Doug Whaley Approval Poll

[shane nelson]

I think this team is in much better shape than in recent past. He came in with a vision and appears to be following his plan. He is bold. He talked a lot about speed on offense and player personal changes support the vision. Coaching and QB are still a pretty big unknown. As Parcells use to say "you are only as good as your record" so we need one maybe two more seasons until we really know if he has what it takes to turn the team around. But we finally appear the have a plan and a sharp young mind at the head of this ship.

[Thirty Year Fan]

+1

[reddogblitz]

The poll is a gauge of whether people approve of Whaley's decisions and the approach that the team is taking thus far during his brief tenure as the Bills' GM.

 

If we go 6-10 or worse this year, all decisions were dumb. Playoffs, he's a football genius. Ws is all that matters and all that will be used to measure whether these are good moves or not, not how they make us feel in mid May.

[26CornerBlitz]

If we go 6-10 or worse this year, all decisions were dumb. Playoffs, he's a football genius. Ws is all that matters and all that will be used to measure whether these are good moves or not, not how they make us feel in mid May.

 

Any knucklehead can tell you what happened after the facts are in.

[ChanOverChin]

Whaley has made moves like this could be his last year as the Bills' GM........and it could be when the new owner is ushered in. He has been awesome. When he realized he couldn't fill a position via the draft (i.e. RB) he traded for it.

 

He has made one good move after another.......even getting rid of SJ and his huge salary/baggage.

 

The team could still use a better vet backup QB, another solid DE, and a big, athletic target at TE, which I hope he'll still consider. But overall, he has done an awful lot in just one year to greatly improve this team.

[GA BILLS FAN]

Too soon to say. Whaley bet his short tenure on the Watkins trade and Bills making playoffs THIS YEAR.

[CardinalScotts]

so a "I dont know yet" was a no vote? Not sure how you can vote anything but yes based on what we know right now. But yet some vote no - hard to respect their opinions

[The Big Cat]

Always a couple of wizened Bills fans that have to chime in and remind us that football doesn't start in May.

 

 

[hondo in seattle]

I voted that it's too soon to tell.

 

Every year the pundits rate everyone's draft. And often even the most knowledgeable draft gurus will give out some low grades to what turns out to be great drafts and high grades to what turns out to be poor drafts. If the smartest draft gurus don't actually know, I won't pretend to know how Whaley did on this - his only - draft.

 

But if I had to take a stand, I'd say I like that Whaley went out and aggressively pursued some good FAs who didn't break the bank. And while the trade for Watkins was awfully expensive, I like a GM who believes in his evaluations and will do what it takes to acquire difference makers.

 

But I really need to see the product on the field before judging Whaley.

[3rdand12]

Any knucklehead can tell you what happened after the facts are in.

Facts can be recalled wrongly sometimes , speaking for us knuckleheads .

I voted EJ .

oops wrong thread again

 

Wait , to the point

I think Whaley is killing it. Both the coaching staff seem organized and ready to go. Like on the same page . I noticed the same from the player aquisitions and releases . I can see upgrades across the team occuring after year one was over . Strong willed and focused i suppose.

Lot of confidence with these guys.

Gotta respect that if nothing else

[Chandler#81]

Best since John Butler.

[Orton's Arm]

so a "I dont know yet" was a no vote? Not sure how you can vote anything but yes based on what we know right now. But yet some vote no - hard to respect their opinions

 

I was among those who voted no. Below are some Whaley decisions with which I disagree.

 

1) Overspending on lousy free agents. That OG we signed from the Rams is the sort of player teams look to replace, not make part of the long-term answer.

2) Failure to re-sign Byrd. Granted, Byrd would have been expensive. Maybe that salary cap space could have been put to better use elsewhere. But many of the free agents Whaley has signed represent far less efficient use of that salary cap space than a large Byrd contract would have been.

3) Being all-in on EJ Manuel. This mistake could end his career in Buffalo, even if he does a lot of other stuff right.

 

Decisions I have mixed feelings about

1) Trading away Stevie Johnson for a fourth or potentially a third round pick. Johnson is a good player with plenty of gas left in the tank. I'm not sure we got adequate compensation for him.

2) Using this year's and next year's first round picks to draft Sammy Watkins. If Watkins has an A.J. Green-like career, this is a good move. But that's a very high bar to clear. There's a chance Watkins will have a good NFL career; but not a good enough career to justify the high draft pick price we paid for him.

3) Drafting that OT in round 2. I liked the call until Bill from NYC raised concerns.

 

Decisions I like:

1) Some of the calculated risks Whaley took in later rounds. I like the fact he was swinging for the fences with a lot of those later round picks. Better to swing for the fences and miss, than to bunt. If you keep swinging for the fences, eventually you'll hit the occasional home run.

2) A few of his free agent signings. Not every signing was bad.

 

The situation at LG is particularly disturbing to me because of what it suggests about Whaley's thought process. There are times when a GM embraces a happy illusion; because doing so is less painful than seeing reality. If he's fallen prey to this kind of soft thinking at the LG spot--as appears to be the case--then who knows what other happy illusions he may have embraced? One could argue that any confidence he has in the head coach, either coordinator, or his quarterback is the result of this kind of wishful thinking.

 

On the bright side, he seems to have a plan in place; and has the confidence to make aggressive moves in support of that plan. I respect that. I also think that parts of the plan--the good parts--are based on reality. I'm not trying to paint a black and white picture here. But I think his flaws are serious enough to sink him.

[White Linen]

If we go 6-10 or worse this year, all decisions were dumb. Playoffs, he's a football genius. Ws is all that matters and all that will be used to measure whether these are good moves or not, not how they make us feel in mid May.

 

I think that's fine if that's how you want to look at it. The point of this poll is to speculate. Have you never commented in over 4,300 posts about something that hasn't proven itself out? You only comment after the results are in about what you liked and didn't like about the off season?

[Buffalo Barbarian]

Buffalo Bills GM Doug Whaley approval poll: May 2014

 

got to love a GM who knows who he wants and goes after them.

[MDH]

Which is why "too soon to tell" should be the only answer.

 

It's easy to look back with 20/20 vision and say, with clarity, that he did a good/bad job. The question is, do you approve of the way he's going about his job? It's a more difficult thing to do when you don't get to see the final results.

[Dibs]

While I like some of the things he's done like finally upgrading our WR position and getting a good 3rd RB. But my vote is no and will be no until such time as we have a winning record.

 

Surely that is a "Too soon to say" vote?

[KRT88]

Yes, he's bolt and willing to make tough decisions. Letting Byrd walk was tough as he was a playmaker but he was also a guy who misses time. He made the trade for Brown looking forward to CJ and Fred departing. He's also willing to gamble a 7th round pick on a guy with 1st/2nd round talent. If he screws up, did we really lose anything?

[Nick the Greek]

He'll have my approval once we are back in the PLAYOFFS!!

[PromoTheRobot]

 

 

I was among those who voted no. Below are some Whaley decisions with which I disagree.

 

1) Overspending on lousy free agents. That OG we signed from the Rams is the sort of player teams look to replace, not make part of the long-term answer.

2) Failure to re-sign Byrd. Granted, Byrd would have been expensive. Maybe that salary cap space could have been put to better use elsewhere. But many of the free agents Whaley has signed represent far less efficient use of that salary cap space than a large Byrd contract would have been.

3) Being all-in on EJ Manuel. This mistake could end his career in Buffalo, even if he does a lot of other stuff right.

 

Decisions I have mixed feelings about

1) Trading away Stevie Johnson for a fourth or potentially a third round pick. Johnson is a good player with plenty of gas left in the tank. I'm not sure we got adequate compensation for him.

2) Using this year's and next year's first round picks to draft Sammy Watkins. If Watkins has an A.J. Green-like career, this is a good move. But that's a very high bar to clear. There's a chance Watkins will have a good NFL career; but not a good enough career to justify the high draft pick price we paid for him.

3) Drafting that OT in round 2. I liked the call until Bill from NYC raised concerns.

 

Decisions I like:

1) Some of the calculated risks Whaley took in later rounds. I like the fact he was swinging for the fences with a lot of those later round picks. Better to swing for the fences and miss, than to bunt. If you keep swinging for the fences, eventually you'll hit the occasional home run.

2) A few of his free agent signings. Not every signing was bad.

 

The situation at LG is particularly disturbing to me because of what it suggests about Whaley's thought process. There are times when a GM embraces a happy illusion; because doing so is less painful than seeing reality. If he's fallen prey to this kind of soft thinking at the LG spot--as appears to be the case--then who knows what other happy illusions he may have embraced? One could argue that any confidence he has in the head coach, either coordinator, or his quarterback is the result of this kind of wishful thinking.

 

On the bright side, he seems to have a plan in place; and has the confidence to make aggressive moves in support of that plan. I respect that. I also think that parts of the plan--the good parts--are based on reality. I'm not trying to paint a black and white picture here. But I think his flaws are serious enough to sink him.

1) Obviously Whaley disagrees with your assessment.

 

2) Please tell me how you would go about resigning a player that had no intention of playing for you, short of holding his family hostage?

[starrymessenger]

 

I just about choke every time I think about the price paid for Sammy Watkins.

He needs to be elite for that trade to work. We gave up a first (and 4th).

However most first round picks do not turn into elite players. Most actually underperform relative to expectations. Many are busts. What are the chances of Sammy being not just good but special? IMO they are pretty good so the risk taken is a good one, or at least not a bad one.

Whaley has loaded a lot of chips on the EJ square. According to conventional NFL thinking, if EJ fails Whaley is probably done in Buffalo.

I am not very optimistic about EJs chances of becoming a reliable to good NFL starter, especially in the time frames needed to help Whaley and Marrone. He could wind up having a late bloomer Doug Williams type of career. For me Bud Elliot's piece on EJ that came out in Tomahawk Nation just before the 2013 draft is pretty much the truth and is confirmed by what I think I saw when he played. I don't know that his "flaws" are easily correctable though I hope they are.

Whether EJ pans out or not I fully support and agree with the decision to draft him when and where they did. They had no QB. They took the guy with unquestionably the highest ceiling amongst those available. Trading down netted Kiko who will be a standout for years to come.

Picking EJ was the right thing to do. It also ushered in a fresh and radical change in philosophy towards an aggressive risk taking approach. On the monopoly board of the NFL, a conservative, one might even say complacent attitude will send you directly to jail for fourteen years. You need to take some chances and you need to catch a few breaks along the way. Anyone who likes what Whaley did in the 2014 draft has to like what he did in the 2013 draft. Both drafts are products of the same philosophy.

So I think Whaley is a very smart football exec who has done well, whether all his moves pan out or not. But I don't think he gets all the credit. Buddy laid some of the groundwork in reforming the scouting network and some of Whaley's senior talent evaluation guys look to me to be pretty good too. It takes time to completely overhaul a failed franchise. Doesn't happen overnight when the rot runs so deep.

I agree with what was said earlier about the Steeler precedent. I think Whaley is showing his pedigree in visualizing a team that is physically dominant on both sides of the ball with very high octane potential at the skill positions on offence. Here's hoping he is able to pull it off. If he does then you will have to pay the man to keep him from migrating to a more glamorous venue.

The EJ/Ben comparisons are interesting and intriguing. When Ben was a rook he adequately game managed a good Steeler team. He was competent, wasn't asked to do too much and was able to execute competently. Of course that is actually doing a lot if you're a rookie QB, but of course Ben was indeed a franchise guy who was always able to take the next step. Well see if EJ can fit that mould.