Tag: Football

Random thoughts on the NFL Draft and the Buffalo Bills’ participation thereof:

:: I was terrified that the Bills were going to take Cam Newton, if he was still there when they came up with the third pick. Luckily, the Carolina Panthers took him first. Newton is a fantastic athlete with tremendous physical gifts and he had a stellar final year of college ball, but that year pretty much constitutes his entire body of work, for the most part, and one-year-wonders have not borne out well in the past. Instead the Bills took Marcell Dareus, whom everyone agrees is awesome.

Now, he could turn out to be a bust, just like Mike Williams did back in 2002 when the Bills took him with the fourth pick overall. While that pick is often cited whenever the discussion of recent Bills draft disasters comes up, I’ve never really blamed them for that one; Williams was seen at the time as an elite prospect who was dead certain to go to someone in the top five. That it was the Bills sucks, but those things happen. You hope they don’t, but they do.

My great dream for this draft was that Newton would drop to the Bills’ spot, and then the Bills would trade down and pick up a pile of extra picks to someone else who wanted him. Obviously that didn’t happen, and all reports are that the Bills actually loved Newton, so if he had dropped to them, they would have taken him. So, I’m actually thrilled with the Dareus pick. I hope he can help the Bills by generating pass rush, either on his own or by disrupting opposing offensive lines sufficiently that other guys can get to the quarterbacks.

Boiling it down: for the first time that I can remember, I don’t feel like I have to talk myself into liking the Bills’ first pick in the draft.

:: They kept drafting defense, taking a cornerback in the second round (a guy who is apparently really big for a CB and can play safety) and a highly-regarded linebacker in the third. I love the focus on defense, which is the big reason the Bills went 4-12 last year; the D couldn’t get off the field, which basically meant that most weeks the Bills needed to win a shoot-out if they wanted to win. Now, the D is obviously not going to automatically be good or even great; the rookies will need their time to grow and learn. But this draft really feels like a draft that bodes well for the future.

:: While most commentators I’ve read give the Bills good marks for their draft this year, there’s a small but vocal minority that rips them for “ignoring” the quarterback position. Well, they have a guy in Ryan Fitzpatrick who is (a) still young and (b) coming off what was a pretty good year. There’s no reason to panic over finding a “franchise quarterback”. Frankly, after seeing the Bills invest four 1st round picks, one 2nd, and one 3rd on “quarterbacks of the future” in the last sixteen years, I’m ready to watch them wait year after year until they feel they’re in a position to grab a guy they’re convinced is the guy. (The QBs? Todd Collins, 2nd round, 1995; Rob Johnson, acquired by trading a 1st rounder to Jacksonville, 1998; Drew Bledsoe, acquired by trading a 1st rounder to New England, 2002; JP Losman, 1st round in 2004 using a pick acquired by trading the 1st rounder in 2005; Trent Edwards, 3rd round, 2006.)

Some of the same commentators rip the Bills for not drafting a tight end. Look, I’m as frustrated as anyone by the Bills’ complete lack of tight end production ever since Pete Metzelaars retired (don’t try telling me that Jay Riemersma was a good tight end), but the fact is that you just can’t fill every hole your team has in the Draft when your team has as many holes as the Bills do. Maybe Shawn Nelson finally shows what he can do this year (if he can truly do anything). But a good tight end — an actual pass-catching tight end, and not some damned blocker like they always get — needs to be here, sooner or later. Especially if they pull the trigger on a “quarterback of the future” soon, because a good pass-catching tight end can really help out a young quarterback.

:: The Patriots are the greatest geniuses in the history of the NFL Draft, ever ever ever, for all time. This is just simply given. I think it’s funny that they drafted Ryan Mallett, though; every Pats fan I’ve ever spoken to thanks God that Drew Bledsoe, the tall strong-armed QB who couldn’t run to save his life, got hurt so that St. Tom the Overrated could become their starter. And now they’ve got Mallett as his potential back-up (and maybe guy for the future). Mallett is a tall, strong-armed QB who can’t run to save his life. The adjective I’ve seen used the most to describe Mallett is “Bledsoesque”. Ouch!

But then, I don’t think Mallett is meant to really be a potential QB of the future for New England, anyway. I continue to think that St. Tom’s physical decline is closer than most people realize, but my conspiracy theory is this. It seems that every year, the Pats go into the Draft with two picks in the 1st Round, and they always use one of those to trade down for extra picks and another 1st in the next year’s Draft. I think that Bill Belichick is waiting for a year to come when he knows he needs to draft St. Tom the Overrated’s successor, at which point he’ll use both of the 1st-rounders in his pocket to trade up and grab a guy. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it.

:: Jake Locker in the top ten. Not sure what to make of that.

:: Christian Ponder in the top twelve. Not sure what to make of that, either.

:: But I’m sure glad that quite a few teams will likely be out of the QB market at next year’s draft.

:: Boy, the Falcons better be right about that receiver they really wanted, because they traded away a lot to get him.

:: I have zero idea what the Seahawks were doing in this draft.

:: I wonder what the draft order in 2012 would be if the labor dispute ends up causing the cancellation of the entire season…would they just repeat the draft order from this year, or come up with some kind of lottery to determine the order?

:: One of Buffalo’s sportstalk guys was predicting that the NFL would go to a lottery for the top pick in the draft at some point in the near future. I hope this doesn’t happen. I’m not a big fan of lotteries and much prefer teams picking players in the order of how badly the teams sucked.

Welcome to Buffalo, rookies of 2011! The one of you that brings me the head of St. Tom the Overrated will be my favorite player for the duration of his stay on the Buffalo roster. That is all!

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So this weekend saw the Buffalo Bills run their first Draft of the Buddy Nix era. Buddy Nix is the new GM that the Bills hired earlier in the offseason after an extensive search (a day or two) in which the Bills interviewed many (well, one) candidate(s) for the job. Now, in truth, Nix does bring a nice-looking resume to the job, as he’s been in football virtually all of his adult life, he was with the Bills’ organization as a scout during the 90s (when the Bills didn’t suck), went to San Diego for most of this decade (when the Chargers went from usually sucking to being a really good team that probably should have been to at least one of the last few Super Bowls). Last year, Nix was with the team in an advisory role, and the 2009 Draft was actually one of the better ones (and it could become even better, if top pick Aaron Maybin blossoms after a really forgettable rookie season).

So, how did they do this year? Well, parts of it were nice, other parts were head-scratching. Most folks were agreed that the major areas of need this year were quarterback and offensive tackle, and while both areas were addressed, they were addressed via late-round picks after the Bills allowed a number of top prospects at each position to pass by them, in some cases, several times. Two of the top quarterback prospects, Jimmy Clausen and Colt McCoy, actually dropped to the fourth round, and the Bills had two shots at drafting each. Another top OT prospect, Bryan Bulaga, was available for the Bills in the first round, but they picked a running back.

That was a pretty head-scratching move. Poor play by a revolving door of offensive tackles was a major reason the Bills stunk the place out last season on offense, and a very good player was available for them, but they instead chose a player at a position they didn’t need. By all accounts CJ Spiller, the running back they took, is a very good prospect indeed, and may even give the Bills some star power that they’ve lacked for years (last season’s flirtation with Terrell Owens notwithstanding), but it still left them in need of a tackle. They eventually took two tackles, in the fifth and seventh rounds, and maybe those players will grow into good NFL tackles, but for now, they’re just prospects.

As for quarterback, there were rumors flying all last week that the Bills were working on trades that would allow them to get a second pick in the first round and thus go after Tim Tebow. Now, I didn’t want Tebow at all; for one thing, everyone agrees that his throwing motion is going to require a lot of work before he’ll be an NFL-ready quarterback, and the Bills may not have that kind of time. For another, Tebow is…how to put this…well, he’s a particularly in-your-face, obnoxious kind of evangelical, and he did a commercial for James Dobson’s organization for last year’s Super Bowl. Tebow stood up to be counted with an openly homophobic organization, and I didn’t want him on that basis alone. But anyway, the Bills didn’t get any trade done (in fact, they insisted afterwards that there was never any trade in the works at all), and Tebow was picked by the Denver Broncos. The Bills eventually took a quarterback, Levi Brown, in the seventh round. Nobody at all sees him as a potential Quarterback of the Future for the Bills; he might develop into a serviceable NFL backup.

So the quarterback situation in Buffalo remains almost exactly what it was last year: Trent Edwards, a guy who was once promising but who was completely screwed up by the previous coaching staff; Ryan Fitzpatrick, a guy who will never be anything more than a backup; Brian Brohm, a guy of whom no one has any idea what to think; and Brown, a seventh-round rookie. Ouch. So why are the Bills content to move forward with this quarterback staff?

As I see it, there are two possible thought processes going on in the Bills’ brain trust, and those thought processes aren’t mutually exclusive, either. First, they may think that Trent Edwards can be salvaged. He’s only entering his fourth year in the league, and he showed a lot of promise in his first season and a chunk of his second, before the last coaching staff pretty much started undermining his confidence, installing incredibly vanilla offensive schemes, and playing havoc with an offensive line that was already not very good to begin with. Edwards’s football head is totally screwed up right now, but maybe the new coaches (led by head man Chan Gailey) figure they can put Edwards’s pieces back together again and discover the potential that everyone thought was there to begin with.

On the other hand, Buddy Nix and the Bills’ scouting department may have simply not been terribly impressed with this year’s crop of quarterback prospects and elected to focus instead on building elsewhere, under the assumption that if Edwards doesn’t emerge in 2010, the Bills can pick a new quarterback in the 2011 class (which I’ve read should be a better, and deeper, quarterback class anyway). The upside there will be that if the new offensive linemen — the two guards taken last year and the two tackles taken this year — come together to form a good line, and if the Spiller develops nicely into a fine offensive weapon, and if the Bills finally put together a decent receiving corps (they drafted a promising receiver this year in the fourth round), maybe a rookie quarterback stepping in next year won’t be stepping into nearly as iffy a situation as a rookie would this year.

I think that may be the scenario after all: build the best team we can through the draft, and see if Edwards can play with that team. Otherwise, next year, put an even better team around our new rookie and see what happens. We’ll see.

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I see that the NFL has voted to change its overtime rules for playoff games. Why they decided to do this for the playoffs only is beyond me, but it’s a step in the right direction. Basically, if the team that receives the ball first scores a touchdown on its possession, they win. If they only score a field goal, then the other team gets a possession to attempt to tie or win the game. If the score is tied after those two possession (i.e., both teams get field goals) then we revert to sudden death.

This is almost indistinguishable from my old notion for repairing OT, which I first proposed in this space more than seven years ago: The first team to possess the lead after each team has completed one possession wins the game. That’s a simple way to say things. Team one scores a field goal, team two get a TD? Team two wins. Both teams get a field goal? Next score wins. Neither team scores on the first two possessions? Next score wins. And for some craziness: Team One fumbles the ball, and Team Two’s defense returns it for a touchdown? Guess what: Both teams have had possession, and Team Two has the lead. Game over, Team Two wins.

Of course, there’s that pesky annoying third way to score: the safety. As continues to be my belief, points should not be awarded for a safety. I hate points for a safety, because it seems to me that scoring should be based on one thing. After all, there’s only one way to score a run in baseball: a runner must cross home plate. In hockey, to score a goal, the puck must go into the net. In basketball, to score points, the ball must go through the basket. Period. And aside from the safety, in football, to score points you must possess the ball. Awarding points for a safety feels to me like changing baseball so that if the pitching team turns a triple play, they’re awarded a run. (My ideal safety would simply be this: the team recording the safety automatically takes possession at the 45-yard line of the team that gave up the safety. No two points, no free kick — just an automatic end of possession resulting in pretty bad field position.)

According to one article I read, under the new OT rules, a safety at any point in OT wins the game, which I suppose would be accurate. But winning in OT by two points by safety would just seem awfully lame.

So the NFL is moving toward my position. Yay! Now, is it draft day yet?

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