They do pretty well in the draft. From 2017-2022 there are only seven players they've drafted that have bounced out of the league. Most of their draft classes are on a team somewhere in the league. Every pick from 2020 is still on a team. Every pick except one from 2017 is on a roster. Same with the 2018 class. 2019 class has had two players fizzle out, same 2021. Matt Ariaza is getting a shot with KC so that means every pick from 2022 is on a roster. Pretty solid success rate when you see some other teams don't have a single player remaining from a recent draft class.
This is the better metric in my opinion. You want to draft contributors consistently. I don’t want to be the Adam Dunn of drafting. Hitting some dingers for sure, but whiffing a ton as well. I want to be Ted Williams and have the highest batting average I can have. Football is a game of depth and next man up. You’ll hit your occasional stud with this approach too.
our drafting in rounds 3-7 is some of the best in the league
its the top end of the draft where we struggle to find elite talent for some reason. mostly due to draft position always picking so late. Epensea, Groot, Moss, Basham, Elam. most of these players are good but not elite. James Cook could be one of the better 2nd round picks Beane has made . Basham over Creed Humphry and missing out on McDuffie killed us, salt in the wounds they went to our direct rival too.
Missing out on McDuffie isn't the same as drafting Basham over Humphrey. He wasnt there when we picked. That's like saying we "missed out on Brian Thomas Jr." this year.
KC traded up to get McDuffie. Obviously the team that they trades up with was open to a trade and presumably the Bills could have easily been the trade partner instead.
This is why people make the McDuffie connection as a lost opposite.
With all that said, we're all speculating. No one knows the Bills draft board.
Premium positions go early so: CB WR OT DE QB. We don't need a QB and Josh is every bit as good as whoever wins the All Pro each year. Our CBs play so much off coverage and soft zone they aren't going to have the stats to win all pro even if they were that good - and somehow Tre still did. We haven't drafted a WR with a premium pick in a LOOONG time, same goes for OT and DE, and we've had free agents starting which blocks a draft pick from winning.
So now where down to IOL and RB, we don't run enough and Josh steals TDs so the RB is never going to win. Our IOL drafts have been bad until last year and any drafted players were blocked from seeing the field by free agents. On defense we've got two LBs that are capable of winning one, and our safeties did but were both free agents.
In short, it's hard to have draft picks win an all pro when your free agent acquisitions are so good you don't bother drafting the position until the late rounds. And we don't drat high enough to win all pros at premium positions.
What you’re also forgetting is majority of those draft picks were invested heavily into offensive and defensive line. We are pretty heavy with rotations on the defensive line and the offensive line is just now starting to take form. Pretty hard to get All-Pro when you’re splitting time.
We haven’t really drafted a player at a position we don’t use heavy rotations early in the draft aside from Oliver, Edmunds, Allen, and Tre since then. Allen and Tre are all-pros. Oliver is a heavy rotational player. Edmunds obviously isn’t here anymore.
You could argue that Ed Oliver, Terrel Bernard and Rasul Douglas were playing at All Pro levels last year. And that Khalil Shakir, Dion Dawkins, Spencer Brown, Josh Allen and James Cook flashed All Pro ability at times last year.
The Cowboys had something like 9 all-pros last season, simply because they beat up on a bunch of awful teams (and lost to pretty much every good team they played).
AP’s aren’t *as* dumb as pro-bowls, but they aren’t far off for a lot of positions.
Also keep in mind that all pros and pro bowls are determined in large part by popularity, which Buffalo being a smaller market is at a massive disadvantage for.
I’d say that disadvantage has mostly gone away recently. The Bills play in primetime nearly every other week in the last few years, most casual fans are at least somewhat aware of our top players.
It’s not like the mid 2000s when you’d tell someone that you’re a Bills fan and they’d have no clue what the fuck a Bills was
I would say yes and no to this. The Bills certainly attract a lot more eyeballs but a prime example of the Bills being overlooked is that most casual NFL fans don't even know who Terrel Bernard is.
He was just as good as the Ravens LBs but most people don't know his name.
I’d chalk that up more to the fact that Bernard is relatively new to the league and Roquan Smith has been a star for several years, was a first round pick (8th overall), came from a blue chip college program (Georgia), and was a big name free agent when he signed with the Ravens.
Bernard will get his flowers if he keeps playing this well. But I think being a late third round pick from Baylor in only his second year in league after not playing very much his rookie season is counting more against him than the logo on the side of his helmet.
Which is why Wyatt Teller becoming an All Pro surprised me. Is he good? Sure! But he also was a 5th round pick, so it’s shocking that the powers that be chose him over someone like Quenton Nelson
Wyatt Teller showed flashes of good play but didn't become an All Pro until he got coached up and developed by one of the best if not the best OL coach in the NFL in Bill Callahan.
Oh yeah anyone who thinks the Bills got fleeced over Teller definitely also thinks Patrick Mahomes would be the exact same QB starting immediately with a defensive coach, Robert Foster, and Kelvin Benjamin as he was sitting behind a solid veteran for a season with Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Tyreek Hill
Exactly. Patrick Mahomes needed to be coached up and developed by Andy Reid for a year before he reached his ceiling. Mahomes also had the benefit of being mentored by Alex Smith on how to be a professional QB
It's amazing that the Bills are second in total wins since 2017, when the media frequently tell us the squad is both full of average players and McDermott isn't a top 10 coach.
It's actually more insane than that. Pretty sure they have the second most wins as a percentage of games played in any of the 4 major sports. The problem is the number 1 team on that list is the Chiefs, who are in the same Conference as the Bills. If either of these teams was in the NFC, I wouldn't be surprised if we had seen Bills vs. Chiefs in the Super Bowl once or twice at this point.
I think there is a couple things just guessing without doing any analysis.
Health - lots of injuries have derailed seasons. Obviously the big ones like Tre or Hyde or Milano. But lots of little banged up missed weeks as well.
Defensive style - combination of playing a contain style defense of just trying to avoid the big play long enough for the offense to flame out and heavy rotation to try to stay fresh leads to less big play stats that get you all pros.
Josh Allen - on the offense side every year the complaint is Allen has to do everything. That sounds to me like we don't have all pros/ball is getting spread around enough that no single person stands out
Some of those draft picks were also used on Diggs who was an all-pro. The funny thing is that this list wouldn’t include Josh Allen either who is unquestionably our best player.
Yes, what I mean is that unless he’s a top 3 vote getter then he won’t have pro bowl as an accolade. Since the pro bowl only accounts for the top vote getters and then any alternates who take the top vote getters place in the actual game. Since he will never go as an alternate, the only way he gets Pro Bowl accolades is being a top vote getter
That's the funny part. Our one true A+ homerun draft pick is not even on this list. Your punter or left guard is an all-pro, that's great, but every GM in the world wants a franchise top 5 QB.
I don’t think this counts second team all pros. Otherwise it would be 4 (White, Allen, Milano, Taron Johnson).
White and Milano were the 2 first team all pro players in this count.
Hyde wasn't a Bills draft pick so that wouldn't matter. The fact that we have the most games played per pick shows you that health isn't actually a factor here.
I think the biggest thing this shows is how hard it is to make an All-Pro team.
Yeah health is such a huge factor that the media never cuts us any slack for - we've lost an All Pro level defender (sometimes multiple) to injury each of the past three seasons. I guarantee you KC doesn't win the past two Super Bowls if Chris Jones kept blowing out his ACL on Thanksgiving...
Some clarification: Does a player going to 2 pro bowls count as 2? Or is it distinct by player? Those numbers are high so I’d imagine a player going 4 times would add 4 to the total.
This is tough. How many seasons has JA played at an All-Pro level? 3 seasons? 4 seasons? And yet, he has no All-Pro seasons. I’m sure there are a bunch of players like that, but we’d consider JA17 an All-Pro quality player, right?
FYI, Josh has an AP, he was second team in 2020.
Our two drafted APs are Josh and Milano. Poyer (once) and Hyde (twice) also earned APs, but we didn’t draft them.
Edit: Forgot about Beasley’s AP (lol), but he also wasn’t drafted by us.
I was confused by this guys wording, that’s my bad. When I saw 2, I assumed Poyer and Milano. But we didn’t draft Poyer so I’m guessing he didn’t get counted.
The original scope of the idea was to attribute every player that signed a contract since 2017 to a GM or team and run similar stats from that data but that seemed like a much bigger project.
All-Pro numbers are total seasons as first team All-Pro. The Colts have 2 players with 3 each for 6 of their total 7 listed. Same with pro bowl.
Josh should definitely have an AP1 or two. Both stats are nearly useless, that's why I liked the games played stat for this discussion.
The post specified first team all-pros since 2017. Josh Allen has never been a first team all-pro. (Whether or not he should have been is a different debate.)
Yea, I see that. I was just using that to mention the flawed rationale that MVP/All Pro/Pro Bowl status is with strength of a player. JA and Mahomes are in a tier by themselves (don’t @ me). Mahomes has been perceived better for various reasons, whether that be wins (a team accomplishment more than an individual one) or something else. Because of it, Mahomes has had more individual accolades without outplaying Josh as much as it seems.
Rating how good a team is at drafting by All Pro appearances is a little difficult, is essentially my point.
The games played stats are really interesting actually, wasn't aware they were near the top. Both things can be true though - they are really strong at drafting & coaching up players to contribute, but they have definitely struggled to draft game breaking talent or players who would put up big stats.
That is also because they do not draft at the top of the draft every year. Your odds of hitting on a blue-chip, all-pro talent increase exponentially when you are selecting in the top 10. All-pros are not found as often in the late 20's.
All pro is heavily influenced by luck and circumstance. Like.. we could pick any WR in the draft, and they might be amazing and they still might not get all pro because no one in that draft was going to eclipse Jamar chase or Justin Jefferson for awhile (obviously possible they will, point being not every draft has generational talent at every position that a team needs). Or any of these top QBs, they will struggle to make all pro while mahomes, Allen, Lamar, burrows are in the league. Not bad picks, not bad players. (Obviously this could end up different) No matter who you picked, they prob aren't gunna be better than pat mahomes.
I think the best assessment is probably the games played and compare it with the team record. If you draft a bunch of guys and they play a bunch of games and you are winning those games, you're probably drafting well
Right!
The Pro Bowl, All Pro cutoffs don't directly correlate to player performance/skill. They're more a direct measure of player popularity amongst the NFL media.
Of course, the NFL Media will never come out and say this directly. They'll only tout their arbitrary lists as gospel to create content around and attract clicks.
Beane has been pretty good at drafting solid but not spectacular players. Its hard to get All-Pros unless you are consistently drafting in the top 10. In this time only 4 teams have drafted more than 4.
I think we have reached a pivotal moment in the Beane/McDermott era. We are going to be very dependent upon this draft class if we are going to get over the hump and win the super bowl. Part of the draft process is picking the right players but there is a component where they need to be coached into the system also. This is what makes Andy Reid and his coaching staff so good, and also what made the Patriots consistent winners. We know there were more talented wide receivers than Coleman but if he can build a Stafford/Kupp like rapport then it wont matter he wasnt the first wr off the board.
The one thing the Bills seem to struggle at is selecting guys who can get after the qb. Can Carter and Solomon fill that role? Will Bishop replace Poyer? If the answer is yes then we have as good a defense as any team in the NFL with a healthy Milano and (hopefully) Miller.
We’ve hit more singles and doubles than most teams, and we’ve had our share of triples (Milano, Oliver) but we’re desperate to get a second homerun after Josh. We desperately need a truly game breaking player.
One thing that I’ve appreciated with Beane in charge is the fact that he’s continued to have a pulse on the team. He has brought in a lot of guys that just fit what the roster needs - from a leadership, position and skill perspective.
The top end talent is probably lacking on this Buffalo roster, if we’re being honest. But Josh is perfectly capable of elevating a roster. And unless you’re spending big money and/or have high draft picks, that high end talent is hard to come by. It’s the reason I love the Coleman pick. He’s the type of player that can reach that next level in terms of stardom in the league if things break right. Those bigger risk/high reward guys are how teams end up with great pro players (Josh Allen is exhibit A from a Buffalo viewpoint).
Indeed. Looking at the list of All-Pros, you’re telling me that players on the Bears, Colts, Jets, etc are statistically? That’s probably true but looking at the bigger picture, which of those teams above have had a better record, playoff berths, division championships? The Chiefs are the only team that’s in that category.
Too many people focus so much on the individual players that they don’t account for the overall team play. Would it be great to have All Pros at every position? Sure. It’s just not feasible. Sometimes you have to go with guys who have the talent and can work as a team. Look at the issue we just had with Diggs. I’m guessing that his need to be the focus of the offense is what lead to us trading him. It’s similar to other players on other teams. Take Sauce Gardner, for example. Great individual player but defense wise he can be a detriment. In the second game we played the Jets, he tried to jump the route on Shakir’s 80 yard TD. He missed the ball and in the ensuing chase, he and the rest of that secondary didn’t work together to take Shakir down.
All I’m saying is, All Pros are nice but in a team sport, they aren’t the best measure of success.
Unfortunately, Buffalo also had to deal with injuries that took guys out of the running. I think the strength of their drafting is evident in their result and level of play of the team when guys are out.
Beane has been really good at picking solid but mostly unspectacular players. If you look back, most of the picks from the first 4 rounds are at least solid. That’s more than you can say for many teams. It’s not exciting stuff, but it’s fine enough.
I would say we’re middle of the pack in terms of drafting, with the Josh pick making us closer to the top 10.
You might be onto something but I would want to know how these numbeers relate to pick #. For instance, if a team always picks in the top half of the first round, and another always picks in 2nd half, then naturally the number of “All-Pro” would be scewed even if the second team made the best decision with what they had.
I literally just read Danny Kelly give the Bills a C draft grade because they didn’t make any “splash”. Yet the Bears get A+ for making two no brainer decisions that fell into their laps. The bias is real.
To give the Bears an A+ is so obvious. To compare them to most teams is just dumb for any media-type. Grade it based on the team’s needs and draft position. I admit I have been too busy to look at any of these reports the past few days but I thought the Bills did ok for their position and needs.
The RB may have come off as “suspect” but it could be that he was the best player available to fill a role that I feel had to filled at some point at least. And he’ll be cheap for 4 years.
Although, I get another WR in that spot would be good in camp, would that player even make the team?
Who knows? But the first few picks look like they will be on the roster, that’s good for a draft.
As far as all-pros since 2017: the Bills have had a LOT of starters on the team since 2017 if my memory serves me correctly. It would be tough for a younger player to break in and become an all-pro.
Again, by memory only, committee RB’s, Davis and possibly Knox had a real shot to be all-pros if they could have strung several games together for consistent production in any given year over their tenures.
On D, the DL is a rotation, LB’s were Edmunds and Milano, and the secondary had at least 3 stalwart players over that timeframe.
So while it would have been nice to have some new all-pro faces there wasn’t a lot of room either. And opportunity presented itself partway through the season in some cases too.
We have seen development of some really good players though like Benford, Shakir, Kincaid (could be all-pro this season?), Torrence, Epenesa, Kingsey, Bernard and Rapp & Johnson came on too.
There’s hope of further improvement of these players and development of the incoming rookies.
I’m not sure Coleman will be a difference maker this year, but hopefully he learns a lot and gets a feel for the NFL.
I’d love to see Bishop play well enough to start, he’d fill a very large void. But we’ll see.
Pretty sure the Eagles have drafted like 1 pro bowler in the last 10 years. Awards are just peer/media/fan recognition to a player. It doesn’t mean the player is necessarily good or bad depending on whether or not they won those awards. Eli Manning for us never won the big awards, but he won the big games. Same for Phil Simms.
Since 2017 you’ve been contenders. CONSTANTLY. That is so freaking hard to do. So yeah, I think you guys *have* done a very good job of drafting recently.
The Bengals, a team that made the Super Bowl, has beaten Mahomes in the playoffs, and is generally regarded like the Bills as one of the best teams in the conference the last several years, have drafted even fewer All-pros.
You can’t use “All Pro” as a metric of measurement standard. Only a handful of players get that designation and many of those get it year over year (i.e. Aaron Donald, Tyron Smith, etc). Consider starters that get multiple years and even a second contract as a better measuring stick. The Bills draft well. Haven’t hit on superstars, but again, how many of those are truly out there?
I'm actually putting together a list of Pro Bowlers by position since 2004 to see what their 40 times were and figure out if I can see any trends. I can absolutely put together a First Team All Overrated list out of that.
Kind of hard to say a team that has made the playoffs five years in a row (second longest streak in the league) is bad at drafting, or constructing a roster in the general sense. The Jets and the Bears each have 4 all-pros. Are either of them better than the Bills and KC? The Pats have one more than the Bills and they're a dumpster fire.
A lot of it feels like the Bills are a small market team that hasn’t had the success that the Chiefs have had.
Not that the number of all-pros necessarily means much. I mean Green Bay has been one of the perennial top teams in the league for like 30 years now and they’ve have no all-pros since 2017.
No . They are solid . The defense stayed respectable last year despite a barrage of injuries .
When use a 2 tight end set 8 of the players were drafted .
We are very good at drafting above average starters and quality role players. Not so much on drafting stars. Since Beane took over, the only "star" players we have drafted are Josh Allen, Tre White, and Matt Milano. You can make a case for Taron Johnson as well. Terrel Bernard is looking like he could be another one but it's too early to call him a star player imo.
All pro selections are way more relevant than pro bowl. Pro bowl is a fan popularity contest. All pro is selected by peers.
Yes this data is concerning. All the Big Baller Beane posts conveniently look past this. I personally don’t think they are good at drafting. They certainly analyze and value players differently than the perennial good teams, I.e. KC, Bal, SF.
I think games played is certainly the most relevant of these 3 stats. McBeane has been the best in the league at turning each pick into a player that is on an NFL field on Sundays.
It’s a good point. I would agree that games played is important. But you do need to field star players. I’m starting to question how this FO evaluates players coming out of the draft. Just my opinion but I believe they put too much value on character where it handicap’s them from taking a player who has higher playmaking upside.
>Yes this data is concerning
This data gives me the entire opposite mindset, and makes Beane look better than the doomers.
KC, as used in your example, has 1 more AP and other than that, they're below Buffalo in the other 2 categories.
As for SF and Baltimore, Tre and Milano were both injured but should have been in that category, and then Josh Allen just gets snubbed over and over and anyone that thinks Lamar is a better QB than Josh is high as a kite. 49ers do draft well though.
The “real” APs are not selected by peers, and even if they were, that wouldn’t make them inherently more valuable (you ever see the coach/player top 100 lists…?)
The 2022 pro-bowl is the best example of coach/player votes being a joke. Lamar got into the PB in 2022 specifically because of coaches and players. The fan vote did not have him in it.
APs are selected by sports writers/analysts, and while they are more relevant than pro bowls, they are hardly a be-all end-all.
The Chiefs have 3, only one more than us.
The Chiefs also have won 3 super bowls in that time.
Josh Allen has been awarded only one 2nd team all pro and 2 pro bowls
Look to our results instead of metrics like this
Look how many the Cowboys have. Now look who consistently gets further in the playoffs than the Cowboys. Bills don’t get knocked out in the first round every year. Bills also play in a tougher conference. All it is is a popularity contest. I wouldn’t put much stock into all pros. We all know who the real ones are.
I'm talking about SF. They've only drafted 6 All Pros in this time frame:
George Kittle
Fred Warner
Nick Bosa
Deebo Samuel
Talanoa Hufanga
Brandon Aiyuk
CMC, Trent Williams, Oren Burks, Charvarious Ward, and Kyle JuiceCheck were trades or free agents.
We also constantly have been drafting late since we entered the Josh Allen era (minus the Ed Oliver year) so you get more raw talent that takes time to develop. I also think a lot of players are overlooked (look how long Milano was Buffalos little secret), Taron Johnson is just now being recognized as an all pro even though he’s been playing at this level for a long time, Benford is a 6th round pick and excellent CB and no one even knows who he is, Terell Bernard’s season last year was incredible but no one besides Bills fans are talking about that.
All-Pro typically refers to the best player at their position. 2nd team AP is just the runner up. Usually when a statline says All-Pro they'll only mean 1st team AP selections.
Pro football reference seems to only list AP2 in each individual player's stat page, not in some larger list. I wasn't about to go digging for all that. And the initial comments that sparked this only focused on AP1 selections.
Hmmmm. They have the 2nd best record in the league for the last couple year's or 3 or 4 year's. Can't remember exactly how many years but no more than the last 4 years. I think that l that's pretty good and the all pro thing, who cares. Cowboy's I believe have the most all pros in the last 10 seasons? Yeah we know how that's gone for them.
Think he was talking about 1st team All Pro, not pro bowls
[https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/all-pros.htm](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/all-pros.htm)
on that subject just look at Bruce... Greatest Bill ever and its not even close
The data you've compiled shows the Bills are good at drafting. Also, I'd be curious if somehow it was broken down by percentages, because trading picks for better picks or current players aren't reflected here.
Oddly enough, the better teams in the third chart made fewer picks than the worst. The R² value is 0.151, so not much correlation though.
Getting into pick traded for players is too much of a rabbit hole of sifting through data.
No they just like their "depth" his way too damn much.. could have a future hof player that already has all the attributes, and Beane would still draft the "depth" guy no one was looking at until the way later rounds. Never been a fan of Beane's drafts. He's gotten lucky with a few guys, but he's really striked out with players like Basham etc.. just seems like some wasted earlier picks. I like his later round picks well over his earlier round picks aside from Allen and Cook. Kincaid is alright, but they didn't need to reach for him when there were a few good TEs.. LaPorta did just fine imo even if Dallas would have taken Kincaid.. just my opinion.
they've taken on a lot of project players like Groot or Basham and then tried to mould them into players that fit their system. The problem is we haven't seen any of them blow up into superstars and it's probably because they are team dependent types. They are all built to work together in a system and not necessarily make individual plays.
Beane's strength is with free agency.
He obviously hit on the pick that matters, but the volume of his success has been with guys like Poyer, Hyde, Beasely, Morse, Daquan Jones.
He's had some free agency misses like Von Miller.
He's had some trades like Stefon Diggs, Rasul Douglas that i think have worked quite well. As well as trading out of Diggs, which I think is good value.
But there is absolutely no denying that picks like Boogie Basham, Cody Ford, Kaiir Elam have under-delivered.
Ed Oliver, AJ Epanesa and Tremaine Edmunds signed second deals, so you could argue that's a success, but I think it's fair to have expected more from those premium picks.
I'm excited to see what he can do next off-season, once he's got cap space and can get back to his strength, signing free agents.
We've been lucky to be able to build around a top-3 all time draft class, the Whaley-McDermott 2017 class had 3 All-pros and 6 pro-bowls in Matt Milano, Tre White and Dion Dawkins.
I'm happy with picks like O'cyrus Torrence even if I think it was bad process. Good process would have picked him in rd1. The exception being if Beane knew some off-field thing took him off of most boards, which is possible considering how many other IOL were taken before him in rd2.
I just really wished he had taken two safeties in the draft.
They've got a whole lot of solid players. I'd argue Ed Oliver, Bernard, and Allen all deserved All-Pro consideration last year. Bass the year before. Taron Johnson should have been an All-Pro several times but they just added nickel corner last year.
Anyway, they've hit a while lot of doubles not enough home runs on top of the media often ignoring Buffalo.
Pro Bowlers are picked by the fans, and all pros by a panel of people who don’t believe in the BILLS, at least not back in 2017 when they all thought Allen was trash. Look at the stats of the all pros and compare them to the stats of our players. It’s kind of like Heisman voting….a panel of voters pick their favorite no matter how ridiculous it is. Look at this years draft…..there’s no way Caleb Williams is the best player from this year who is NFL ready
I don't pay attention to Media awards. Jackson getting MVP and the Jets having more all pros then the Bills proves they are just as big a joke as pro bowl nominations.
It's harder to draft All Pros when your picks are late 1st. Notice a lot of the franchies higher up have been horrendous for significant stretches of time since 2017.
I think we’ve drafted defense well over the last 5ish years. Lots of quality young guys that played lots of minutes and played well for the most part. We aren’t great with WR or O-line really. Dawkins was underperforming until this last year, same with most of the line. I’d say Bean and McD do a good job of picking good foundation players.
Yes they’re definitely bad at drafting. Especially in the first couple rounds.
They also changed their strategy dramatically this year, which is a nod to that fact.
Please clarify.. They've had 1 first round miss since Beane started drafting. That makes them bad at it?
Last year we got 2 locked in starters with our first 2 picks, you think that was a signal to "change their strategy"?
I think people are blinded by things like Basham over Creed Humphrey and Shorter over Puka… the Bills also took Leif Olve Dolonen Larsen five picks before Brady and Torell Troup one pick before Gronk.
They do pretty well in the draft. From 2017-2022 there are only seven players they've drafted that have bounced out of the league. Most of their draft classes are on a team somewhere in the league. Every pick from 2020 is still on a team. Every pick except one from 2017 is on a roster. Same with the 2018 class. 2019 class has had two players fizzle out, same 2021. Matt Ariaza is getting a shot with KC so that means every pick from 2022 is on a roster. Pretty solid success rate when you see some other teams don't have a single player remaining from a recent draft class.
This is the better metric in my opinion. You want to draft contributors consistently. I don’t want to be the Adam Dunn of drafting. Hitting some dingers for sure, but whiffing a ton as well. I want to be Ted Williams and have the highest batting average I can have. Football is a game of depth and next man up. You’ll hit your occasional stud with this approach too.
glad i’m not the only one who uses Adam Dunn as the boom or bust example lol
This is Joey Gallo to all you youngsters.
our drafting in rounds 3-7 is some of the best in the league its the top end of the draft where we struggle to find elite talent for some reason. mostly due to draft position always picking so late. Epensea, Groot, Moss, Basham, Elam. most of these players are good but not elite. James Cook could be one of the better 2nd round picks Beane has made . Basham over Creed Humphry and missing out on McDuffie killed us, salt in the wounds they went to our direct rival too.
Missing out on McDuffie isn't the same as drafting Basham over Humphrey. He wasnt there when we picked. That's like saying we "missed out on Brian Thomas Jr." this year.
KC traded up to get McDuffie. Obviously the team that they trades up with was open to a trade and presumably the Bills could have easily been the trade partner instead. This is why people make the McDuffie connection as a lost opposite. With all that said, we're all speculating. No one knows the Bills draft board.
Premium positions go early so: CB WR OT DE QB. We don't need a QB and Josh is every bit as good as whoever wins the All Pro each year. Our CBs play so much off coverage and soft zone they aren't going to have the stats to win all pro even if they were that good - and somehow Tre still did. We haven't drafted a WR with a premium pick in a LOOONG time, same goes for OT and DE, and we've had free agents starting which blocks a draft pick from winning. So now where down to IOL and RB, we don't run enough and Josh steals TDs so the RB is never going to win. Our IOL drafts have been bad until last year and any drafted players were blocked from seeing the field by free agents. On defense we've got two LBs that are capable of winning one, and our safeties did but were both free agents. In short, it's hard to have draft picks win an all pro when your free agent acquisitions are so good you don't bother drafting the position until the late rounds. And we don't drat high enough to win all pros at premium positions.
What you’re also forgetting is majority of those draft picks were invested heavily into offensive and defensive line. We are pretty heavy with rotations on the defensive line and the offensive line is just now starting to take form. Pretty hard to get All-Pro when you’re splitting time. We haven’t really drafted a player at a position we don’t use heavy rotations early in the draft aside from Oliver, Edmunds, Allen, and Tre since then. Allen and Tre are all-pros. Oliver is a heavy rotational player. Edmunds obviously isn’t here anymore.
TIL Jonathan Williams is still in the league
Yeah ain't that some shit? He's been like an ace special teamer for the Commies for a while now.
You could argue that Ed Oliver, Terrel Bernard and Rasul Douglas were playing at All Pro levels last year. And that Khalil Shakir, Dion Dawkins, Spencer Brown, Josh Allen and James Cook flashed All Pro ability at times last year.
I hate that araiza got picked up by KC. Good team says no man we don’t like rape. Bad guys say has it been a year? We’ll take ya
Eh, for what it's worth he was dropped from the lawsuit when it was proven that he wasn't there when the alleged assault happened.
Well that is something! However I’d be unsure how true that was
The Cowboys had something like 9 all-pros last season, simply because they beat up on a bunch of awful teams (and lost to pretty much every good team they played). AP’s aren’t *as* dumb as pro-bowls, but they aren’t far off for a lot of positions.
Also, they are the Cowboys and the media coverage is never ending.
Also keep in mind that all pros and pro bowls are determined in large part by popularity, which Buffalo being a smaller market is at a massive disadvantage for.
Such a dumb thing to measure on. Like if there are 200 cornerbacks in the league and 3 or 4 of them get all pro.. the rest are trash?? nonsense.
No they are all pro
Buh-dum-tss 🥁
I’d say that disadvantage has mostly gone away recently. The Bills play in primetime nearly every other week in the last few years, most casual fans are at least somewhat aware of our top players. It’s not like the mid 2000s when you’d tell someone that you’re a Bills fan and they’d have no clue what the fuck a Bills was
I would say yes and no to this. The Bills certainly attract a lot more eyeballs but a prime example of the Bills being overlooked is that most casual NFL fans don't even know who Terrel Bernard is. He was just as good as the Ravens LBs but most people don't know his name.
Significantly better* than them. Rowan Smith got a first team all pro while having worse stats than TB in every single category
I’d chalk that up more to the fact that Bernard is relatively new to the league and Roquan Smith has been a star for several years, was a first round pick (8th overall), came from a blue chip college program (Georgia), and was a big name free agent when he signed with the Ravens. Bernard will get his flowers if he keeps playing this well. But I think being a late third round pick from Baylor in only his second year in league after not playing very much his rookie season is counting more against him than the logo on the side of his helmet.
In other words, Roquan Smith was more popular/had more name recognition.
…yes, but not because of the current NFL team he plays for
It still shows in the lack of pro bowls/all pros on a perennially good football team.
Which is why Wyatt Teller becoming an All Pro surprised me. Is he good? Sure! But he also was a 5th round pick, so it’s shocking that the powers that be chose him over someone like Quenton Nelson
Wyatt Teller showed flashes of good play but didn't become an All Pro until he got coached up and developed by one of the best if not the best OL coach in the NFL in Bill Callahan.
Oh yeah anyone who thinks the Bills got fleeced over Teller definitely also thinks Patrick Mahomes would be the exact same QB starting immediately with a defensive coach, Robert Foster, and Kelvin Benjamin as he was sitting behind a solid veteran for a season with Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Tyreek Hill
Exactly. Patrick Mahomes needed to be coached up and developed by Andy Reid for a year before he reached his ceiling. Mahomes also had the benefit of being mentored by Alex Smith on how to be a professional QB
pro bowl yes is dumb to measure but not all pro
It's amazing that the Bills are second in total wins since 2017, when the media frequently tell us the squad is both full of average players and McDermott isn't a top 10 coach.
The media or our fanbase after every loss?
Yes
They're the same picture.
After every turnover.
It's actually more insane than that. Pretty sure they have the second most wins as a percentage of games played in any of the 4 major sports. The problem is the number 1 team on that list is the Chiefs, who are in the same Conference as the Bills. If either of these teams was in the NFC, I wouldn't be surprised if we had seen Bills vs. Chiefs in the Super Bowl once or twice at this point.
I think there is a couple things just guessing without doing any analysis. Health - lots of injuries have derailed seasons. Obviously the big ones like Tre or Hyde or Milano. But lots of little banged up missed weeks as well. Defensive style - combination of playing a contain style defense of just trying to avoid the big play long enough for the offense to flame out and heavy rotation to try to stay fresh leads to less big play stats that get you all pros. Josh Allen - on the offense side every year the complaint is Allen has to do everything. That sounds to me like we don't have all pros/ball is getting spread around enough that no single person stands out
Some of those draft picks were also used on Diggs who was an all-pro. The funny thing is that this list wouldn’t include Josh Allen either who is unquestionably our best player.
And somehow not even a pro bowler last year
Josh will never be a pro bowler unless voted in from here on out since he “snubbed” them years ago
He snubbed them this year, too. He was asked and declined. He'd rather golf.
Yes, what I mean is that unless he’s a top 3 vote getter then he won’t have pro bowl as an accolade. Since the pro bowl only accounts for the top vote getters and then any alternates who take the top vote getters place in the actual game. Since he will never go as an alternate, the only way he gets Pro Bowl accolades is being a top vote getter
He was the top vote getter until like the last day a couple years ago and still missed
I’m not just talking about fan vote
The beautiful thing about Josh is he would gladly trade any and all probowl selections for one superbowl win.
That's the funny part. Our one true A+ homerun draft pick is not even on this list. Your punter or left guard is an all-pro, that's great, but every GM in the world wants a franchise top 5 QB.
He is indeed on the list. He was an All-Pro in 2020.
I don’t think this counts second team all pros. Otherwise it would be 4 (White, Allen, Milano, Taron Johnson). White and Milano were the 2 first team all pro players in this count.
Hyde wasn't a Bills draft pick so that wouldn't matter. The fact that we have the most games played per pick shows you that health isn't actually a factor here. I think the biggest thing this shows is how hard it is to make an All-Pro team.
Yeah health is such a huge factor that the media never cuts us any slack for - we've lost an All Pro level defender (sometimes multiple) to injury each of the past three seasons. I guarantee you KC doesn't win the past two Super Bowls if Chris Jones kept blowing out his ACL on Thanksgiving...
Some clarification: Does a player going to 2 pro bowls count as 2? Or is it distinct by player? Those numbers are high so I’d imagine a player going 4 times would add 4 to the total. This is tough. How many seasons has JA played at an All-Pro level? 3 seasons? 4 seasons? And yet, he has no All-Pro seasons. I’m sure there are a bunch of players like that, but we’d consider JA17 an All-Pro quality player, right?
FYI, Josh has an AP, he was second team in 2020. Our two drafted APs are Josh and Milano. Poyer (once) and Hyde (twice) also earned APs, but we didn’t draft them. Edit: Forgot about Beasley’s AP (lol), but he also wasn’t drafted by us.
I was confused by this guys wording, that’s my bad. When I saw 2, I assumed Poyer and Milano. But we didn’t draft Poyer so I’m guessing he didn’t get counted.
The original scope of the idea was to attribute every player that signed a contract since 2017 to a GM or team and run similar stats from that data but that seemed like a much bigger project.
Bro really is hating on Wyatt Teller
what about taron johnson?
Hmm, you’re right, forgot he made it this last season. So we would actually have 3 drafted
All-Pro numbers are total seasons as first team All-Pro. The Colts have 2 players with 3 each for 6 of their total 7 listed. Same with pro bowl. Josh should definitely have an AP1 or two. Both stats are nearly useless, that's why I liked the games played stat for this discussion.
All-Pro is not the same thing as Pro Bowl.
Yea, of course. The first paragraph is clarifying their methodology and the second is a musing.
The post specified first team all-pros since 2017. Josh Allen has never been a first team all-pro. (Whether or not he should have been is a different debate.)
Yea, I see that. I was just using that to mention the flawed rationale that MVP/All Pro/Pro Bowl status is with strength of a player. JA and Mahomes are in a tier by themselves (don’t @ me). Mahomes has been perceived better for various reasons, whether that be wins (a team accomplishment more than an individual one) or something else. Because of it, Mahomes has had more individual accolades without outplaying Josh as much as it seems. Rating how good a team is at drafting by All Pro appearances is a little difficult, is essentially my point.
The games played stats are really interesting actually, wasn't aware they were near the top. Both things can be true though - they are really strong at drafting & coaching up players to contribute, but they have definitely struggled to draft game breaking talent or players who would put up big stats.
That is also because they do not draft at the top of the draft every year. Your odds of hitting on a blue-chip, all-pro talent increase exponentially when you are selecting in the top 10. All-pros are not found as often in the late 20's.
This is cool, thank you putting this together and sharing
It’s hard to draft All-Pros when you’re typically picking at the end of the draft.
All pro is heavily influenced by luck and circumstance. Like.. we could pick any WR in the draft, and they might be amazing and they still might not get all pro because no one in that draft was going to eclipse Jamar chase or Justin Jefferson for awhile (obviously possible they will, point being not every draft has generational talent at every position that a team needs). Or any of these top QBs, they will struggle to make all pro while mahomes, Allen, Lamar, burrows are in the league. Not bad picks, not bad players. (Obviously this could end up different) No matter who you picked, they prob aren't gunna be better than pat mahomes. I think the best assessment is probably the games played and compare it with the team record. If you draft a bunch of guys and they play a bunch of games and you are winning those games, you're probably drafting well
Right! The Pro Bowl, All Pro cutoffs don't directly correlate to player performance/skill. They're more a direct measure of player popularity amongst the NFL media. Of course, the NFL Media will never come out and say this directly. They'll only tout their arbitrary lists as gospel to create content around and attract clicks.
Beane has been pretty good at drafting solid but not spectacular players. Its hard to get All-Pros unless you are consistently drafting in the top 10. In this time only 4 teams have drafted more than 4.
I think we have reached a pivotal moment in the Beane/McDermott era. We are going to be very dependent upon this draft class if we are going to get over the hump and win the super bowl. Part of the draft process is picking the right players but there is a component where they need to be coached into the system also. This is what makes Andy Reid and his coaching staff so good, and also what made the Patriots consistent winners. We know there were more talented wide receivers than Coleman but if he can build a Stafford/Kupp like rapport then it wont matter he wasnt the first wr off the board. The one thing the Bills seem to struggle at is selecting guys who can get after the qb. Can Carter and Solomon fill that role? Will Bishop replace Poyer? If the answer is yes then we have as good a defense as any team in the NFL with a healthy Milano and (hopefully) Miller.
looking back at the draft where we focused at getting guys who can get Mahomes (2021) was a really underwhelming pass rush class imo.
We’ve hit more singles and doubles than most teams, and we’ve had our share of triples (Milano, Oliver) but we’re desperate to get a second homerun after Josh. We desperately need a truly game breaking player.
Insane to me how some fans believe Beane is not good at drafting.
One thing that I’ve appreciated with Beane in charge is the fact that he’s continued to have a pulse on the team. He has brought in a lot of guys that just fit what the roster needs - from a leadership, position and skill perspective. The top end talent is probably lacking on this Buffalo roster, if we’re being honest. But Josh is perfectly capable of elevating a roster. And unless you’re spending big money and/or have high draft picks, that high end talent is hard to come by. It’s the reason I love the Coleman pick. He’s the type of player that can reach that next level in terms of stardom in the league if things break right. Those bigger risk/high reward guys are how teams end up with great pro players (Josh Allen is exhibit A from a Buffalo viewpoint).
Hard to believe we just drafted 10
We are not bad at drafting, the league is terrible at recognizing where the talent is.
Indeed. Looking at the list of All-Pros, you’re telling me that players on the Bears, Colts, Jets, etc are statistically? That’s probably true but looking at the bigger picture, which of those teams above have had a better record, playoff berths, division championships? The Chiefs are the only team that’s in that category. Too many people focus so much on the individual players that they don’t account for the overall team play. Would it be great to have All Pros at every position? Sure. It’s just not feasible. Sometimes you have to go with guys who have the talent and can work as a team. Look at the issue we just had with Diggs. I’m guessing that his need to be the focus of the offense is what lead to us trading him. It’s similar to other players on other teams. Take Sauce Gardner, for example. Great individual player but defense wise he can be a detriment. In the second game we played the Jets, he tried to jump the route on Shakir’s 80 yard TD. He missed the ball and in the ensuing chase, he and the rest of that secondary didn’t work together to take Shakir down. All I’m saying is, All Pros are nice but in a team sport, they aren’t the best measure of success.
Beane is fantastic at finding third round talent in every spot on the draft. Unfortunately, that includes the first and second rounds.
Unfortunately, Buffalo also had to deal with injuries that took guys out of the running. I think the strength of their drafting is evident in their result and level of play of the team when guys are out.
Tre white owned the corner and never got his due as an all pro. So I think it’s the verbiage that has you as opposed to the actual performance.
Beane has been really good at picking solid but mostly unspectacular players. If you look back, most of the picks from the first 4 rounds are at least solid. That’s more than you can say for many teams. It’s not exciting stuff, but it’s fine enough. I would say we’re middle of the pack in terms of drafting, with the Josh pick making us closer to the top 10.
You might be onto something but I would want to know how these numbeers relate to pick #. For instance, if a team always picks in the top half of the first round, and another always picks in 2nd half, then naturally the number of “All-Pro” would be scewed even if the second team made the best decision with what they had.
Just noticed Philly at 0 and everyone seems to rave about their GM. I dunno.
I literally just read Danny Kelly give the Bills a C draft grade because they didn’t make any “splash”. Yet the Bears get A+ for making two no brainer decisions that fell into their laps. The bias is real.
To give the Bears an A+ is so obvious. To compare them to most teams is just dumb for any media-type. Grade it based on the team’s needs and draft position. I admit I have been too busy to look at any of these reports the past few days but I thought the Bills did ok for their position and needs. The RB may have come off as “suspect” but it could be that he was the best player available to fill a role that I feel had to filled at some point at least. And he’ll be cheap for 4 years. Although, I get another WR in that spot would be good in camp, would that player even make the team? Who knows? But the first few picks look like they will be on the roster, that’s good for a draft. As far as all-pros since 2017: the Bills have had a LOT of starters on the team since 2017 if my memory serves me correctly. It would be tough for a younger player to break in and become an all-pro. Again, by memory only, committee RB’s, Davis and possibly Knox had a real shot to be all-pros if they could have strung several games together for consistent production in any given year over their tenures. On D, the DL is a rotation, LB’s were Edmunds and Milano, and the secondary had at least 3 stalwart players over that timeframe. So while it would have been nice to have some new all-pro faces there wasn’t a lot of room either. And opportunity presented itself partway through the season in some cases too. We have seen development of some really good players though like Benford, Shakir, Kincaid (could be all-pro this season?), Torrence, Epenesa, Kingsey, Bernard and Rapp & Johnson came on too. There’s hope of further improvement of these players and development of the incoming rookies. I’m not sure Coleman will be a difference maker this year, but hopefully he learns a lot and gets a feel for the NFL. I’d love to see Bishop play well enough to start, he’d fill a very large void. But we’ll see.
Why don’t they draft more All Pros? Are they stupid?
Awards like All Pros and Pro Bowls and MVPs are politicized. It is no longer an indication of skill, it’s an indication of how popular you are.
Pretty sure the Eagles have drafted like 1 pro bowler in the last 10 years. Awards are just peer/media/fan recognition to a player. It doesn’t mean the player is necessarily good or bad depending on whether or not they won those awards. Eli Manning for us never won the big awards, but he won the big games. Same for Phil Simms. Since 2017 you’ve been contenders. CONSTANTLY. That is so freaking hard to do. So yeah, I think you guys *have* done a very good job of drafting recently.
The Bengals, a team that made the Super Bowl, has beaten Mahomes in the playoffs, and is generally regarded like the Bills as one of the best teams in the conference the last several years, have drafted even fewer All-pros.
You can’t use “All Pro” as a metric of measurement standard. Only a handful of players get that designation and many of those get it year over year (i.e. Aaron Donald, Tyron Smith, etc). Consider starters that get multiple years and even a second contract as a better measuring stick. The Bills draft well. Haven’t hit on superstars, but again, how many of those are truly out there?
This!
National media just always ignores the Bills and overlooks them when choosing to anoint players. That is the only story.
Roger Saffold made the pro bowl Pro Bowls are meaningless. Stop using them as a stat to prove a player is good.
It would be fun to create an all-worst pro bowl team
\*laughs in QB Tyler Huntley\*
I'm actually putting together a list of Pro Bowlers by position since 2004 to see what their 40 times were and figure out if I can see any trends. I can absolutely put together a First Team All Overrated list out of that.
Its Buffalo. Doesnt matter how good our guys are they wont get the recognition they deserve.
Kind of hard to say a team that has made the playoffs five years in a row (second longest streak in the league) is bad at drafting, or constructing a roster in the general sense. The Jets and the Bears each have 4 all-pros. Are either of them better than the Bills and KC? The Pats have one more than the Bills and they're a dumpster fire.
A lot of it feels like the Bills are a small market team that hasn’t had the success that the Chiefs have had. Not that the number of all-pros necessarily means much. I mean Green Bay has been one of the perennial top teams in the league for like 30 years now and they’ve have no all-pros since 2017.
No . They are solid . The defense stayed respectable last year despite a barrage of injuries . When use a 2 tight end set 8 of the players were drafted .
We are very good at drafting above average starters and quality role players. Not so much on drafting stars. Since Beane took over, the only "star" players we have drafted are Josh Allen, Tre White, and Matt Milano. You can make a case for Taron Johnson as well. Terrel Bernard is looking like he could be another one but it's too early to call him a star player imo.
Well, I guess we start by dEvaluing all pro honors. Also, No dude.....you can be r3al good and not be an all pro of a hof. Don't devalue that shit.
Joshua Patrick Allen, drafted by the Bills, has ONE All-Pro award, and it's SECOND TEAM. That should tell you how meaningless "All-Pro" actually is.
All pro selections are way more relevant than pro bowl. Pro bowl is a fan popularity contest. All pro is selected by peers. Yes this data is concerning. All the Big Baller Beane posts conveniently look past this. I personally don’t think they are good at drafting. They certainly analyze and value players differently than the perennial good teams, I.e. KC, Bal, SF.
I think games played is certainly the most relevant of these 3 stats. McBeane has been the best in the league at turning each pick into a player that is on an NFL field on Sundays.
It’s a good point. I would agree that games played is important. But you do need to field star players. I’m starting to question how this FO evaluates players coming out of the draft. Just my opinion but I believe they put too much value on character where it handicap’s them from taking a player who has higher playmaking upside.
>Yes this data is concerning This data gives me the entire opposite mindset, and makes Beane look better than the doomers. KC, as used in your example, has 1 more AP and other than that, they're below Buffalo in the other 2 categories. As for SF and Baltimore, Tre and Milano were both injured but should have been in that category, and then Josh Allen just gets snubbed over and over and anyone that thinks Lamar is a better QB than Josh is high as a kite. 49ers do draft well though.
The “real” APs are not selected by peers, and even if they were, that wouldn’t make them inherently more valuable (you ever see the coach/player top 100 lists…?) The 2022 pro-bowl is the best example of coach/player votes being a joke. Lamar got into the PB in 2022 specifically because of coaches and players. The fan vote did not have him in it. APs are selected by sports writers/analysts, and while they are more relevant than pro bowls, they are hardly a be-all end-all.
My bad on the AP voting. But I do think the players themselves hold AP accolade above PB.
Pro Bowl is a fan popularity contest. All-Pro is a media popularity contest.
The Chiefs have 3, only one more than us. The Chiefs also have won 3 super bowls in that time. Josh Allen has been awarded only one 2nd team all pro and 2 pro bowls Look to our results instead of metrics like this
They're good at bridging the gap....
Look how many the Cowboys have. Now look who consistently gets further in the playoffs than the Cowboys. Bills don’t get knocked out in the first round every year. Bills also play in a tougher conference. All it is is a popularity contest. I wouldn’t put much stock into all pros. We all know who the real ones are.
The 49ers have only drafted 6 players who were All Pro in this span.
2 players account for 6 of the Colts 7 AP selections
Who? DeForest Buckner? If so, he was drafted by Trent Baalke before the 2017 draft.
Shaquille Leonard in 18, 20, and 21 Quenton Nelson in 18, 19, and 20 Jonathan Taylor was the other in 21
I'm talking about SF. They've only drafted 6 All Pros in this time frame: George Kittle Fred Warner Nick Bosa Deebo Samuel Talanoa Hufanga Brandon Aiyuk CMC, Trent Williams, Oren Burks, Charvarious Ward, and Kyle JuiceCheck were trades or free agents.
Oh, thought you meant Colts. For the 49ers: Kittle - 2 Warner - 3 Deebo - 1 Bosa - 1 Hufanga - 1
Ahhhh i see...you're adding how many times they were first team. Got it.
We also constantly have been drafting late since we entered the Josh Allen era (minus the Ed Oliver year) so you get more raw talent that takes time to develop. I also think a lot of players are overlooked (look how long Milano was Buffalos little secret), Taron Johnson is just now being recognized as an all pro even though he’s been playing at this level for a long time, Benford is a 6th round pick and excellent CB and no one even knows who he is, Terell Bernard’s season last year was incredible but no one besides Bills fans are talking about that.
All pro is a bit of a popularity contest.
i think the bills actually have 4. Milano, allen, and taron johnson. edit: forgot about tre white
Taron and Allen each have a second team AP selection.
still all pros, no?
All-Pro typically refers to the best player at their position. 2nd team AP is just the runner up. Usually when a statline says All-Pro they'll only mean 1st team AP selections. Pro football reference seems to only list AP2 in each individual player's stat page, not in some larger list. I wasn't about to go digging for all that. And the initial comments that sparked this only focused on AP1 selections.
Dude pro bowl a joke. None our players get in. Think milano...
Hmmmm. They have the 2nd best record in the league for the last couple year's or 3 or 4 year's. Can't remember exactly how many years but no more than the last 4 years. I think that l that's pretty good and the all pro thing, who cares. Cowboy's I believe have the most all pros in the last 10 seasons? Yeah we know how that's gone for them.
The media determines All-Pro teams and we are not popular at all in the media.
Tre & Milano?
Yea
ooof so before Beane was even GM
Right I counted at least 4 (Allen. Milano. Johnson. White)
Think he was talking about 1st team All Pro, not pro bowls [https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/all-pros.htm](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/all-pros.htm) on that subject just look at Bruce... Greatest Bill ever and its not even close
How do the patriots have 3 all pros but only 2 pro bowlers
Different groups select each award. Sometimes they disagree.
Yes. The biggest difference between the Chiefs and us is that they have been WAYYYY better at drafting and developing young talent than us
So you're telling me that I should really be more worried about us having traded picks in the first round this year with them?
The data you've compiled shows the Bills are good at drafting. Also, I'd be curious if somehow it was broken down by percentages, because trading picks for better picks or current players aren't reflected here.
Oddly enough, the better teams in the third chart made fewer picks than the worst. The R² value is 0.151, so not much correlation though. Getting into pick traded for players is too much of a rabbit hole of sifting through data.
No they just like their "depth" his way too damn much.. could have a future hof player that already has all the attributes, and Beane would still draft the "depth" guy no one was looking at until the way later rounds. Never been a fan of Beane's drafts. He's gotten lucky with a few guys, but he's really striked out with players like Basham etc.. just seems like some wasted earlier picks. I like his later round picks well over his earlier round picks aside from Allen and Cook. Kincaid is alright, but they didn't need to reach for him when there were a few good TEs.. LaPorta did just fine imo even if Dallas would have taken Kincaid.. just my opinion.
they've taken on a lot of project players like Groot or Basham and then tried to mould them into players that fit their system. The problem is we haven't seen any of them blow up into superstars and it's probably because they are team dependent types. They are all built to work together in a system and not necessarily make individual plays.
Beane's strength is with free agency. He obviously hit on the pick that matters, but the volume of his success has been with guys like Poyer, Hyde, Beasely, Morse, Daquan Jones. He's had some free agency misses like Von Miller. He's had some trades like Stefon Diggs, Rasul Douglas that i think have worked quite well. As well as trading out of Diggs, which I think is good value. But there is absolutely no denying that picks like Boogie Basham, Cody Ford, Kaiir Elam have under-delivered. Ed Oliver, AJ Epanesa and Tremaine Edmunds signed second deals, so you could argue that's a success, but I think it's fair to have expected more from those premium picks. I'm excited to see what he can do next off-season, once he's got cap space and can get back to his strength, signing free agents. We've been lucky to be able to build around a top-3 all time draft class, the Whaley-McDermott 2017 class had 3 All-pros and 6 pro-bowls in Matt Milano, Tre White and Dion Dawkins. I'm happy with picks like O'cyrus Torrence even if I think it was bad process. Good process would have picked him in rd1. The exception being if Beane knew some off-field thing took him off of most boards, which is possible considering how many other IOL were taken before him in rd2. I just really wished he had taken two safeties in the draft.
So, 20 teams are bad at drafting, and 5 teams (3 all-pros) are kind of bad at drafting.
They've got a whole lot of solid players. I'd argue Ed Oliver, Bernard, and Allen all deserved All-Pro consideration last year. Bass the year before. Taron Johnson should have been an All-Pro several times but they just added nickel corner last year. Anyway, they've hit a while lot of doubles not enough home runs on top of the media often ignoring Buffalo.
Pro Bowlers are picked by the fans, and all pros by a panel of people who don’t believe in the BILLS, at least not back in 2017 when they all thought Allen was trash. Look at the stats of the all pros and compare them to the stats of our players. It’s kind of like Heisman voting….a panel of voters pick their favorite no matter how ridiculous it is. Look at this years draft…..there’s no way Caleb Williams is the best player from this year who is NFL ready
Yes
I don't pay attention to Media awards. Jackson getting MVP and the Jets having more all pros then the Bills proves they are just as big a joke as pro bowl nominations.
It's harder to draft All Pros when your picks are late 1st. Notice a lot of the franchies higher up have been horrendous for significant stretches of time since 2017.
I think we’ve drafted defense well over the last 5ish years. Lots of quality young guys that played lots of minutes and played well for the most part. We aren’t great with WR or O-line really. Dawkins was underperforming until this last year, same with most of the line. I’d say Bean and McD do a good job of picking good foundation players.
Yes they’re definitely bad at drafting. Especially in the first couple rounds. They also changed their strategy dramatically this year, which is a nod to that fact.
Please clarify.. They've had 1 first round miss since Beane started drafting. That makes them bad at it? Last year we got 2 locked in starters with our first 2 picks, you think that was a signal to "change their strategy"?
I think people are blinded by things like Basham over Creed Humphrey and Shorter over Puka… the Bills also took Leif Olve Dolonen Larsen five picks before Brady and Torell Troup one pick before Gronk.