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

[Dibs]

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.

I don't get how you say this Bill. I don't see how we could have gotten down to the #23 spot in the draft to select Joseph.....I've already covered the Mangold #29 thing with HA. We were never going to draft a player who was obviously rated(in terms of potential & impact) much lower than the players available at #15(I'm assuming a trade down here with Denver).

 

Here's a concept......perhaps.....just perhaps, the Bills absolutely loved what they saw in DW & had him rated well above most other players. They might well have been wrong but you'd expect your team to select the player who they had rated well above the other players available wouldn't you(ala Trent Edwards)?

[Orton's Arm]

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.

You're right: I should have included OG and OT as positions of need in 2006. But that just makes the main point of that post stronger.

 

Had I personally been the GM for the Bills in 2006, Whitner would not have been my plan A. But given that he was someone else's plan A, that someone else at least should have recognized that he had a very strong plan B (and as you seem to hint at, a very strong plan C and plan D).

 

What I was getting at earlier was this. Suppose one was, for the sake of argument, to accept the premise that Whitner should have been our plan A. The idea that there would have been this huge drop-off from plan A to plan B was a fallacy. But because the front office had convinced itself the fallacy was true, they made the mistake of refusing Denver's trade-down offer to avoid any "risk" of experiencing that supposedly huge drop-off from plan A to plan B.

 

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.

I agree this would have been a much better option than taking Whitner. But at the time, you were calling for the Bills to use their best picks on defensive backs. It's only in hindsight that you realize those picks should have been used on the offensive line. . . .

 

 

 

Just kidding, Bill.

 

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.

I agree that if we make the playoffs, the '07 draft will be the single biggest reason why. But the '06 draft will deserve some of the credit as well, albeit not as much as the '07 draft. The Bills clearly left money on the table in '06, but they did walk away with a better draft than many other teams had for that year.

[Orton's Arm]

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

If the poll was about what the Bills should do, then I'd agree with you. This poll is about what the Bills will do with their first round pick, which is another way of asking which defensive back position they most want to fill.

[Buffaloed in Pa]

Trade up for a pass -rushing De. Oh it helps the secondary also . 2nd round TE 3rd round OLB

[JStranger76]

How the hell we gonna trade up and still have a 2nd and 3rd round pick? Now, if we have a great free agency, I'm all for trading up for a potential "great" pass rusher.

[The Dean]

If the poll was about what the Bills should do, then I'd agree with you. This poll is about what the Bills will do with their first round pick, which is another way of asking which defensive back position they most want to fill.

 

 

Let me take this opportunity to repeat how huge of an idiot you are.

 

No matter if it were WILL or SHOULD all positions should have been included if you really cared what we thought. You don't give a rat's ass what other people think. That is pretty clear.

[Buffaloed in Pa]

How the hell we gonna trade up and still have a 2nd and 3rd round pick? Now, if we have a great free agency, I'm all for trading up for a potential "great" pass rusher.

Duh next years pick ,a trade Duh , there are ways.

[Orton's Arm]

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.....

It doesn't sound like there's anything I could possibly have said or done here to avoid having you apply the "hindsight" label to everything I've written about this.

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.

I disagreed with that logic pre-draft, and I disagree with it now, for exactly the same reasons. You imply the imperfections in the Bills' approach were only evident in hindsight. They were not.

 

I'll grant that Whitner is a solid football player, but he's a solid football player who probably would have been there at #15. I'm not aware of any mock drafts which had him going somewhere between picks 9 and 15. Are you?

 

What do you want, a medal?

Other than watching it collect dust on some shelf, what would I do with a medal? What I want is for the Bills to win a Super Bowl trophy. For that to happen, the front office has to do a better job than I would have done in its place. And in fairness to it, there are a lot of times when that's happened. But I just need to see that more consistently. If a given course of action seems like an obvious mistake to me--both before and after the fact--I don't want to see them going down that road. If this was any other team, imperfections and mistakes wouldn't bother me that much.

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.

Thanks, I think. But I have to disagree with you on this. I wasn't the only one on this board who thought the Bills would have been better off trading down for someone like Mangold than they were staying put at #8 and taking Whitner. I have to believe that some of the general managers in this league would have been able to see that Fowler wasn't the answer at center, and that Mangold was. A general manager who realized both those things--as many of them probably would have--would have been much more likely to accept Denver's trade down offer. Whether he ended up by taking Whitner or Mangold at #15, he'd consider it a victory either way--plus he gets that 2nd round pick for his troubles.

 

"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."

 

In other words, you are unwilling to consider the possibility that the front office may have made errors based on the information available at the time, and that some fans might have seen those errors both at the time and in hindsight.

 

To act all holier than thou.....or more to the point, more knowledgeable at assessing talent than the FO is a bit egotistical.

You seem a lot more interested in analyzing my supposed egotism than you are in even considering the possibility of whether the front office made an avoidable error. And that's a problem--or would be if you worked in the front office. A truly outstanding front office will categorize nearly every error as "avoidable," thereby putting itself in a position to learn from its past mistakes. I hope--perhaps vainly--that the Bills will come to recognize that their overemphasis on the defensive secondary and underemphasis on the offensive line is mistaken. But we're talking about a team whose head coach is himself a former defensive back, and a former defensive backs coach. Our defensive coordinator is also a former defensive backs coach. They emphasize the positions with which they're most familiar (defensive backs) while de-emphasizing positions which seem more tangential to them (the offensive line, TE, etc.).

 

This behavior is not unique to this staff in particular, or even to football. If the CEO of a company has come up through sales, his approach is likely going to be different than that of a CEO who came up through operations, or through finance, or who'd been the CTO before the CEO. In each case, each CEO is going to place a little more emphasis on whichever area of the business he's most familiar with, potentially at the expense of other areas.

As example, Langston Walker seems to be earning his dollars for us. Many said that he was totally useless before we signed him.

That's a good point. But a better front office would have signed Walker but not Fowler. More generally, this front office's attempts to fill positions via free agency have been failures more often than not. For every one Walker, there seem to be two guys like Melvin Fowler, Peerless Price, Robert Royal, or Larry Triplett. Even Dockery is looking overpaid, over-hyped, and overrated.

 

But even if you want to argue that the Bills were justified on taking a chance on a guy who couldn't hold down the starting center position in Cleveland, how do you explain the Bills' failure to try to replace Fowler after last season--or the season before, for that matter? How many years do the Bills need to content themselves with total ineptitude at the center position, before you admit that they place a higher priority on their secondary than on the offensive line?

 

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.

Like I said, nobody at center.

 

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.

After the Dolphins' 1-15 season, they obviously had more than a few holes to fill. But Parcells used a 2nd round pick on a QB, even though the prior regime had taken a QB in the second round one year earlier. Had Parcells become the Bills' GM back in 2006, I personally believe there's an excellent chance he would have seen Losman in the same light.

 

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

Show me a mock draft which has him going between #9 and #15. I've seen nothing to indicate that anyone other than the Bills considered Whitner a top 15 pick. Many or most very knowledgeable people--including Carucci and Kirwan--considered Whitner second round material.

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.

You summed it all up in that first sentence: SS and DT were considered "high importance" positions of need, so the decision was made to focus on those two positions in the first round, while essentially ignoring opportunities to upgrade at other positions of dire need. As Bill pointed out, our needs along the offensive line went well beyond just SS. But that wasn't considered a "key" position of need like SS was.

[The Dean]

Show me a mock draft which has him going between #9 and #15. I've seen nothing to indicate that anyone other than the Bills considered Whitner a top 15 pick. Many or most very knowledgeable people--including Carucci and Kirwan--considered Whitner second round material.

 

 

The Friday before the draft, Mike Maycok's last Mock had the Bills taking Whitner at #8. One again, Mike Maycok had the Bills taking Donte Whitner at #8. It has already been mentioned, at least once in this thread, that you started as you are SOOOO interested in our opinions, yet you refuse to acknowledge it.

 

It's hard to dig up mocks that old, but these should suffice:

 

http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:0eyOT5...lient=firefox-a

 

Mike Mayock from NFL network had both of those correct on his final mock draft. It came on friday night on i thought he was crazy when i saw but he turned out to be correct. -posted on 5-23-06

 

 

http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:i-66Zf...lient=firefox-a

We'd call this the first shocker of the draft, but NFL Network's Mike Mayock called it Friday. --posted 4-29-06 according to the site

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/sports/f...and&emc=rss

It was Mayock who accurately predicted the Bills would select safety Donte Whitner with the eighth selection. May 2, 2006

[Nanker]

stupid pole

Look who posted it.

 

I'm astonished that QB wasn't a choice.

It is after all a Bills weakness.

[The Dean]

I'm astonished that QB wasn't a choice.

It is after all a Bills weakness.

 

 

I'm guessing that HA believes that, because they passed on Cutler, they will NEVER again draft a QB in the early rounds.

[Dibs]

It doesn't sound like there's anything I could possibly have said or done here to avoid having you apply the "hindsight" label to everything I've written about this.

 

I disagreed with that logic pre-draft, and I disagree with it now, for exactly the same reasons. You imply the imperfections in the Bills' approach were only evident in hindsight. They were not.

 

I'll grant that Whitner is a solid football player, but he's a solid football player who probably would have been there at #15. I'm not aware of any mock drafts which had him going somewhere between picks 9 and 15. Are you?

 

 

Other than watching it collect dust on some shelf, what would I do with a medal? What I want is for the Bills to win a Super Bowl trophy. For that to happen, the front office has to do a better job than I would have done in its place. And in fairness to it, there are a lot of times when that's happened. But I just need to see that more consistently. If a given course of action seems like an obvious mistake to me--both before and after the fact--I don't want to see them going down that road. If this was any other team, imperfections and mistakes wouldn't bother me that much.

 

Thanks, I think. But I have to disagree with you on this. I wasn't the only one on this board who thought the Bills would have been better off trading down for someone like Mangold than they were staying put at #8 and taking Whitner. I have to believe that some of the general managers in this league would have been able to see that Fowler wasn't the answer at center, and that Mangold was. A general manager who realized both those things--as many of them probably would have--would have been much more likely to accept Denver's trade down offer. Whether he ended up by taking Whitner or Mangold at #15, he'd consider it a victory either way--plus he gets that 2nd round pick for his troubles.

 

"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."

 

In other words, you are unwilling to consider the possibility that the front office may have made errors based on the information available at the time, and that some fans might have seen those errors both at the time and in hindsight.

 

 

You seem a lot more interested in analyzing my supposed egotism than you are in even considering the possibility of whether the front office made an avoidable error. And that's a problem--or would be if you worked in the front office. A truly outstanding front office will categorize nearly every error as "avoidable," thereby putting itself in a position to learn from its past mistakes. I hope--perhaps vainly--that the Bills will come to recognize that their overemphasis on the defensive secondary and underemphasis on the offensive line is mistaken. But we're talking about a team whose head coach is himself a former defensive back, and a former defensive backs coach. Our defensive coordinator is also a former defensive backs coach. They emphasize the positions with which they're most familiar (defensive backs) while de-emphasizing positions which seem more tangential to them (the offensive line, TE, etc.).

 

This behavior is not unique to this staff in particular, or even to football. If the CEO of a company has come up through sales, his approach is likely going to be different than that of a CEO who came up through operations, or through finance, or who'd been the CTO before the CEO. In each case, each CEO is going to place a little more emphasis on whichever area of the business he's most familiar with, potentially at the expense of other areas.

 

That's a good point. But a better front office would have signed Walker but not Fowler. More generally, this front office's attempts to fill positions via free agency have been failures more often than not. For every one Walker, there seem to be two guys like Melvin Fowler, Peerless Price, Robert Royal, or Larry Triplett. Even Dockery is looking overpaid, over-hyped, and overrated.

 

But even if you want to argue that the Bills were justified on taking a chance on a guy who couldn't hold down the starting center position in Cleveland, how do you explain the Bills' failure to try to replace Fowler after last season--or the season before, for that matter? How many years do the Bills need to content themselves with total ineptitude at the center position, before you admit that they place a higher priority on their secondary than on the offensive line?

 

 

Like I said, nobody at center.

 

 

After the Dolphins' 1-15 season, they obviously had more than a few holes to fill. But Parcells used a 2nd round pick on a QB, even though the prior regime had taken a QB in the second round one year earlier. Had Parcells become the Bills' GM back in 2006, I personally believe there's an excellent chance he would have seen Losman in the same light.

 

 

Show me a mock draft which has him going between #9 and #15. I've seen nothing to indicate that anyone other than the Bills considered Whitner a top 15 pick. Many or most very knowledgeable people--including Carucci and Kirwan--considered Whitner second round material.

 

You summed it all up in that first sentence: SS and DT were considered "high importance" positions of need, so the decision was made to focus on those two positions in the first round, while essentially ignoring opportunities to upgrade at other positions of dire need. As Bill pointed out, our needs along the offensive line went well beyond just SS. But that wasn't considered a "key" position of need like SS was.

I'm tired of continually trying to explain things.....you seem to not understand the points I make in relation to the way you are thinking.....instead of addressing the points you simply repeat yourself.

You persist on saying the Bills made an error(when the end result turned out to be above average).

You persist on relating everything to the 'media consensus'(even after I have shown you how erroneous this sort of thinking is).

You then persist in wanting to ignore 'media consensus'(and the actual draft results) and shove players drafted in the late 20s all the way up to #15 or worse #8.

You even persist in the concept that a teams FO should be perfect.....in that bad decisions ala Fowler & McCargo should never happen(as if there is some magical GM out there who always gets things right).....and that good decisions ala L.Walker should simply be run of the mill.

 

FWIW, I've never said that the 2006 draft(#8 pick choice) could not have ended up better......I am continually trying to show you that not only was it a reasonable & logical choice(i.e. not a stupid choice)....but one which with hindsight has shown to be a successful choice(when comparing other picks 6-10).

 

I'm done.

[Dibs]

Show me a mock draft which has him going between #9 and #15. I've seen nothing to indicate that anyone other than the Bills considered Whitner a top 15 pick. Many or most very knowledgeable people--including Carucci and Kirwan--considered Whitner second round material.

:wallbash:

[The Dean]

I'm tired of continually trying to explain things.....you seem to not understand the points I make in relation to the way you are thinking.....instead of addressing the points you simply repeat yourself.

 

 

You've been around long enough to know that's what HA does.

[Astrobot]

Unless the name Taylor Mays is sitting at our pick, we should not pick a safety in the 1st. I'd go with a olb or dend. Te and Center closely but pretty far behind those positions.

 

Mays will go #14 to the Ravens.

William Moore will go off #15 to the Chargers.

And the Bills, down at #27, will be looking at Witherspoon at LB or Selvie at DE.

[Hazed and Amuzed]

My hopes for a #1 pick is playing tonight.

 

George Selvie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJZLb6jdnZ0

 

I'd love to see us grab him and move him to LB

[Orton's Arm]

I'm tired of continually trying to explain things.....you seem to not understand the points I make in relation to the way you are thinking.....instead of addressing the points you simply repeat yourself.

That's pretty much how I feel about how you've approached this.

You persist on saying the Bills made an error(when the end result turned out to be above average).

To assume--as they did--that their plan B was a lot weaker than their plan A--was an error.

 

You persist on relating everything to the 'media consensus'(even after I have shown you how erroneous this sort of thinking is).

You've repeatedly implied that there is this huge gap between what the people in the media are thinking, and what people in front offices are thinking. The inherent conclusion you drew from that is that mock drafts are more or less worthless as an indication of how front offices around the league see potential draft picks. I responded to that by pointing out that not everyone in the media has been created equal, and that people like Kirwan actually have front office experience. Their opinions are not meaningless, and do have a strong relationship with how players are seen amongst NFL front offices. You seem to have ignored everything I wrote about that point, and persist in thinking that you have "proved" that mock drafts can't teach us anything at all about how a player is generally perceived by NFL front offices.

 

You then persist in wanting to ignore 'media consensus'(and the actual draft results) and shove players drafted in the late 20s all the way up to #15 or worse #8.

As I mentioned earlier, one of Kirwan's drafts had Mangold going at #15, which is where I hinted he could have been taken. If Mangold falling to the end of the first round was predictable, and if there was another trade-down offer to move from 15 to, say, 20, then obviously the Bills should have taken it.

 

You even persist in the concept that a teams FO should be perfect

No, I persist in the concept that a front office should aspire to perfection, and should learn from its mistakes.

 

.....in that bad decisions ala Fowler & McCargo should never happen(as if there is some magical GM out there who always gets things right)

Whoever Cleveland's GM was at the time got things right when he decided that Fowler wasn't the answer. At least prior to this season, the current regime seemed to have a lot more free agent failure stories than success stories. And--with Fowler, Royal, and others--I didn't necessarily see a sense of urgency in correcting the failure.

 

FWIW, I've never said that the 2006 draft(#8 pick choice) could not have ended up better......

No, but you're claiming that, based on the information the Bills had available at the time, it was a perfectly logical draft with no major mental errors. Whenever anyone suggests otherwise, you put your fingers in your ears and scream "hindsight!"

 

I am continually trying to show you that not only was it a reasonable & logical choice(i.e. not a stupid choice)....but one which with hindsight has shown to be a successful choice(when comparing other picks 6-10).

Hindsight has invalidated the underlying assumptions of that draft: namely, that SS and DT should have been much higher priorities than some of the other positions we'd discussed.

I'm done.

That's probably good. You've done a good job of expressing your own arguments, but an extremely poor job of listening to mine.

[Orton's Arm]

The Friday before the draft, Mike Maycok's last Mock had the Bills taking Whitner at #8.

Normally I would not respond to your posts, as you would simply see such a response as an opportunity to continue your crusade against me. But you've brought up a point I'd like to address. Maycok's mock drafts are, to the best of my knowledge, largely based on inside knowledge of what specific teams will do on draft day, not necessarily what he thinks they should do.

 

Maycok correctly predicted that the Bills would take Whitner at #8. But my original question asked whether any mock draft had Whitner going from picks #9 to #15. The reason I asked my question in that particular way was to see if there was even a shred of evidence suggesting that any team other than the Bills would have taken Whitner in the top 15. Thus far no one has shown me any such evidence.

[The Dean]

Normally I would not respond to your posts, as you would simply see such a response as an opportunity to continue your crusade against me. But you've brought up a point I'd like to address. Maycok's mock drafts are, to the best of my knowledge, largely based on inside knowledge of what specific teams will do on draft day, not necessarily what he thinks they should do.

 

Maycok correctly predicted that the Bills would take Whitner at #8. But my original question asked whether any mock draft had Whitner going from picks #9 to #15. The reason I asked my question in that particular way was to see if there was even a shred of evidence suggesting that any team other than the Bills would have taken Whitner in the top 15. Thus far no one has shown me any such evidence.

 

 

Mock drafts are attempts to guess what teams WILL do. Any Mock draft that doesn't use that philosophy isn't much of a mock draft. Some draftnicks rank the players in terms of who they think is the best, second best, etc. But, the Mock is an attempt to predict the draft.

 

And, as you will note (if you actually read posts without preconception) Maycok's last MOCK DRAFT, before the draft, had the Bills picking Whitner at #8. Holy s#it, you can't even admit a mistake when it is right in your face.

[Orton's Arm]

Maycok's last MOCK DRAFT, before the draft, had the Bills picking Whitner at #8. Holy s#it, you can't even admit a mistake when it is right in your face.

You've missed my point completely. Maycok evidently picked up on the fact that the Bills thought highly of Whitner--so highly that they'd take him 8th overall. That (most likely) speaks highly Maycok's information sources. Or, he possibly picked up on the fact that Whitner would be seen as a good fit in the Tampa-2 scheme, making him a much more interesting pick for the Bills than he'd be for the vast majority of teams which don't run a Tampa-2. Either way, kudos to him.

 

What the Maycok prediction doesn't do is the one thing I'd asked for: provide a shred of evidence that any team besides the Bills was considering taking Whitner in the top 15. But even in the unlikely event Whitner had been off the board at #15, the Bills would still have had excellent opportunities to fill positions of dire need, with players as good as or better than Whitner.