Bills vs. Ravens: Haloti Ngata, Michael Oher Drive Bills Fans Crazy

Holy spark Batman!

OT has been a huge need for a while. DT wasn’t that big of a need back then.

Prepare for comment Armageddon in 3….2…..1…..

Ozzie Newsome is the best GM ever.

And thats sad for Bills fans.

You know you just opened a Fuccilo sized HUUUUUUUUGE can of worms…

A solid/young LT would be huge right now going forward

DT is not our problem, LB is

leads Buffalo’s 28th-ranked defense

Kind of an oxymoron… lol.

Ngata and is not even close. He is a dominant player in a position of need. Oher fell in the draft because there were concerns among scouts about his committment to football.

Of course, you could also mention McKelvin over Flacco, Eric Moulds over Ray Lewis, or… (shudder) Mike Williams over Ed Reed.

Honestly, I don’t think the post is that big of a deal. Everyone seems to understand these were two colossal, egregious errors. Once a something reaches a certain size, it’s mass is impossible to comprehend.

And that’s where we are. The questions surrounding tragic failings of this franchise’s personnel department have reached the point where we might as well be asking how long it would take to drive to Alpha Centauri?

Tragic mistakes of gigantic proportions. How do the scouts responsible still have jobs? Who put a first round grade on Maybin? blah blah blah.

the results of this poll will skew toward Maybin. Whitner isn’t the apparent bust Maybin is, and with Orakpo/Matthews doing so well the miss is magnified.

add to that the fact LT is the second most important position on the team and this should be a landslide for Oher.

have drafter Oher over Maybin and Ngata over Whitner.

I say hindsight because going into 2009 I wanted either Raji, Maybin, Oher, or Mack (with Maybin and Oher on equal footing).

A draft with Oher, Wood, Byrd, and Levitre in the first 2 rounds would have been stellar. Just doesn’t look as good without the great LT.

You are tEhz SUXOR. Oher is tEhz NONSUXORZ.

Right? That’s what we’re all really getting at here.

One, at the time, DT was a HUGE need. It was probably the biggest need that offseason. The Bills chose to fill it with Larry Tripplett and panicked to trade up for John McCargo. They also spent a 5th on Kyle Williams that year. Obviously, DT was a huge need and the BIlls did everything wrong in trying to fix that problem. Everybody thought the Bills would be picking Ngata, Broderick Bunkley or a QB that year. They reached for an undersized safety that wasn’t even a playmaker in college.

Two, Ngata is a Pro Bowler and a huge part of that Ravens’ D. Oher is still a question mark, but he looks like he’ll be a good LT for a long time. As of now, Ngata is simply the better player. The announcers in the Pats/Ravens game said he was the best DT in the league during the game, and I don’t disagree.

Third, as ridiculous as it seems, Aaron Maybin might still actually amount to something. I doubt it, but that hope is still there. Donte Whitner is what he is. An average player that is probably playing his final season for the Bills.

Hey, at least the Ravens didn’t have a very good draft besides Ngata that year, outside of Dawan Landry in round 5!!

“You can crap in one hand and wish in the other, and see which one fills up first…” – Burgess Merideth

Maybin is just as likely to get cut before the end of the year as Whitner is to be playing his last game as a Bill. They extended Kelsay….why not Whitner?

I fault the Bills simply for taking Whitner at #8 in ‘06 and Maybin at #11 in ’09. Specific players that were drafted after these selections don’t get my blood boiling. There were scores of better players taken after both Whitner and Maybin in their respective drafts; there’s nothing unique about Ngata and Oher. I don’t care where the Kipers and McShays and the fanboys slot draft prospects. Get a player worthy of their draft status and I’m happy, regardless of who gets drafted around us. In the case of Whitner and Maybin, Buffalo whiffed on the pick. That’s what inept personnel evaluators do.

Ngata bc we still don’t have a QB to protect anyway

but neither is the “move up to take JP Losman” which involved mortgaging 3 picks, including the #1 pick the next year-which we could have taken Aaron Rodgers with.

It’s strange-Ngata is clearly the better player right now, but the Maybin miss is just obscene. I am not a fan of Donte, not really, but he does at least play. I’m sure that Maybin is still getting paid in the millions per/play given he seems to have only been on the field 6 times total.

So you missed a more sure thing by taking Whitner, but Maybin is by far the worse pick of the two (compared to each other).

Either way, I"ll be looking forward to reviewing the ’06 and ’09 drafts in full.

I can justify Maybin over Oher, as a stud pass rusher was just as big a need as a left tackle, quite possibly even bigger at the time. These two positions are only slightly behind quarterback as the most difficult and important positions to fill. With Demetrious Bell in the fold already, we had an intruiging tackle prospect already. In retrospect Maybin was not a “stud pass rusher”, but the thought process behing the decision was extremely sound.
Whitner over Ngata on the other hand is very hard to justify for me. Ngata played a far more important position on the field, and was a far better overall prospect. If Whitner had the raw tools to potentially be elite in the secondary I’d understand the pick, but he really didn’t have that speed or playmaking abilities to justify the pick. I also recall throwing the remote and screaming “what the f” when they announced that pick.
In retrospect, I’d be fine with both scenarios if they have set us down the road to get a truly elite quarterback. In the long run, I really think I’d be happier taking a gamble on Luck or Locker becoming truly elite rather than having both Ngata and Oher and a rotation of mid-level quarterbacks.

Post this now on Monday, and get all of the whining, b*tching, complaining about past FAILURES in our draft picks.
Awesome move.

by virtue of the arguments made in this thread. It is very true that Maybin was a pick that was made at a need position, unlike Donte Whitner’s selection. I was particularly frustrated by the Whitner pick because it was made right after Michael Huff – Oakland. I always feel like taking a player at a position immediately after someone in that position was taken leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Makes me feel like the GM should have just traded up one position.

beat me to it.

That’s just not a fair question – it’s the same as asking “Would you like a kick in the left nut or the right nut” ? Both hurt equally !

I was happy about it later. I was happy about the Maybin pick first, it shocked me later.

As an early fan of this young man (before the book became a bestseller) and one of the shouldda voices, I feel obligated to comment…in verse:

I was sad when he was passed over for a maybin
      and was depressed when he became a Raven
I cried when I heard his interview after being selected
      and shed more tears when a starting right tackle he was elected
And when he moved to the left side
      my displeasure with the Bills I could not hide
I’m out of words