Willis McGahee needs a job: Cut by the Broncos

[BADOLBILZ]

Donahoe outsmarted himself on that one. He got a little too cute.

 

The irony is that McGahee is one of the best players to come out of that 2003 draft… and certainly very few players taken after him had the career that McGahee did.

 

The argument that defenders of the pick made at the time was that there was nobody else who would have been a better option. And while McGahee certainly had one of the 30 best overall careers out of that draft, there were obvious players that were passed on.

 

The first was Eric Steinbach. The Bills still needed starting OL help, particularly up the middle where teams were pressuring Bledsoe. Steinbach started immediately. A lot of people thought Steinbach was going to be the pick. It just made a lot of sense. He didn't turn out to be a GREAT player but he was a better player than Andy Levitre at a time when the Bills were in a 10 year stretch of mostly poor offensive line play. His value to the team would have far exceeded that of McGahee.

 

The next at the time were probably the tight ends. Dallas Clark and Jason Witten. Pro bowl players for much of their careers, in hindsight either of these two highly rated TE's would have been a far wiser selection than McGahee and better even than Steinbach. Losing Peerless Price hurt Bledsoe but losing Jay Riemersma and Larry Centers in the same offseason was killer. Mark Campbell was just another guy. Either of those TE's would have been GREAT picks. Witten slipped all the way to round 3 but had been considered the top TE prospect and a likely first rounder for most of the process. Clark went with the next pick after McGahee.

 

Obviously there were quite a few stars picked after McGahee who were less obvious selections.

 

Anquan Boldin......who was the best football player in that class before multiple ACL injuries at FSU took away his breakaway speed. Why McGahee made sense and he did not is perplexing. I mean, they dealt their #2 receiver to get the pick. Would have at least been logical.

 

Osi Umeniyora would have been a great pick. Lance Briggs would have been a great pick. Those guys all went in the top 70 picks so it wasn't like there weren't not just Pro Bowl but All Pro type players that were passed on.

 

And I don't promote drafting DB's in round 1 year after year but there were a lot of very good ones that year. Namdi Asomugha and Charles Tillman have been among the best in the game since being drafted early in 2003. At least you can play more than 1 cornerback on the field at a time. Having two halfbacks now is the norm......but back then teams had feature backs, not rotations. If the Bills had been foreseeing the future of two-back systems..... the McGahee pick would have at least made an ounce of sense. But they weren't!

 

Point being......the idea that there wasn't anyone else worth drafting was incorrect. There always are. I mean, Asante Samuel and Robert Mathis were later picks in that draft too. There are always good players available in any draft after pick #21 and it's a fools argument to suggest that there aren't. It may not have been a great draft, but there were a lot better options than gambling on a guy with a gimpy knee at a position that is just not all that critical to organizational success.

[San Jose Bills Fan]

^^^^^^^^^^

 

As I said, Donahoe outsmarted himself on that one. I wasn't thrilled with the pick although as a Bills homer, I tried to like it and probably talked myself into liking it.

 

I stated the irony of McGahee's career but never suggested that they shouldn't have drafted someone else.

 

Your historical reflections on that draft are right on.

 

The irony of Eric Steinbach is that after passing him over in the draft the Bills could made amends by signing him as a free agent in 2007 but opted to pursue and give a better contract to… Derrick Dockery.

 

:doh:

[BADOLBILZ]

^^^^^^^^^^

 

As I said, Donahoe outsmarted himself on that one. I wasn't thrilled with the pick although as a Bills homer, I tried to like it and probably talked myself into liking it.

 

I stated the irony of McGahee's career but never suggested that they shouldn't have drafted someone else.

 

Your historical reflections on that draft are right on.

 

The irony of Eric Steinbach is that after passing him over in the draft the Bills could made amends by signing him as a free agent in 2007 but opted to pursue and give a better contract to… Derrick Dockery.

 

:doh:

 

Donahoe's first draft was masterful. Clements, Schobel, Henry and Jonas Jennings in succession was one of the best runs the Bills have ever had on a draft day.

 

The next 4 drafts he definitely outsmarted himself. Midway thru the 2002 season SHOUT magazine actually printed an issue with Bryant McKinnie on the cover. It was almost a foregone conclusion. There has never been a more obvious player/team fit than McKinnie being picked by the Bills with the 4th pick in the 2002 draft. Donahoe seemed to resent the fact that everybody was projecting McKinnie to Buffalo going back 7-8 months BEFORE the draft and all the way thru the process. I remember him being irked in a radio interview where the WGR host was talking about McKinnie like it was a foregone conclusion. At that point it occurred to me that this guy was really not going to test the football gods and NOT take the obvious pick. I was stunned but after that first GREAT draft Donahoe had earned a bit of leeway so it was hard to really attack him.

 

He should have just pulled the trigger and traded up for Roethlisberger in 2004 instead of trying to get Lee Evans AND a QB.

 

Picking Roscoe Parrish with his first pick in 2005 was laughable.

 

I really couldn't imagine him going freestyle like he did in those years if he had still been in Pittsburgh. The environment seemed to breed stupidity.

[JohnC]

Donahoe's first draft was masterful. Clements, Schobel, Henry and Jonas Jennings in succession was one of the best runs the Bills have ever had on a draft day.

 

Excellent analysis of the Donahoe draft era. As you noted after his first exceptional draft he fizzled. He maneuvered in in his inaugural draft for us like a master. After that he drafted to demonstrate to others how smart and unconventional he was.

 

 

I really couldn't imagine him going freestyle like he did in those years if he had still been in Pittsburgh. The environment seemed to breed stupidity.

 

His insufferable arrogant and autocratic attitude caused his exit in Pittsburg. I have read accounts where Cowhrer gave the ultimatum of him or me. They smartly kept Cowhrer.

 

When you review the Bills' draft record over the past dozen years or so it becomes very clear why this franchise has been mired in the muck of mediocrity for so long. There is a lot to be learned from the Steeler approach to running a franchise.The Steelers are not a glitzy drafting team. They take more of a meat and potatatoes approach to drafting. It has served them well. I have high hopes for the Whaley era. It seems that the successful Pittsburgh way has been instilled in him. Let's just hope that he can follow and execute that example.

Edited June 16, 2013 by JohnC

[DefenseWinzChampionshipz]

He should just retire and spend whatever money he got left going to different cities and enjoy their "night life"...

[RevWarRifleman]

See ya at Dave & Buster's, Willis.

[Rico]

Donahoe's first draft was masterful. Clements, Schobel, Henry and Jonas Jennings in succession was one of the best runs the Bills have ever had on a draft day.

 

The next 4 drafts he definitely outsmarted himself. Midway thru the 2002 season SHOUT magazine actually printed an issue with Bryant McKinnie on the cover. It was almost a foregone conclusion. There has never been a more obvious player/team fit than McKinnie being picked by the Bills with the 4th pick in the 2002 draft. Donahoe seemed to resent the fact that everybody was projecting McKinnie to Buffalo going back 7-8 months BEFORE the draft and all the way thru the process. I remember him being irked in a radio interview where the WGR host was talking about McKinnie like it was a foregone conclusion. At that point it occurred to me that this guy was really not going to test the football gods and NOT take the obvious pick. I was stunned but after that first GREAT draft Donahoe had earned a bit of leeway so it was hard to really attack him.

 

He should have just pulled the trigger and traded up for Roethlisberger in 2004 instead of trying to get Lee Evans AND a QB.

 

Picking Roscoe Parrish with his first pick in 2005 was laughable.

 

I really couldn't imagine him going freestyle like he did in those years if he had still been in Pittsburgh. The environment seemed to breed stupidity.

No surprise, TD was working for the worst owner in the league. In 2001, he was given the keys to the franchise (much like Brandon this year). That first draft, he was probably able to do whatever he wanted. After that though, Ralph started meddling again & it just got worse and worse. I'm not giving TD a total pass at all, but the circumstances were certainly less than optimal. Puddinhead Williams over McKinnie was definitely on TD. The Bledsoe trade and extending Bledsoe after 2003 (his biggest mistake IMO), those could've been Ralph calls, as well as the McGahee pick.

 

As for not taking Willis #1 in 2003, the Bills would've probably taken Kelsay in the 1st instead, what great luck!

[transient]

Donahoe outsmarted himself on that one. He got a little too cute.

 

The irony is that McGahee is one of the best players to come out of that 2003 draft… and certainly very few players taken after him had the career that McGahee did.

Donahoe rolled the dice and lost... kinda. At 230 lbs and running a sub 4.3 40 prior to the knee injury, if McGahee had recovered that top gear, it would have been a gamble that paid off. He never did, and despite that, he went on to have a pretty good career. I didn't have a problem with Donahoe drafting a high risk, high reward player like that. We had bigger needs, but no one drafted at that position in the first round had more potential than McGahee. Personally, I soured on the pick after he turned out to be a loud-mouthed ingrate. I don't often feel that players owe an organization a debt of gratitude, but he did, and his boorish behavior on his way out of town spoke volumes about him as a person.

[billsfan89]

The argument that defenders of the pick made at the time was that there was nobody else who would have been a better option. And while McGahee certainly had one of the 30 best overall careers out of that draft, there were obvious players that were passed on.

 

The first was Eric Steinbach. The Bills still needed starting OL help, particularly up the middle where teams were pressuring Bledsoe. Steinbach started immediately. A lot of people thought Steinbach was going to be the pick. It just made a lot of sense. He didn't turn out to be a GREAT player but he was a better player than Andy Levitre at a time when the Bills were in a 10 year stretch of mostly poor offensive line play. His value to the team would have far exceeded that of McGahee.

 

The next at the time were probably the tight ends. Dallas Clark and Jason Witten. Pro bowl players for much of their careers, in hindsight either of these two highly rated TE's would have been a far wiser selection than McGahee and better even than Steinbach. Losing Peerless Price hurt Bledsoe but losing Jay Riemersma and Larry Centers in the same offseason was killer. Mark Campbell was just another guy. Either of those TE's would have been GREAT picks. Witten slipped all the way to round 3 but had been considered the top TE prospect and a likely first rounder for most of the process. Clark went with the next pick after McGahee.

 

Obviously there were quite a few stars picked after McGahee who were less obvious selections.

 

Anquan Boldin......who was the best football player in that class before multiple ACL injuries at FSU took away his breakaway speed. Why McGahee made sense and he did not is perplexing. I mean, they dealt their #2 receiver to get the pick. Would have at least been logical.

 

Osi Umeniyora would have been a great pick. Lance Briggs would have been a great pick. Those guys all went in the top 70 picks so it wasn't like there weren't not just Pro Bowl but All Pro type players that were passed on.

 

And I don't promote drafting DB's in round 1 year after year but there were a lot of very good ones that year. Namdi Asomugha and Charles Tillman have been among the best in the game since being drafted early in 2003. At least you can play more than 1 cornerback on the field at a time. Having two halfbacks now is the norm......but back then teams had feature backs, not rotations. If the Bills had been foreseeing the future of two-back systems..... the McGahee pick would have at least made an ounce of sense. But they weren't!

 

Point being......the idea that there wasn't anyone else worth drafting was incorrect. There always are. I mean, Asante Samuel and Robert Mathis were later picks in that draft too. There are always good players available in any draft after pick #21 and it's a fools argument to suggest that there aren't. It may not have been a great draft, but there were a lot better options than gambling on a guy with a gimpy knee at a position that is just not all that critical to organizational success.

 

Well you have to look at guys that were picks take around that spot. Every draft there are late round gems that anyone could have drafted. But if you look at the draft from pick 23-40 there were far better options than a Running back with Travis Henry already in place and it not being the hardest position to acquire.

 

Steinbach and Jon Stinchcomb were productive offensive linemen for years that could have started for the Bills at a time when the team needed help protecting their QB's. Obviously Dallas Clark and Jason Whitten would have been much better picks at tightend.

 

Even on the defensive end the litany of pro bowl DB's would have made more sense. McGahee wasn't able to play year one and it wasn't a position of need anyway. But even at positions of need on the offensive end both tightends or either O-line would have been much better picks. Only value the Bills got for McGahee was a couple of years of productivity and the draft picks they got for him after they traded him.

 

They didn't miss out on a franchise QB but they missed on getting one of two great TE's or one of two highly productive offensive linemen.

[San Jose Bills Fan]

No surprise, TD was working for the worst owner in the league. In 2001, he was given the keys to the franchise (much like Brandon this year). That first draft, he was probably able to do whatever he wanted.

 

I'm not sure if Donahoe's downfall was having too much power or Ralph's later meddling (or if the first caused the second) but you're right.

 

Donahoe was the first person named Bills President aside from Ralph himself.

 

Donahoe rolled the dice and lost... kinda. At 230 lbs and running a sub 4.3 40 prior to the knee injury, if McGahee had recovered that top gear, it would have been a gamble that paid off. He never did, and despite that, he went on to have a pretty good career. I didn't have a problem with Donahoe drafting a high risk, high reward player like that. We had bigger needs, but no one drafted at that position in the first round had more potential than McGahee. Personally, I soured on the pick after he turned out to be a loud-mouthed ingrate. I don't often feel that players owe an organization a debt of gratitude, but he did, and his boorish behavior on his way out of town spoke volumes about him as a person.

 

Great post, especially the bolded. It hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet (it's been said numerous times of Jason Peters) but it's true.

 

The Bills took a chance on McGahee and showed faith in him during his darkest hours following his catastrophic injury.

 

His form of repayment to the Bills was to not attend voluntary offseason workouts in Buffalo and to quickly become a malcontent.

 

A person of good conscience would have approached things differently than McGahee did.

Edited June 16, 2013 by San Jose Bills Fan

[Gray Beard]

Donahoe rolled the dice and lost... kinda. At 230 lbs and running a sub 4.3 40 prior to the knee injury, if McGahee had recovered that top gear, it would have been a gamble that paid off. He never did, and despite that, he went on to have a pretty good career. I didn't have a problem with Donahoe drafting a high risk, high reward player like that. We had bigger needs, but no one drafted at that position in the first round had more potential than McGahee. Personally, I soured on the pick after he turned out to be a loud-mouthed ingrate. I don't often feel that players owe an organization a debt of gratitude, but he did, and his boorish behavior on his way out of town spoke volumes about him as a person.

I'm not sure if Donahoe's downfall was having too much power or Ralph's later meddling (or if the first caused the second) but you're right.

 

Donahoe was the first person named Bills President aside from Ralph himself.

 

 

 

Great post, especially the bolded. It hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet (it's been said numerous times of Jason Peters) but it's true.

 

The Bills took a chance on McGahee and showed faith in him during his darkest hours following his catastrophic injury.

 

His form of repayment to the Bills was to not attend voluntary offseason workouts in Buffalo and to quickly become a malcontent.

 

A person of good conscience would have approached things differently than McGahee did.

I'm glad I'm not the only guy to hold a grudge against somebody who showed so little class toward the team and town that gave him a chance when it would have been more logical to write him off.

[ganesh]

I'm glad I'm not the only guy to hold a grudge against somebody who showed so little class toward the team and town that gave him a chance when it would have been more logical to write him off.

May be he did not want the Bills to pick him up. Unfortunately he did not have much control like a Eli Manning.

[reddogblitz]

I don't care about all the team should move Toronto nonsense. I think the guy can still play and would be an improvement over Choice. He'd be a great guy to have in our back pocket when Fred and CJ go out with their annual injuries.

 

I'm all for signing him.

[ny33]

I'm glad I'm not the only guy to hold a grudge against somebody who showed so little class toward the team and town that gave him a chance when it would have been more logical to write him off.

 

McGahee was a risk, sure, but he was a first round pick. Plenty of other teams would have taken him in the second round, or later in the first. If he were an undrafted free agent whom we paid for and rehabilitated for a year, I would agree, but he was a fairly coveted player.

[machine gun kelly]

He's getting old and has bad knees. He screwed Buffalo back in the day so the heck with him. We took a chance on that guy when we should have gone for a durable guy. We let him sit a year, and a couple years later e

We have to get Lynch.

[26CornerBlitz]

http://gazette.com/klee-whos-on-first-better-yet-whos-at-rb-for-broncos/article/1502362

[San Jose Bills Fan]

Just as a point of comparison, a similar scenario played out this year with Marcus Lattimore who if healthy would have arguably been the first RB drafted.

 

He was taken by an established team with very few holes (San Francisco) in the 4th round at #131.

[Buftex]

Detroit or Green Bay could use more depth at RB.......

 

 

That's why I gave him the name Willis "McLazee"

 

 

 

From everything I have heard, McGahee is a very hard trainer. An old friend of mine works at the University of Miami, in the athletics department. He told me that McGahee and Frank Gore are two of the hardest workers to ever come through the doors, during his time there.

 

Many UM NFL alumni hold their own conditioning and "training camps". Apparently, from a pure conditioning and strength aspect, McGahee and many others feel this helps them more than voluntary workouts with their NFL teams. It may not do much to convince NFL fan experts that their allegence to the team is as strong as the fans, but they are voluntary for a reason...I don't recall McGahee ever being out of shape.

 

Just as a point of comparison, a similar scenario played out this year with Marcus Lattimore who if healthy would have arguably been the first RB drafted.

 

He was taken by an established team with very few holes (San Francisco) in the 4th round at #131.

 

People forget, before his injury during the bowl game, McGahee was viewed by many as an "elite, generational" type running back. Sure, the Bills had Travis Henry (still one of my favorite Bills from the "dark years"), but the Bills knew, maybe more than fans at that time, that Henry was a disaster waiting to happen off the field. So, I just don't view the McGahee pick as all that crazy, or wasteful. Sure, the Bills might have other needs, but I think TD was taking the calculated gamble that McGahee would pan out (which he did, to a less specatacular degree than might have been hoped) and they could unload Henry in a year, while he still had some value.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Buftex

[Ralph W.]

This is the worst year to be a FA RB. The teams that needed one were able to grab great backs in later rounds.

[San Jose Bills Fan]

From everything I have heard, McGahee is a very hard trainer. An old friend of mine works at the University of Miami, in the athletics department. He told me that McGahee and Frank Gore are two of the hardest workers to ever come through the doors, during his time there. Many UM NFL alumni hold their own conditioning and "training camps". Apparently, from a pure conditioning and strength aspect, McGahee and many others feel this helps them more than voluntary workouts with their NFL teams. It may not do much to convince NFL fan experts that their allegence to the team is as strong as the fans, but they are voluntary for a reason...I don't recall McGahee ever being out of shape.

 

People forget, before his injury during the bowl game, McGahee was viewed by many as an "elite, generational" type running back. Sure, the Bills had Travis Henry (still one of my favorite Bills from the "dark years"), but the Bills knew, maybe more than fans at that time, that Henry was a disaster waiting to happen off the field. So, I just don't view the McGahee pick as all that crazy, or wasteful. Sure, the Bills might have other needs, but I think TD was taking the calculated gamble that McGahee would pan out (which he did, to a less specatacular degree than might have been hoped) and they could unload Henry in a year, while he still had some value.

 

Fair points. However…

 

As to your first paragraph, while all you say has been stated before and is possibly true, NFL teams prefer that their players workout at the team facilities. So do the team's fans. The team is the employer and the fans are the revenue that ultimately pays the players. On top of that, the number of players who don't participate in "voluntary conditioning programs" is less than 5% as far as we can tell. Very few players turn their noses up at their team's conditioning program. It seems like it's 1-2 players per team IF that. So McGahee's refusal to work out with his teammates is problematic at best

 

As to your second paragraph, it's true that pre-injury he was viewed as an elite talent. However he didn't have just a simple ACL tear. He tore his ACL, his PCL, and his MCL. This was a catastrophic injury and there was never any guarantee that he would come back the same player.

 

He's had a good career but no one would argue that he's the same player he was pre-injury so that was another negative that Donahoe overlooked, in addition to knowing he would miss a year and in addition to RB not necessarily being a position of great need.