February 28, 2010
It’s open season for picking the next quarterback of the Buffalo Bills. Draft day is right around the corner, and I’m spending the five to ten minutes going to sleep picturing a new franchise starter lifting the Lombardi trophy over his head while wearing that iconic powder blue and red Bills jersey (I dream in 1998 Bill’s jerseys).
So, I figured that I would make public my general wish list and anti-wish list for quarterbacks. The way I see it, they can be broken into five clearly distinguishable buckets: Quarterbacks I have no interest in, quarterbacks whose jersey I would buy on draft day if we got them, quarterbacks who intrigue me, the forgottens, and the truly horrible quarterbacks.
So, here it goes:
#1 Quarterbacks that I have absolutely no interest in:
Sam Bradford: I have absolutely no use for an immobile, injury-prone quarterback, no matter how good an arm he has. I lived through the Drew Bledsoe era in Buffalo, and it wasn’t by any means a good period in my life.
We have an atrocious offensive line that isn’t going to rebuild itself overnight. Being quarterback for the Buffalo Bills over the next few years is going to mean taking a good share of licks, and having to help yourself out by dodging some of the blows; two things that Bradford has not shown a real propensity for. I don’t doubt that he has the passing ability, but the bottom line is that he is going to get killed back there.
Aside from the poor fit, there’s the fact that drafting Bradford would mean using our first round pick, and would likely mean that Bradford would be the first quarterback taken, which means a significant long-term financial commitment of anywhere from forty to fifty million over five or six years. Trust me, we have enough problems without tying our future to a guy that doesn’t fit our system, and likely won’t be healthy enough to stay on the field.
Tony Pike: Pike has all of the symptoms of a college quarterback who gets ridiculous stats in a pass-happy, run and gun offense, only to get to the pros and find that he can’t just sling the ball around everywhere against athletically overmatched defensive backs. I’m also not crazy about the fact that Pike missed a handful of games and his replacement, Zach Collaros had arguably superior statistics during his time at the helm, while continuing to lead the team to wins. In my opinion, that brings into question Pike’s relative importance to his team’s success, while furthering my belief that much of his numbers have been system driven.
Darryl Clark: Hey Darryl: Beat Iowa.
Ryan Perrilloux: I don’t typically think that it’s smart to invest your future in a guy who didn’t have his act together enough…you know what? I actually think so little of Ryan Perrilloux that I’m not even going to write the rest of that thought.
#2 Quarterbacks whose jerseys I would purchase the day of the draft:
Jimmy Clausen: He’s just a big-gamer. I hate Notre Dame, and watched almost all of their games this season, rooting for them to lose and for Charlie Weiss to get sent packing (sorry…still have a little post-Willingham spite). Every game, if Clausen got the ball in his hands at the end with a chance to win, myself and my girlfriend both would have the exact same reaction: “Damn, Clausen is going to win it”. And he did just that. I challenge anyone to point to a game where Jimmy Clausen blew it at the end.
I don’t know about his measurables, or about his arm-strength, but I know that there are only a handful of guys out there who have that sense of inevitability about them; that aura of “Damn, he’s gonna win this thing” when they get a ball at the end of a game. That’s enough for me. If the Bills take Clausen, order me two jerseys, a rookie card, and a signed poster. I have my quarterback for the next ten years.
(Side note: if we draft Clausen, our quarterbacks will be from the following Universities: Harvard, Stanford, and Notre Dame. NFL all-academic honors?)
Tim Tebow: I completely understand all of the detractors: horrible throwing motion, tendency to run, lack of reps under center, and all the rest. Every single objective bone in my body tells me that drafting Tebow would be a mistake, but that same biological, male-gene that forces me to instinctually love and laugh at everything that Bill Simmons writes or podcasts about draws me to Timmy boy. His intangibles are just so good. I want to believe that it could work, and even if it didn’t, I would at least feel good about rooting for it to happen.
I think Tebow has the work ethic, the character, and the determination to at least make success plausible, even if not probable. He would provide revenue boosts from merchandising, inject leadership into the team, and fit with the blue-collar ethic that defines Buffalo, New York. Additionally, you probably get Tebow in either the late second or early third-round, which means a significantly reduced price-tag in comparison to the “top quarterbacks” like Clausen and Bradford. Even if the football realities don’t make complete sense, the economics just might.
#3 Quarterbacks that somehow intrigue me:
Colt McCoy: I don’t have a lot of faith in the fact that McCoy is a great pro-style fit, but I have a lot of faith in the fact that he flat-out wins games. How much of that was him, and how much of that was the team around him? I’m not sure exactly, but losing him in the national championship hurt bad. He’s a little bit too mobile for my liking, but he has a 100% certified, manly, football starting-quarterback-ready name (Colt).
Dan Lefevour: Lefevour is the mysterious import from the north. The central Michigan Sasquatch who has been playing in the NCAA for about 27 years according to my count (didn’t they put a giant billboard up of him in Detroit in 1996?). He may be the quarterback that has been on the most televised, ESPN2 games without people really being able to recall anything about his game. I know that he’s tall, and a lot of league insiders think he might be the third best quarterback in the draft. The mysteriousness means that there’s potential upside, which I think makes him a better choice than a lot of the big-name guys who might have more limited ceilings.
Jevan Snead: Being named first team all-SEC over Tim Tebow (whether by accident or not) is a definite eye-catcher, and some analysts thought that he had mid-first round potential as recently as last year. He did himself no good by coming out after his Junior year, and I’ll admit that I’m only remotely intrigued, and wouldn’t love him to be the Bill’s pick. But there is this lingering possibility that he could be a pick I dislike upfront, and come to like in a few years.
#4 The Forgottens:
- Zac Robinson
- Tim Hiller
- Max Hall
- Todd Reesing
- Juice Williams
Chris Turner: Just one more horrible, horrible quarterback legacy left at the University of Maryland. I take solace in the fact that nobody would ever draft and/or sign him. Not even in the Canadian league.
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