I think this article is dead on in terms of the problems we’re seeing right now. I also think Brian’s mentioning a talent evaluator like Eric DeCosta hones in on the point even more: this team has had a plan (more than some teams can say), but hasn’t been able to evaluate players correctly, leaving the team without the firepower to execute their plan. It also means that injuries in past years to players like Schobel and Edwards have impacted the team more greatly than they might have otherwise.

I’m usually much more of a lurker on this site, but I had to comment on an article that I felt made a specific and important point about the team. Should things go awry, I really hope that some new sets of evaluating eyes will be brought in.

That said, I still have some hope that Trent and TO will manage to carry us somewhere this season and am excited to see what we have in our promising rookies. Very excited for football season to start… go Bills!

I’m ancient enough to have been around during the 1980s and 1990s when the first thing that came to mind about the Bills — whether they made the playoffs or not in a particular year — was that they were a well-run team. I’m a critical sort due to my professional training but I don’t remember second-guessing the team very much in those days. The moves they made all seemed to pass the test of common sense.

No longer. Ever since the departure of Butler and Smith and the arrival of Donahoe and his gang this team has given the impression that it is clueless — at least by comparison to the days of Polian and Butler and Levy, which is what I naturally measure things by. What the Bills need more than anything else, IMHO, is a strong and football-savvy GM who can then hire an equally strong HC (no HC worth his salt is going to come to Buffalo if there is no clearly-defined GM to report to). Russ Brandon may develop into such a GM eventually, but he badly needs the chance to apprentice for a while under a GM who knows what he is doing. Until that happens I suspect we are going to see a lot more frustrating years in Orchard Park.

Exactly. For a while now, the Bills have been especially horrendous at evaluating talent in the draft. We routinely overvalue talent that doesn’t pan out (e.g., John McCargo) and undervalue college players who become stars. We leave the rest of the league and outside experts scratching their heads. It’s depressing to consider what could have been.

In fact, if the Bills just used Mel Kiper’s Draft Board rather than their own list, we’d be better off!

(Also, the fact that some of our picks have turned into productive players doesn’t indicate that the Bills know how to conduct the draft well. If you have an early pick, chances are the player you pick will contribute. But the relevant comparison isn’t [the Bills with the drafted player] v. [the Bills without the drafted player]; rather, the comparison should be [the Bills with the player] vs. [the Bills with the player who should’ve been drafted].)