Football Gameplan's 1st and Forever - Why Did the Bills Draft EJ Manuel?

[FootballCEO]

FBGP's 1st and Forever - Why Did the Bills Draft EJ Manuel? (http://footballgameplan.com/football-gameplans-1st-and-forever-why-did-the-bills-draft-ej-manuel/)


Good afternoon Bills fans! Our FBGP Analyst Gene Clemons asks the question in his 1st & Forever column: Why did the Bills draft EJ Manuel?


Would love to hear you guys' thoughts on Gene's article


Enjoy!


Em

[casdhf]

Whoever wrote that clearly does not follow the Bills. Benching Manuel could save his career as the future of this team. Leaving him in there would certainly ruin it.

[Novacane]

The Bills were competitive in all four games, and it’s easy to argue that Manuel was not the reason they lost two in a row and when you look at their most recent WIN with Orton as quarterback, it’s easy to see that Orton was not the primary reason for winning.


Couldn't disagree with this paragraph any stronger! Manuel was the reason they lost in Houston and there is no way they would of beaten Detroit with him.

[trapezeus]

ej got yanked because of his performance, not his stat line. he wasn't in the right zip code and the receivers were giving up on him. unless he was going to be dramatically better on decision making and putting his throws somewhere catchable, the feeling was it wasn't coming along at all.

i want EJ to develop, but i didn't see how he was going to do that in the games when he isn't making the right decisions with wide open receivers. he went back far enough watching the 4 games that it was worth pulling him.

and the bills went in for a QB with a partially rebuilt team. ej wasn't the first pick in the rebuild. so you have half a team that is ready to win now. from what we hear, there isn't much discontent or bickering in the locker room. perhaps the move was to keep it that way.

[Generalissimus Gibby]

FBGP's 1st and Forever - Why Did the Bills Draft EJ Manuel? (http://footballgameplan.com/football-gameplans-1st-and-forever-why-did-the-bills-draft-ej-manuel/)


Good afternoon Bills fans! Our FBGP Analyst Gene Clemons asks the question in his 1st & Forever column: Why did the Bills draft EJ Manuel?


Would love to hear you guys' thoughts on Gene's article


Enjoy!


Em

Because he was the best of a bad lot. It could have been a lot worse. After all we could have taken Geno's Pizza or Barkley

[wolfpack]

Whoever wrote that clearly does not follow the Bills. Benching Manuel could save his career as the future of this team. Leaving him in there would certainly ruin it.

Tweet: @geneclemons
Email: gclemons@footballgameplan.com

[Fletch]

Why Did the Bills Draft EJ Manuel?

We drafted Manuel because Whaley, not Nix, was enamored with him. Anyone thinking that there is any other reason is misinformed.

"And as Mark says, if in three years maybe he's not [our quarterback of the future], then I'll be sitting there saying 'hey guys', .... anybody got a job for me?"

See ya Doug!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/HI2TFbCiI08" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[The King]

As mentioned above it doesn't seem like the writer has all of the information Em. Bills had intentions on developing Manuel behind Kolb, that didn't work out because Kolb is literally so injury prone a sneeze is like JJ Watt. So they were forced to rush him into the line-up. Injuries caused him to come in and out of the line-up last year and he never really developed. This year he was at the front of a week QB spot, but the division is too competitive to let him learn on the job. So the Bills acquired Orton and paid him well, the switch has been in the works since that deal.

They always wanted him behind a vet, they just didn't have the options.

[starrymessenger]

Well we prolly won't be hearing from the Bills before the second round next year.
And Mr. CEO you need to learn from Donald Trump. "Your fired" is what your writer needs to hear.

[Homegrown]

Would love to hear you guys' thoughts on Gene's article
Em

My thoughts on the article .... its not very well written.

Its full of a series of rhetorical questions, which to me is lazy


Why did the Buffalo Bills draft EJ Manuel?
What happened to the development part?
So why did the Bills give Manuel the quick hook?
Why give the impression that they don’t believe in their first round draft pick?
Why not keep developing him?
Why would the Bills throw in the towel on your first round pick now?
Are we really supposed to buy Kyle Orton as a better option or they using Manuel’s benching to try and keep their jobs longer?

The article ends with "Who really knows the reason ," ... most well written articles will actually have a conclusion, as opposed to a 'who knows'

Also, the text :


(AND I’M NOT COMPARING EJ MANUEL TO ANDREW LUCK FROM A SKILLS PERSPECTIVE)

Is condescending the reader, on many levels.

My $0.02

[Meathead]

ej was benched bc he was not able to consistently execute bread and butter nfl throws that every qb has to make. for the first two it looked like he had turned a small corner there, but the last two were just disasters. he was missing wide open guys, picking the wrong guy to throw to, bouncing key balls off the turf or throwing them into the gatorade table

normally a young qb is drafted by a team that is a bottom feeder, so then yeah it would be ok to just let him keep playing. but they arent. this is the deepest team theyve had for probably a decade. its arguable that the only thing holding them back was the substandard qb play. so when youve spent a bunch of money and made a bunch of moves to make the team better, and youve got a 31 yo guy on the bench with 70 nfl starts, you would be foolish not to let him run your offense if your young qb is consistently faltering

i said all along that ej should be playing as long as he was progressing and didnt have two abysmal games within a short time frame. unfortunately, those two games showed he really needed to sit down and do what he should have been doing all along - learning how to be an nfl qb from a solid pro who had been there before. the bills coaches screwed up multiple ways in preparing for ejs development so it isnt all his fault, but now they finally had the right set up to both give them a chance to win consistently and allow ej to learn and grow mentally from an on-field mentor

it was the right move imo