Bulaga may be Bills Target

By Mike Watkins:

The more I think about the Bills first round pick and look over who's available and what the needs are around the league, I'm not really seeing how this pick isnt 'going to be an OT. Unless Clausen or Bradford drop to us and that's really the only way I see us not picking an OT.

This is what I'm looking at Buffalo, KC, Oak, Seattle, S.F., Pitt,N.E., G.B., Dallas, S.D., Ari, and Detroit all have very legitimate reasons to take an OT high. I went to each teams message board to kind of gauge it because sometimes they have a sleeper on there team and all of their fans in each of those cities list OT either 1 or 2 on their needs list.

Here are the OT's that carry a first or a fringe first grade Okung, Davis, Williams, Bulaga, Campbell, Ducasse. Okung is the only elite prospect among them and then the other 5 are in the next tier down.

So you have 12 teams with a 1 or 2 need at OT and only 6 players to fill that need. Now more than likely Buffalo is smart enough to realize this(or at least I hope they are) that if you don't take one at 9 your likely going to be stuck picking one off the 3rd tier in the second round which is going to be a big reach and big reaches is where big bust tend to come from or worse yet picking off the 4th and 5th tiers in rounds 3 and 4. Despite reports this class is week I think you going to have the OT's once again come flying off the boards in the first round.

You also have to assume the Bills are going to be looking for some immediate improvement on the offensive side of the ball since they made it such a point to draft an offensive minded coach. Gailey is no fool he knows the quickest way, outside of getting talent at the QB spot, to improve an offense is to improve the OL play. The IOL should be fine but the OT spots are at best a train wreck. So he is likely to be very motivated and will push for an OT if the QB's are off the board.

I'm assuming Buffalo wants to get at least one of these OT spots locked in before they start TC and going into TC thinking Bell can do that at this point is being extremely hopefully at the best and is more than likely a recipe for disaster. So I bet there at this point looking to lock up one of those spots with a day one starter, my guess would be the left tackle spot and have a competition play out on the right side.The pickings are also very slim in FA'cy so that leaves the draft to fill that day one starter at LT.

So looking over the board, Detroit at 2 is likely going DT because of how highly rated they are it would be stupid to pass on one because of both value and need, then the best bet is Okung doesn't make it by KC,then you have Seattle who is likely going QB or maybe DE because they're thinking they can get one of the second tier OT's at 14. So then you have the Oakland Raiders. Al Davis is desperate to make it work with J.Russell and he has some good skill possession players so the obvious upgrade would be along the OL because it is pretty clear he, J.Russell is not a good enough QB to overcome avg OL play let alone what he gets sometimes in Oakland. My bet is he likes A.Davis from Rutgers because of his age and his physical up side plus the ability to play 4 of the 5OL Spots.

That has left the Bills with a choice of Campbell, Williams, Bulaga, Ducasse, and if you want C.Brown from USC. Now Ducasse and Brown are nixed off the bat because they carry fringe first round grades at this point and picking them at 9 would be big reaches. Williams is off the board too because you have to figure they are looking for a LT with atop 10 pick and if there is one thing Williams showed this year it's that he's not a LT.

So now we are left with Bulaga and Campbell. Both have great measurable for the position and have earned first round grades. What separates them however is that Bulaga is much farther along in the Tech dept thanCampbell is right now and that in of itself is going to shorten the learning curve which is what the Bills are looking for since they arelooking for a day one starter. Now Nix said he likes to stay away from the one year wonders and while Bulaga had a great year his Soph yearhis Junior year was a bit of a let down but the Thyroid condition I would imagine played a big part in that. He started off slow but finished strong getting back to what looked like his Soph year. So I think he clears the one year wonder qualification set by Nix with his28 starts most of which were very quality starts.

So long story short, I think as of right now on Jan 28th 2010 Brian Bulaga is the front runner to be the Bills selection at 9