Good scouting? Micro-Management?

[SouthernMan]

I'm seeing a team that may be turning the corner in their maturity.

 

What I'm witnessing are handful of scrappy guys that were not top draft pickks, but are are just "football players". The kind of lunchbucket guys that are embraced by blue collar Buffalo and could be the foundation for a very good team in the future. I'm thinking of guys from the '86-'87 teams like Talley, Tasker, Ken Jones, Devlin, Metzelaars, Bentley that were hardly household names at the time, but became important elements in the climb to the top - a big part of building that team chemistry.

 

Today I see similarities in the likes of Donald Jones, Fred Jackson, Steve Johnson, Kyle Williams, David Nelson, et al.

 

As bad as the Bills have been drafting in the early part of the draft, they've done a good job with undrafted FAs and mid-round or late picks.

 

How do they miss so badly on these low-risk top choices, but then find these hidden gems.

 

Leads me to believe a lot of the whispers that there's just too much micro-management(meddling)out of Detroit when it comes to the big $$ picks.

Can't help but wonder how good this team would be with high round picks that panned out resulting in players now in key contributing roles. Instead we suffer the likes of aftertoughts like McCargo, Losman, McGahee, Maybin, Lynch, Hardy, etc etc etc Sure, all teams miss on a few in he draft, but we're not just talking missing the bullseye - this is completely missing the dartboard. Some may argue for Lynch, but just using his eventual trade value as a guage, it's obvious it was a big "miss".

 

Imagine if the Bills had hit on just half of those picks and had say a top DE and/or LB and maybe something besides a FA rookie offensive tackle. I'd say another DT, but the jury is still out on the seldom used Troup.

 

Imagine the team with three top level players in those key positions.

 

Ralph, are you listening? No? TURN UP THE VOLUME ON YOUR HEARING AID!