Draft Analysis - We're All Debi from Depew

[CSBill]

On 4/28/2024 at 1:40 PM, nedboy7 said:

Here is a take from CBS discussing the Bills draft.  Starts around 6:45

 

 

 

 

 

Three Debi's

[Shaw66]

10 hours ago, Rampant Buffalo said:

 

Professionals, smart, and committed? I can give you another group of people who meet that description. Medical professionals. Below is a quote from Johns Hopkins Medicine:

 

 

That's just the diagnostic errors which result in death or permanent disability. The total number of medical errors is of course much higher. If highly trained, rigorously selected medical professionals can make errors at that rate, it is not necessarily the case that a Tom Donahoe, Russ Brandon, or a Doug Whaley "knows better" than any of the fans. Avoidable errors do happen in NFL front offices, just as they happen in medicine. I'd take Brandon Beane over any of our playoff drought GMs, but even he had an avoidable error (2nd round pick on Boogie Basham).

 

I firmly believe there's room for NFL front offices to get better at this. If a particular NFL front office figures out how, it could give itself a competitive advantage over other teams.

The question is not whether doctors or NFL general managers are wrong sometimes.   The question is whether they are wrong about medical diagnoses or football players, as the case may be, more often than you or I.  

 

If I have a pain in my chest, I'm going to the hospital, not Two Bills Drive.  Yes, the doctors in the hospital may be wrong, but that isn't the question.  

 

Yes, NFL front offices could get better at player evaluation.  However, given the nature of the problem, they never can be perfect.  Maybe it was possible two years ago to predict what would happen to Rashee Rice, but not with any certainty.   There was no way to predict Von Miller's most recent knee injury.  In both cases, what happened to them was possible, and the teams that acquired them MIGHT have chosen not to acquire those players because of the perceived risk, but a GM who says no to every player with a perceived risk will fail miserably.  The nature of the job is to do the best you can with the information and the resources you have.  GMs have better information and better resources than any of us, and that makes them quite likely to be better at player evaluation than you or I.  Doctors, too. 

 

I've mentioned GM, the book about Ernie Accorsi as GM with the Giants.   The author describes going to a Penn State game to scout players.  Accorsi was watching the game and said. "Look at Posluzni's feet.   He makes the correct first step every time."   I've been watching pro football for 65 years, and I've never casually noticed anyone's feet, and if I did, I wouldn't know what the right first step is supposed to be.  When I go to the hospital with chest pains, I want the medical equivalent of Ernie Accorsi, even if he did bet on Jeremy Shockey.  

[finn]

Why Debi? Why not Tom from Tonawanda or Leo from Lancaster? Did you choose a female name deliberately, or were you unconsciously channeling our culture's poor view of woman when looking for a name that would evoke sneers? 

 

Women don't have a monopoly on stupidity, believe me. 

[ColoradoBills]

16 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Hondo -

 

It will come as no surprise to many around here that I generally agree with what you said.  The Bills accumulate more data, probably by a factor of ten or more, than any of us here has available to evaluate players, whether they are coming out of college or they are free agent veterans.  And that information is valuable.  

 

However, I think you're a bit unfair to posters here.   There are a lot of people here who actually spend a lot of time reading, studying, and watching film.  Not as much as the Bills do, but a lot nevertheless.   (And the law of diminishing returns works here, too.   The first ten hours of study is generally more valuable than the second ten, and the second ten is more valuable than the third ten.  After a while, the extended study is just producing data, but not knowledge.)  Those people are learning things, and when they post here they allowing all of us to have the benefit of the time and thinking they put into their work.  Yes, there's a bit of group-think that takes over, and that is a problem, but it does not alter the fact that a lot of people share a lot of interesting information here that educates all of us.  

 

I tend to trust the Bills over posters here, because they're professionals, they're smart, and they're committed.  But I also value the thinking of people here who put in the time to have intelligent and informed points of view about the team's personnel decisions.  

 

All true Shaw but Beane, the teams coaching staff, and the scouts have a lot more detailed info than just players' tape.

 

Interviewing players, former coaches and just the scouting process itself gives them a lot more input than fans get.

College players stats/play can also be driven by the scheme and other talent on their team.  How these guys transfer their skills to the NFL

and to a particular NFL teams' scheme can't be easy for even an informed fan.

Heck, the Bills staff even get input from current players already on the team about these guys.  

Sprinkle in some analytics on these players and that's a lot of details to consider.

 

I see a lot of people at OBD who collectively, have input in putting together the teams' draft board.

[Shaw66]

15 minutes ago, ColoradoBills said:

 

All true Shaw but Beane, the teams coaching staff, and the scouts have a lot more detailed info than just players' tape.

 

Interviewing players, former coaches and just the scouting process itself gives them a lot more input than fans get.

College players stats/play can also be driven by the scheme and other talent on their team.  How these guys transfer their skills to the NFL

and to a particular NFL teams' scheme can't be easy for even an informed fan.

Heck, the Bills staff even get input from current players already on the team about these guys.  

Sprinkle in some analytics on these players and that's a lot of details to consider.

 

I see a lot of people at OBD who collectively, have input in putting together the teams' draft board.

That's all true, and as I've said, I generally agree with the point.  

 

However, I still am not prepared to dismiss the views of people on this forum, or to say that they are never right.   Some people are just good at some things.  Some people here, for example, are good athletes in their own right, and I do believe that it often takes one to know one - that is, I believe that some athletes are just good at looking at other athletes and knowing, somehow, whether the guy can play or not.   It's not intuition, but it's intuitive.  My intuitive response to Sammy Watkins was wrong; my intuitive response to CJ Spiller was correct.  

 

Consequently, I read what people say here with interest, even though I may believe that in general, the Bills' staff, particularly this staff, has better information and more experience, and spends more time evaluating players and the Bills needs, than the average poster here.  

[ColoradoBills]

11 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

That's all true, and as I've said, I generally agree with the point.  

 

However, I still am not prepared to dismiss the views of people on this forum, or to say that they are never right.   Some people are just good at some things.  Some people here, for example, are good athletes in their own right, and I do believe that it often takes one to know one - that is, I believe that some athletes are just good at looking at other athletes and knowing, somehow, whether the guy can play or not.   It's not intuition, but it's intuitive.  My intuitive response to Sammy Watkins was wrong; my intuitive response to CJ Spiller was correct.  

 

Consequently, I read what people say here with interest, even though I may believe that in general, the Bills' staff, particularly this staff, has better information and more experience, and spends more time evaluating players and the Bills needs, than the average poster here.  

 

Hearing the input for some of the posters is the reason I am on the board.

[HardyBoy]

19 hours ago, Jauronimo said:

He's saying you and @GoBills808 are Debbie from Depew.

 

Haha, wait me?! I think sports talk radio taking phone calls from the audience is super lazy and they do it largely to fill space...that and the reflexive immediate negative reaction people have and the use of petty nicknames is super annoying

[Shaw66]

2 hours ago, ColoradoBills said:

 

Hearing the input for some of the posters is the reason I am on the board.

Absolutely.  A lot of great stuff here.

[Rampant Buffalo]

4 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

The question is not whether doctors or NFL general managers are wrong sometimes.   The question is whether they are wrong about medical diagnoses or football players, as the case may be, more often than you or I.  

 

If I have a pain in my chest, I'm going to the hospital, not Two Bills Drive.  Yes, the doctors in the hospital may be wrong, but that isn't the question.  

 

Yes, NFL front offices could get better at player evaluation.  However, given the nature of the problem, they never can be perfect.  Maybe it was possible two years ago to predict what would happen to Rashee Rice, but not with any certainty.   There was no way to predict Von Miller's most recent knee injury.  In both cases, what happened to them was possible, and the teams that acquired them MIGHT have chosen not to acquire those players because of the perceived risk, but a GM who says no to every player with a perceived risk will fail miserably.  The nature of the job is to do the best you can with the information and the resources you have.  GMs have better information and better resources than any of us, and that makes them quite likely to be better at player evaluation than you or I.  Doctors, too. 

 

I've mentioned GM, the book about Ernie Accorsi as GM with the Giants.   The author describes going to a Penn State game to scout players.  Accorsi was watching the game and said. "Look at Posluzni's feet.   He makes the correct first step every time."   I've been watching pro football for 65 years, and I've never casually noticed anyone's feet, and if I did, I wouldn't know what the right first step is supposed to be.  When I go to the hospital with chest pains, I want the medical equivalent of Ernie Accorsi, even if he did bet on Jeremy Shockey.  

 

I hear what you're saying, and you have a point. 

 

Decision quality = knowledge x insight

 

Let's say you were to bring Leonardo da Vinci back to life, and you started asking him questions about how to build a successful online business. Da Vinci was an extremely intelligent and insightful individual--one of the most insightful who ever lived. But he had no knowledge about the Internet. Therefore he's unlikely to help you much, because both insight and knowledge have to be there. 

 

Subject matter experts are generally in the opposite position. They have plenty of relevant knowledge. When they make a mistake, it's usually because of a lack of insight. If an expert is making a mistake due to lack of insight, that mistake can often be seen by someone who combines a basic level of knowledge with good insight. 

 

Suppose the vast majority of fans strongly oppose the use of the 8th overall pick on Donte Whitner. But that's the pick that's made anyway. When Whitner subsequently falls very short of his draft position, this gets classified as an avoidable error. So then you ask: "What went wrong to create that avoidable error, and what can we do differently in the future to avoid having that happen again?" In the case of Whitner, Levy and Jauron believed their first two picks needed to be safety and DL, but not necessarily in that order. That team had plenty of needs, and lacked starter caliber players at many positions. There are two failures to learn from here: the over-estimation of Donte Whitner's value as a player, as well as their big picture approach to drafting strategy. The goal should be to rigorously learn from both those failures, to get better at this in the future.

[Bob Chandler's Hands]

On 4/28/2024 at 11:07 AM, Ethan in Cleveland said:

I have to be correct 100% of the time in my job.

This is an amazing statement. I am afraid to even ask what you do for a living.  Taxi driver?

[Mikey152]

Flat out...fans are playing fantasy football. So are draft analysts and talking heads. They look at these players based on a series of numbers and act like they are plug and play.

 

Need I remind you Mike Mayock was a GM for a hot minute...remind me how that went.

 

Most of the "draft experts" on this board formulate their boards based on what they read on the internet, which is in turn probably sourced from somewhere else on the internet, which is sourced form an insider using information from scouts and coaches.

 

Nobody here is just watching a bunch of college football and coming up with their "board" based on what they saw. You're already biased toward industry beliefs before you even start your e v a l.

Edited May 8 by Mikey152

[Bill from NYC]

On 4/28/2024 at 2:38 PM, RyanC883 said:

yeah, the FO has been great.  Groot and Basham are annual pro bowl players and Humphrey is a bum. 

 

The idea that fans should’t opine in picks, etc is ridiculous.  We are the customers.  The customer is not always right, but no harm in sharing our thoughts in a message board. 

100% true. What should we as fans and posters on TSW do?

A) Whenever the Bills do someting, strenuously agree. Here, I'll try.....Donte Whitner was a great pick because the Bills scouts know more than me.  Does that work?

B) Maybe we should never post at all because our opinions are invalid. Why? Because McDermott/Beane are great beyond question. I'll try again.....It was smart for McDermott to trade the Mahomes pick for a low return and draft a corner instead of one of the greatest QBs of all time.

 

This is a message boards. Message boards are made to share opinions and interact with other fans, not to be altars of blind worship. 

 

 

 

 

[hondo in seattle]

6 hours ago, finn said:

Why Debi? Why not Tom from Tonawanda or Leo from Lancaster? Did you choose a female name deliberately, or were you unconsciously channeling our culture's poor view of woman when looking for a name that would evoke sneers? 

 

Women don't have a monopoly on stupidity, believe me. 

 

Finn, I hear you...   

 

I was kind of riffing off of "Debi Downer."   I have a wife and two daughters - one of whom is entering med school, something I certainly didn't have the grades to do.   Each of them is better than me in many ways.  If anyone in my family has monopolized stupidity, it's me.  

[Augie]

29 minutes ago, Bill from NYC said:

100% true. What should we as fans and posters on TSW do?

A) Whenever the Bills do someting, strenuously agree. Here, I'll try.....Donte Whitner was a great pick because the Bills scouts know more than me.  Does that work?

B) Maybe we should never post at all because our opinions are invalid. Why? Because McDermott/Beane are great beyond question. I'll try again.....It was smart for McDermott to trade the Mahomes pick for a low return and draft a corner instead of one of the greatest QBs of all time.

 

This is a message boards. Message boards are made to share opinions and interact with other fans, not to be altars of blind worship. 

 

 

 

 

 

Agreed on the bold, until the crusading starts. Sometimes it would be nice if a good point is made, but then you aren’t clubbed over the head with it repeatedly by the same posters in countless redundant threads. 

 

But maybe that’s just me. 

2 minutes ago, hondo in seattle said:

 

Finn, I hear you...   

 

I was kind of riffing off of "Debi Downer."   I have a wife and two daughters - one of whom is entering med school, something I certainly didn't have the grades to do.   Each of them is better than me in many ways.  If anyone in my family has monopolized stupidity, it's me.  

 

My wife is the brains of the operation, but I’m smart enough to know that. 

[Ethan in Cleveland]

1 hour ago, Bob Chandler's Hands said:

This is an amazing statement. I am afraid to even ask what you do for a living.  Taxi driver?

Lol. 

Cardiologist

[Augie]

16 minutes ago, Ethan in Cleveland said:

Lol. 

Cardiologist

 

Yet mistakes are part of life, and why your malpractice is so outrageous. 

 

If Beane misses on a draft pick, nobody generally dies. However, if you are picking a RT for the Dolphins, a miss could be fatal. 

[hondo in seattle]

Shaw, my main point was simply this: We need to have a little humility.  I've seen posters write as if they're smarter about football than Beane and the entirety of the Bills personnel department.  These same posters often disrespect the opinions of their fellow posters - which I think is wrong.  

 

I had the honor of leading soldiers into combat during the First Gulf War.  Before the war, I read some articles about how it was going to be a long, protracted fight against a battle-hardened enemy with significant American losses.  This was not the kind of stuff I wanted my soldiers to read.   What really annoyed me, and made me laugh at the same time, was the sense of certainty and intellectual superiority that dripped from some of these articles.   Of course, the talking heads were cluelessly wrong and American armored units quickly rolled into the Euphrates Valley with minimal losses leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and Iraqi soldiers crying the Arabic version of "No Mas" by the tens of thousands. 

 

Non-experts thinking they're smarter than experts is a type of hubris.  Just think about amateurs commenting on your own profession, whatever it is.  Expertise is too often underrated.  

 

But it's also true that so-called experts aren't always expert.  Matt Millen, case in point.  And there are so many unknown/unknowable variables in predicting which college players will succeed in the NFL and which won't, that sometimes fans will be right and GMs wrong.  And I'll acknowledge this, too... my main source of information about the draft is TBD.  I always appreciate your commentary, GunnerBill's, etc.  I think the collective Bills IQ of TBD is much higher than the collective Bills IQ of the national media.  This is my primary source of information about the club.  What I read here heavily influences my own opinions.  

 

I'm just hoping people can be humble - and kind - with their opinions because we're not as smart as the pros and, even if we were, there's no certainty in this game.  Every pick is, to some extent, a roll of the dice.  

 

Personally, I've watched video on all our draft picks, reviewed their draft profiles, read the opinions here, and have some weak opinions of my own about the likelihood of their success.  Mostly I'm just keeping an open mind and hoping the dice fall in our favor.     

 

[oldmanfan]

1 minute ago, hondo in seattle said:

Shaw, my main point was simply this: We need to have a little humility.  I've seen posters write as if they're smarter about football than Beane and the entirety of the Bills personnel department.  These same posters often disrespect the opinions of their fellow posters - which I think is wrong.  

 

I had the honor of leading soldiers into combat during the First Gulf War.  Before the war, I read some articles about how it was going to be a long, protracted fight against a battle-hardened enemy with significant American losses.  This was not the kind of stuff I wanted my soldiers to read.   What really annoyed me, and made me laugh at the same time, was the sense of certainty and intellectual superiority that dripped from some of these articles.   Of course, the talking heads were cluelessly wrong and American armored units quickly rolled into the Euphrates Valley with minimal losses leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and Iraqi soldiers crying the Arabic version of "No Mas" by the tens of thousands. 

 

Non-experts thinking they're smarter than experts is a type of hubris.  Just think about amateurs commenting on your own profession, whatever it is.  Expertise is too often underrated.  

 

But it's also true that so-called experts aren't always expert.  Matt Millen, case in point.  And there are so many unknown/unknowable variables in predicting which college players will succeed in the NFL and which won't, that sometimes fans will be right and GMs wrong.  And I'll acknowledge this, too... my main source of information about the draft is TBD.  I always appreciate your commentary, GunnerBill's, etc.  I think the collective Bills IQ of TBD is much higher than the collective Bills IQ of the national media.  This is my primary source of information about the club.  What I read here heavily influences my own opinions.  

 

I'm just hoping people can be humble - and kind - with their opinions because we're not as smart as the pros and, even if we were, there's no certainty in this game.  Every pick is, to some extent, a roll of the dice.  

 

Personally, I've watched video on all our draft picks, reviewed their draft profiles, read the opinions here, and have some weak opinions of my own about the likelihood of their success.  Mostly I'm just keeping an open mind and hoping the dice fall in our favor.     

 

Good discussion with you and Shaw.  I wanted to comment on the value of expertise.  One of the truly dangerous things going on in the country today is the lack of respect for expertise.  We saw this most vividly during Covid on social media.  I  am a scientist with reasonable knowledge of virology and had hairdressers among others tell me on social media they knew more about Covid than me or other trained professionals.  
 

Front offices in the NFL have way more data than folks on TBD, thus a better chance of picking correctly.  More data always is better than less.  There are a few folks on TBD who really dig into as much film and that as they can, and I fund their assessments more worth a read.  But the vast majority base in on maybe one YouTube video, if that.

[Mat68]

2 hours ago, Rampant Buffalo said:

 

I hear what you're saying, and you have a point. 

 

Decision quality = knowledge x insight

 

Let's say you were to bring Leonardo da Vinci back to life, and you started asking him questions about how to build a successful online business. Da Vinci was an extremely intelligent and insightful individual--one of the most insightful who ever lived. But he had no knowledge about the Internet. Therefore he's unlikely to help you much, because both insight and knowledge have to be there. 

 

Subject matter experts are generally in the opposite position. They have plenty of relevant knowledge. When they make a mistake, it's usually because of a lack of insight. If an expert is making a mistake due to lack of insight, that mistake can often be seen by someone who combines a basic level of knowledge with good insight. 

 

Suppose the vast majority of fans strongly oppose the use of the 8th overall pick on Donte Whitner. But that's the pick that's made anyway. When Whitner subsequently falls very short of his draft position, this gets classified as an avoidable error. So then you ask: "What went wrong to create that avoidable error, and what can we do differently in the future to avoid having that happen again?" In the case of Whitner, Levy and Jauron believed their first two picks needed to be safety and DL, but not necessarily in that order. That team had plenty of needs, and lacked starter caliber players at many positions. There are two failures to learn from here: the over-estimation of Donte Whitner's value as a player, as well as their big picture approach to drafting strategy. The goal should be to rigorously learn from both those failures, to get better at this in the future.

Hgnata was the pick.  Need and an absolute unit.  They were in a big is slow faze.  

[Shaw66]

9 minutes ago, hondo in seattle said:

Shaw, my main point was simply this: We need to have a little humility.  I've seen posters write as if they're smarter about football than Beane and the entirety of the Bills personnel department.  These same posters often disrespect the opinions of their fellow posters - which I think is wrong.  

 

I had the honor of leading soldiers into combat during the First Gulf War.  Before the war, I read some articles about how it was going to be a long, protracted fight against a battle-hardened enemy with significant American losses.  This was not the kind of stuff I wanted my soldiers to read.   What really annoyed me, and made me laugh at the same time, was the sense of certainty and intellectual superiority that dripped from some of these articles.   Of course, the talking heads were cluelessly wrong and American armored units quickly rolled into the Euphrates Valley with minimal losses leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and Iraqi soldiers crying the Arabic version of "No Mas" by the tens of thousands. 

 

Non-experts thinking they're smarter than experts is a type of hubris.  Just think about amateurs commenting on your own profession, whatever it is.  Expertise is too often underrated.  

 

But it's also true that so-called experts aren't always expert.  Matt Millen, case in point.  And there are so many unknown/unknowable variables in predicting which college players will succeed in the NFL and which won't, that sometimes fans will be right and GMs wrong.  And I'll acknowledge this, too... my main source of information about the draft is TBD.  I always appreciate your commentary, GunnerBill's, etc.  I think the collective Bills IQ of TBD is much higher than the collective Bills IQ of the national media.  This is my primary source of information about the club.  What I read here heavily influences my own opinions.  

 

I'm just hoping people can be humble - and kind - with their opinions because we're not as smart as the pros and, even if we were, there's no certainty in this game.  Every pick is, to some extent, a roll of the dice.  

 

Personally, I've watched video on all our draft picks, reviewed their draft profiles, read the opinions here, and have some weak opinions of my own about the likelihood of their success.  Mostly I'm just keeping an open mind and hoping the dice fall in our favor.     

 

This is great.   Thanks.  I agree completely.  I'm glad you clarified your point.   Actually, I suppose it may be that I just missed the point in the first place. 

 

Humility is the key.   I don't score high on the humility range, but at least I get that the gap between what real experts, the people in the business, know and what all the rest of us know pretty wide.  I don't how many times I've said something like, "look, I don't know.  I'm just looking at the decisions that have been made and trying to figure out why they made them."   I don't always assume that Bills management was right; I just assume that they had some pretty good reasons for doing what they did, reasons that go beyond what I can understand.   Reasons based on knowledge I don't have and conclusions driven by years of experience in the field.   

 

So, yeah, I agree.  It's the attitude that says, "I've watched a lot of football and I understand this stuff," that bothers me.  Truth is, you pretty much can't possibly understand what McDermott and Beane understand.  

 

And I think @Rampant Buffalo put it in a very interesting way - knowledge and insight.  The area where I have some sympathy with those who aren't always so humble is the question of whether McDermott is good enough.  Is he stuck in a rut, or is he still in the process of accumulating insight?  And even if he's accumulating insight, how long is going to take for him to accumulate enough?  Of will he ever?  After all, millions of people spent their lives thinking about all sorts of things, but there was only one da Vinci.  It's time for McDermott to paint a Mona Lisa.