee in a manner in which his talents will be maximized. He would not be used in the same manner as Peterson would be if he was on their roster. Peterson is one of the greatest running backs in the history of the game. That is obvious. That doesn't mean that the past production will translate into the present and future production. I don't understand your position. The Pats made a judgment on who is the best player at an acceptable price for their system. Believing that Gillis is more suited for what they want doesn't diminish what Peterson is or was. They just came to a different conclusion than what you come to. For an organization that has been the most successful organization in the game for more than a generation I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.