What will the Bills do with their first round pick of 2009?

[JimmyPage]

Why is the poll cornerback , free safety or strong safety?

[Circlingthewagons]

none of the above.

[Guest dog14787]

I'm confused...

 

Will there be no DE's or TE's in the 09 Draft?

 

Naww, we may never get a TE for TE, not a 1st rounder anyway.

[2020 Our Year For Sure]

Why is the poll cornerback , free safety or strong safety?

[Orton's Arm]

I'm not arguing that Mangold would have been a reach at #15......simply that OC is not considered(correctly or incorrectly) to be worth a top 15 pick.

Jim Kelly once said that the key to making the K-Gun work was Kent Hull. Obviously, the Bills don't have a player in that category--or anyone close. Mangold would have filled Hull's shoes admirably, in much the same way Edwards seems to be filling Kelly's shoes. Getting a Mangold at #15 is clearly better draft day value than getting Whitner at #8. That doesn't make the Whitner pick bad--he's a good if imperfect player.

 

The end result is the same though.......as it turned out he was selected near the end of the 1st round......so that is the level he was generally considered.

That's not necessarily true. It could be that several teams had him graded higher than that, but didn't have a need at the center position. There might also have been other teams that had him graded highly, and that had a need at center. But those other teams might have had one or two other players on their boards with even higher grades at other positions of need.

 

IMO there is no reaches.....never....ever.

If a player is selected at #8 then that is what his value is. We(as observers) never know how the 32 teams in the NFL grade the draft prospects. For all we know there could have been 20+ teams who had DW as a legit top 10 prospect.

I partially disagree with this. Take Sebastian Janikowski, a kicker whom the Raiders drafted in the first round. I think it was reasonably obvious that no other team felt it necessary to use a first round pick on a kicker. Janikowski was therefore a reach: a player taken by the Raiders at a much higher spot than any of the league's other teams had rated him. I'd apply this same logic to all other players. If the other teams didn't have Whitner rated as a top 15 player, he was a reach. If there were a lot of teams who had him rated in the top 10, he wasn't a reach. As you point out, there is no way for us to know for sure where teams had him rated.

 

But mock drafts can provide an estimate of how players might generally be seen. Pat Kirwan, for example, used to work for the Jets' front office, and now writes for NFL.com. In his mock draft, he had Donte Whitner being taken #54 overall, by Kansas City. Yes, it's just one man's opinion, but it's the opinion of a man with NFL front office experience and expertise. And I think that most or all other mock drafts you'll find, written by people at the Kirwan level, indicate Whitner going in latter part of the first round at the very earliest. Based on the information we have, Whitner at #8 was a reach.

 

The Bills clearly thought Whitner was one of the eight best players in that draft. Part of the reason for that is because he was felt to be a particularly good fit for the Tampa-2 scheme. But teams which don't use the Tampa-2--i.e., most teams--almost certainly didn't see Whitner in that same light. Had the Bills wanted to trade down to #15 and take Whitner at that spot, the main potential danger would have been a team that a) ran the Tampa-2, b) needed a SS, and c) had, or could acquire, a pick between 8 and 15. And had Whitner been off the board at #15, the Bills could have taken Mangold--thereby getting a better football player than Whitner, and at a position of dire need.

[Dibs]

Jim Kelly once said that the key to making the K-Gun work was Kent Hull. Obviously, the Bills don't have a player in that category--or anyone close. Mangold would have filled Hull's shoes admirably, in much the same way Edwards seems to be filling Kelly's shoes. Getting a Mangold at #15 is clearly better draft day value than getting Whitner at #8. That doesn't make the Whitner pick bad--he's a good if imperfect player....

 

....And had Whitner been off the board at #15, the Bills could have taken Mangold--thereby getting a better football player than Whitner, and at a position of dire need.

This is hindsight revisionist history......the reality was that Mangold was not going to be a good logical draft choice for the Bills at the time of the draft.....therefore it is futile to say(once he has shown himself to be a very good player) that the Bills should have traded down & drafted him at #15(which he clearly was not considered to be worth by all of the NFL teams that had the option to draft him).

 

I also explained how the OC position was obviously not considered a position of 'dire need' on draft day. We had nobody at DT.....we had nobody at Safety......we had a FA acquisition at OC who had started 9 games the previous season for a good offensive team(Vikings) and looked like he might be the answer(he is certainly smart enough).

 

 

On top of all that.....after only 2.5 seasons it is very premature to say who the better player is out of DW & NM.

[Dibs]

.....But mock drafts can provide an estimate of how players might generally be seen. Pat Kirwan, for example, used to work for the Jets' front office, and now writes for NFL.com. In his mock draft, he had Donte Whitner being taken #54 overall, by Kansas City. Yes, it's just one man's opinion, but it's the opinion of a man with NFL front office experience and expertise. And I think that most or all other mock drafts you'll find, written by people at the Kirwan level, indicate Whitner going in latter part of the first round at the very earliest. Based on the information we have, Whitner at #8 was a reach.....

Mock drafts can provide an estimate.......I agree. But to say that since they can provide an estimate(generally speaking), that they apply to all draft selections is illogical. Every year there are players taken well above and well below their media projections. The estimation of these players perceived worth in the NFL by NFL teams is misjudged by the media(for one reason or another).

Sometimes it shows that the NFL teams picking the player(or letting them slide) are wrong.....but at other times it shows that the consensus media projections were wrong. Only in the passing of time can we tell who got it right/wrong......in the case of DW......I have shown you several times now in comparison to other similar picks(range 6-10) that he(so far in his career) has shown himself to be a worthy #8 selection. The media got it wrong.....the Bills got it right.

 

If you want to keep calling DW a reach to me......please show me how I've analyzed things incorrectly and show me that he has underperformed compared to his draft position peers(spots 6-10).

[Orton's Arm]

This is hindsight revisionist history......the reality was that Mangold was not going to be a good logical draft choice for the Bills at the time of the draft.....

I don't see why you feel the need to attach labels like "hindsight" and "revisionist" to my arguments, given that leading up to that particular draft, I'd called for the Bills to either stay put at #8 and take a QB, or trade down and take Mangold. I also expressed a distinct lack of excitement when Fowler was brought to the Bills--an opinion he's done absolutely nothing to change.

 

More generally, I've noticed a tendency among many people on this board to simply disregard all criticism of the front office. It's a "they're the ones running the show and you're not, so they must be right and you must be wrong," type attitude. Before that draft, I wrote that the Bills should have taken a Qb at #8, or else trade down for Mangold. Immediately after the draft, I wrote that the Bills should have either taken a QB at #8, or should have traded down for Mangold. Three years after the fact, I feel they should have either taken a QB at #8 (there was no way for them to have known they'd be getting Edwards in the third), or they should have traded down for Mangold. My logic then and my logic now are exactly the same. I get the feeling that for you it doesn't matter, and that you're going to put negative labels like "revisionist" and "hindsight" on whatever criticism I might make of any of the front office's moves. But out of a morbid sense of curiosity, is there anything I could possibly have done differently to have avoided those two labels?

 

therefore it is futile to say(once he has shown himself to be a very good player) that the Bills should have traded down & drafted him at #15(which he clearly was not considered to be worth by all of the NFL teams that had the option to draft him).

One of Pat Kirwan's mock drafts had Mangold going at #15. Another of Kirwans' mock drafts had him going in the late 20s. (In case you're wondering, both drafts had Whitner going in the second round to Kansas City.)

 

I also explained how the OC position was obviously not considered a position of 'dire need' on draft day.

You are right to say it wasn't considered a position of need. The fact it was not was an error on the Bills' part--an avoidable error, I believe. He couldn't hold onto the starting position at Cleveland, which is why he bounced over to the Vikings as Birk's backup. The Bills should not have pretended to themselves that this player was anything more than a stopgap measure until a real center could be brought in.

 

We had nobody at DT.....we had nobody at Safety......

And nobody at center, and nobody at quarterback. There were a number of needs that could legitimately have been filled. There was no reason to be so desperate to fill the DT and Safety needs (1 reach and 1 bust) while pretending to ourselves that several other positions were not also dire needs. For crying out loud, it was year 1 of a rebuilding effort. To hone in on just two positions would have been a logical for a team that was just two good players away from being a Super Bowl contender. It would be hyperbole to state that the Bills were two good players away from having two good players. But it wouldn't be all that hyperbolic.

 

we had a FA acquisition at OC who had started 9 games the previous season for a good offensive team(Vikings) and looked like he might be the answer(he is certainly smart enough).

I know he's a good chess player, but, this season, the Bills have been very poor at picking up the blitz. A lot of that has been missed blocks--including missed blocks or poor blocks from Melvin Fowler. But it's also seemed to me that the blocking scheme has often failed to account for blitzers. I've heard plenty of talk about how wonderful Fowler supposedly is with line calls. But I haven't personally seen any direct evidence to back up that claim. Have you?

On top of all that.....after only 2.5 seasons it is very premature to say who the better player is out of DW & NM.

I disagree. You can't put Whitner one-on-one with a good TE and expect him to be okay. That keeps him out of the ranks of the elite SSs, and is likely to do so for the remainder of his career. But Mangold has already proven he belongs amongst the ranks of the very best centers in this league.

[Orton's Arm]

Mock drafts can provide an estimate.......I agree. But to say that since they can provide an estimate(generally speaking), that they apply to all draft selections is illogical. Every year there are players taken well above and well below their media projections. The estimation of these players perceived worth in the NFL by NFL teams is misjudged by the media(for one reason or another).

Sometimes it shows that the NFL teams picking the player(or letting them slide) are wrong.....but at other times it shows that the consensus media projections were wrong. Only in the passing of time can we tell who got it right/wrong......in the case of DW......I have shown you several times now in comparison to other similar picks(range 6-10) that he(so far in his career) has shown himself to be a worthy #8 selection. The media got it wrong.....the Bills got it right.

 

If you want to keep calling DW a reach to me......please show me how I've analyzed things incorrectly and show me that he has underperformed compared to his draft position peers(spots 6-10).

When I call Whitner a "reach," I mean that the Bills could have traded down to #15 and probably still have gotten him.

 

The people in the front office thought the next-best alternative to Whitner would have been a significant step down, and they were wrong. This initial fallacy then led to another mistake: the thought that the Bills absolutely had to avoid any risk at all of losing out on Whitner. So when Denver offered the Bills a 2nd round pick to move down to #15, Marv turned them down. There was an excellent chance Whitner would still have been there at #15. But he (or someone) was convinced that if Whitner hadn't been there, it would have been very bad indeed. So they turned Denver down.

 

The situation that actually pertained was this: the Bills had gaping holes at a number of positions, including SS, C, DT, and QB. Had they traded down from #8 to #15, and had Whitner not been there, they could have filled the gaping hole at center with a better football player than the SS they grabbed at #8. The strength of this plan B (stronger, actually, than their plan A) gave them a much greater freedom of action than they realized they had. By failing to utilize that freedom of action, they squandered the second round pick they could have had by trading down.

[Bill from NYC]

When I call Whitner a "reach," I mean that the Bills could have traded down to #15 and probably still have gotten him.

 

The people in the front office thought the next-best alternative to Whitner would have been a significant step down, and they were wrong. This initial fallacy then led to another mistake: the thought that the Bills absolutely had to avoid any risk at all of losing out on Whitner. So when Denver offered the Bills a 2nd round pick to move down to #15, Marv turned them down. There was an excellent chance Whitner would still have been there at #15. But he (or someone) was convinced that if Whitner hadn't been there, it would have been very bad indeed. So they turned Denver down.

 

The situation that actually pertained was this: the Bills had gaping holes at a number of positions, including SS, C, DT, and QB. Had they traded down from #8 to #15, and had Whitner not been there, they could have filled the gaping hole at center with a better football player than the SS they grabbed at #8. The strength of this plan B (stronger, actually, than their plan A) gave them a much greater freedom of action than they realized they had. By failing to utilize that freedom of action, they squandered the second round pick they could have had by trading down.

 

I disagree with the premise of this post. Imo it would not have mattered whether or not Whitner would have been there at 15. You see, you left out OG and OT in your list of "positions of need" in 06.

Whitner is a good player, but every time you watch him, you are looking at what could have been Davin Joseph or Mangold, and Jeremy Trueblood. These players would have been sitting right there, and the Bills would have been able to draft them and still squander a 2nd and a 3rd for McCargo.

Instead, they devoted the 06 and 08 drafts primarily to defensive backs. I said that it was crazy then, and I continue to think so. All I can hope is that I am wrong, and we can finally make the playoffs this year. If we do, we should all say thank you to the 07 draft.

[THEDuganWolcott]

I say go o-line. I never understood what anybody saw in Jason Peters even before this season. Trade him and move up and draft someone else.

[BuffaninATL]

stupid pole

 

ummm, do you mean "poll"?

 

what's stupid is your grammar.....

[BuffaninATL]

IMO, this poll should be TE, C, and DE....in no particular order

[Bill from NYC]

IMO, this poll should be TE, C, and DE....in no particular order

 

No DT?

[mead107]

I still say QB . :rolleyes

 

One more game like sunday and that should be a move up to grab one .

[bills_fan_in_raleigh]

None of the above. I really think we go DT or LB but depends on how rest of the season pans out.

[/dev/null]

Who cares right now. We're in the middle of a season.

We'll move up to draft in the 3.5 spot.

 

There are only 3 poll options: CB, FS, and SS. Where is the option for other?

HA should re-run this sampling with 4 poll options: CB, FS, SS, and Other

 

7 Total Options

2 Total Polls

 

7/2=

[2020 Our Year For Sure]

Can we not use mock drafts as actual references, HA? Pat Kirwan is hardly better than Mayock, who had Whitner going #8 to the Bills.

[Dibs]

I don't see why you feel the need to attach labels like "hindsight" and "revisionist" to my arguments, given that leading up to that particular draft, I'd called for the Bills to either stay put at #8 and take a QB, or trade down and take Mangold. I also expressed a distinct lack of excitement when Fowler was brought to the Bills--an opinion he's done absolutely nothing to change.

 

More generally, I've noticed a tendency among many people on this board to simply disregard all criticism of the front office. It's a "they're the ones running the show and you're not, so they must be right and you must be wrong," type attitude. Before that draft, I wrote that the Bills should have taken a Qb at #8, or else trade down for Mangold. Immediately after the draft, I wrote that the Bills should have either taken a QB at #8, or should have traded down for Mangold. Three years after the fact, I feel they should have either taken a QB at #8 (there was no way for them to have known they'd be getting Edwards in the third), or they should have traded down for Mangold. My logic then and my logic now are exactly the same. I get the feeling that for you it doesn't matter, and that you're going to put negative labels like "revisionist" and "hindsight" on whatever criticism I might make of any of the front office's moves. But out of a morbid sense of curiosity, is there anything I could possibly have done differently to have avoided those two labels?

I attach hindsight etc to the arguments because that is exactly what they are. It matter not that you did or didn't have the same views prior to the draft.....because prior to the draft it was simply an opinion, a guess at what one thinks about how players will pan out. It is only with hindsight that those opinions can be proven correct or not.

 

The logic of the Bills doing as you suggested does not change with hindsight.....and this is where I feel you are not following what I am saying. I am discussing why the Bills made the draft day decisions that they did.....with the knowledge pre-draft, not with post draft hindsight. Not only did the Bills decision(re: Whitner, not McCargo) pan out to be a good one, but was also sound in its logic.

For you to keep saying "I predicted a better way.....and It would have turned out better." is quite meaningless. What do you want, a medal? You basically guessed a different route which honestly I couldn't see any GM following.....and it(with the benefit of hindsight) has shown to end up pretty good. This does not mean it would have been the wiser decision at the time.

 

Keep in mind that if 100 fans were to chose 100 different draft day scenarios randomly.....most likely several of them would end up with 'magic' draft days. This points out that not only should each fan that 'guesses' and gets it right on a draft should not feel anything more than that they had a lucky guess.....but that their prediction might have been quite irrational for the team to do at the time.

 

One of Pat Kirwan's mock drafts had Mangold going at #15. Another of Kirwans' mock drafts had him going in the late 20s. (In case you're wondering, both drafts had Whitner going in the second round to Kansas City.)

I thought I covered the 'media consensus' thing quite clearly in my previous posts. Who cares if someone has Mangold rated a bit higher....or a bit lower? He ended up being drafted at #29.

Winston Justice was rated by some as high as #10.....and by most inside the top 16. He dropped to the 2nd round. Does this mean he would have been a wise pick at #15? Obviously not.

 

You are right to say it wasn't considered a position of need. The fact it was not was an error on the Bills' part--an avoidable error, I believe. He couldn't hold onto the starting position at Cleveland, which is why he bounced over to the Vikings as Birk's backup. The Bills should not have pretended to themselves that this player was anything more than a stopgap measure until a real center could be brought in.

Again with the hindsight. Now don't take offense at that.....it is simple truth. If he had panned out to be a solid starter then it would have been a wise move. To act all holier than thou.....or more to the point, more knowledgeable at assessing talent than the FO is a bit egotistical. Many considered him a 'real' center....or at least someone with 'real' potential to be one.

 

As example, Langston Walker seems to be earning his dollars for us. Many said that he was totally useless before we signed him. Had he not panned out, would that then justify the nay-sayers to bleat "The Bills should not have pretended to themselves that this player was anything more than a stopgap...."?

For anyone to think that they have some sort of definitive ability on analysing the talent of players is ludicrous.

 

And nobody at center, and nobody at quarterback. There were a number of needs that could legitimately have been filled. There was no reason to be so desperate to fill the DT and Safety needs (1 reach and 1 bust) while pretending to ourselves that several other positions were not also dire needs. For crying out loud, it was year 1 of a rebuilding effort. To hone in on just two positions would have been a logical for a team that was just two good players away from being a Super Bowl contender. It would be hyperbole to state that the Bills were two good players away from having two good players. But it wouldn't be all that hyperbolic.

Nobody at center????? Fowler was added. Fowler was added. Fowler was added. Fowler was added. Fowler was added. Fowler was added. Fowler was added. Fowler was added.

Again, as I explained earlier.....most teams tend not to draft OC high in the draft nor do they place an overly high level of importance on the position(rightly or wrongly). They place more importance on it than FB......I can't think of any other position apart from ST that is generally given a lower priority.

 

Nobody at QB????? JPL anyone? A 1st round draft pick who had only 8 starts & was effectively entering his 2nd season.....and still showed promise. BIG bloody decision to decide(when every position needed upgrading.....as you put it) to draft high at QB.

 

OK.....now I'm pissed. How was DW a reach? Show me how!

 

It wasn't honing in on just 2 positions.....it was identifying the 2 weakest positions which were also of high importance to the schemes. We were OK with LBs(Fletcher, Spikes & Crowell), we were OK with CBs(Clements & McGee), we were OK with DE(Schobel, Denney & Kelsay), we were OK with WR(Evans, Price, Reed, Parrish), we were OK with RB(McGahee), we were committed at QB(JPL).....there was an obvious 'wait and see' approach to the OL(producing Peters as a probowl LT)......on top of that there were no realistic OL prospects for high in the 1st round.

These are the reasons why Safety & DT were targeted......because we didn't have anybody at the positions & there were players available of appropriate talent level in the 1st round.

[Dibs]

When I call Whitner a "reach," I mean that the Bills could have traded down to #15 and probably still have gotten him.

Bollocks.....prove it.