It is official: Doug Whaley is the man. Not the most polished speaker, but whatever. As long as he picks the right players, he can be Helen Keller of the NFL World. Nothing really earth shattering from the press conference besides being confused about who negotiates contracts (Overdorf? Darcy? Ralph's wife?). Honestly, almost all teams have a chief negotiator when it comes to deal who isn't the GM.
Still wish the Bills would take the analytics department more serious than just throwing it out there as a possibility. Start hiring some math whizzes or the dorky looking guy who runs Football Outsiders.
Not sure what differences Whaley will bring to the table that we haven't seen before. I kind of wish his first duty would be to squash the Byrd contract situation pretty quickly. If you want me to really jump on the Bills are going in the right direction bandwagon, get this guy locked up.
However, today is really about change. At least on the surface and in the Bills media guide. Am I skeptical? Of Course, I'm a Bills fan. Cynicism is in the blood. However, the Bills haven't been this swift in their actions since Donahoe in 2001 when it came to player movement and rearranging the hire ups.
The Bills have a new coach, new president, new GM and new QB. All of them are young and no one is close to collecting social security or a failing track record. You wanted change, you got it.
The question now is whether those changes will be the right ones?
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I'm pretty happy that Whaley is bringing in his own guys right away. If memory serves me, it took awhile for Buddy to hire his won boys. For crap sakes, they still had Modrak on the staff for Buddy's first two drafts before the canned his ass.
The Bills hired Jim Monos as director of player personnel. He spent the past eight years as a scout for the New Orleans Saints in the Southeast region. If we go by the Saints drafting players in the Southeast, here's who they drafted:
Devery Henderson (2nd round)
Roman Harper (2nd round)
Robert Meachem (1st round)
Marvin Mitchell (7th round)
Patrick Robinson (1st round)
Jimmy Graham (3rd round)
Al Woods (4th round)
Mark Ingram (1st round)
Harper and Graham are studs. The rest of the group is kind of meh. Of course, I have no clue how their draft authority went and what goes on with how scouts present evidence. But that's the resume of the Southeast players selected. Not exactly a lot of them drafted in that part of the country by comparison to Buddy Nix's time here.
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—If Doug Whaley extends Chris Kelsay, he's fired!
—As someone tweeted to me, the Bills are talking analytics but they can't even get a live feed of the press conference. Get your technology down, Mr. Brandon.
— "Lock step", Russ? Feels like a prison term in a futuristic jail on Planet Vulcan.
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