Maybe I should've posted this in the "Let's Talk About the Bills" thread, but whatever.
It's true that the Bills got some good players out of trading the 2017 10th overall pick to KC, but they'd hop into Doc Brown's Delorean and draft Mahomes in a heartbeat, dicks in hand.
Also, this gem: "Now they have a proven playoff winner in Allen and an all-star supporting cast to go with him and continue to build around." By his standards, Alex Smith is also a proven playoff winner.
Let's make one thing clear before we go any further: The Buffalo Bills don't need to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game Sunday night to somehow justify a 2017 draft-day trade that enabled the Chiefs to draft Patrick Mahomes, even if he is the best quarterback in the NFL now and on his way to becoming the best of all time.
Both teams did what they needed to do that day, and it couldn't have worked out better for either one.
The Chiefs were much closer to a finished product when they gave the Bills their first-round pick (No. 27) and a third-round pick (No. 91) in 2017 and a first-round pick in 2018 (No. 22) for the Bills' first-round pick (No. 10), which they used to select Mahomes.
Mahomes went on to become the league MVP and lead the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl title since Hank Stram ordered up the 65 toss power trap.
But the Bills were able to turn their haul into a plentiful bounty that includes cornerback Tre'Davious White, linebacker Tremaine Edmunds and left tackle Dion Dawkins.
They were not as close to a finished product as the Chiefs were then. But thanks in large part to the value received in that original trade, they are on equal footing now.
Besides, their choice of Josh Allen with the No. 7 pick in 2018, four spots after the New York Jets moved up to take Sam Darnold at No. 3, landed them a quarterback who has blossomed into one of the league's elite.
You don't need the best quarterback in the history of the world to win the Super Bowl. But you do need to put a team around one you can win with, which the Bills might not have been able to do had they stood pat and just drafted Mahomes that day.
Now they have a proven playoff winner in Allen and an all-star supporting cast to go with him and continue to build around.
White became an elite player almost immediately. Ditto for Edmunds. Both have been Pro Bowl selections in each of the last two seasons, and White was an All-Pro in 2019.
Dawkins needed a little more time to find his way, but eventually he emerged to become a key component of a team at or near its athletic peak.
"They got a good player in Patrick," coach Sean McDermott said, via ESPN, "and I think we made out as well with Josh, Tremaine and Tre'Davious -- however you kind of shape that, in terms of picks that became picks. I think both teams fared awfully well."
So before turning this contest into a referendum on that trade, try to think of how good the Bills would be right now with Mahomes but decidely lesser players at left tackle, cornerback and linebacker.
Only one team can win on Sunday, but both won on that day. That much is certain.
Regardless of Sunday night's result, this trade already has gone down in history as one both teams had to make.
Nick Fierro is the publisher of Bills Central. Check out the latest Bills news at www.si.com/nfl/bills and follow Fierro on Twitter at @NickFierro [Reply]
They lost the fuck out of that and thats hard to do with three pro bowlers on your end. No reason to be upset about it, they did what they felt best and its worked well. Both teams won really but one team got michael jordan. [Reply]
The trade DID work out well for Buffalo. They have built a team using those pics and now they have a QB that looks like he's absolutely legit. He's proven he can win in the playoffs, and the Bills are a team on the rise. Good for them.
At the end of the day, the Bills are in a great position in part due to the trade. They were a Hail Murray away from closing out with what, a 12 game win streak?
Its much easier for them to justify trading the pick that became Patrick Mahomes than say the Chicago Bears who traded up and drafted the complete wrong guy. They're in the superbowl hunt and on a hot streak.
Unfortunately, they still have to get past the guy they passed on to do that, and he's 24-1 in his last 25 games.
I dont really see a way again this week, outside of #15 just opting out of the contest, the The Buffalo Bills can win this game. He's just far too good.
In the game where we ran it on them 30+ times for 245 yards Mahomes still threw for 221 in the wind and rain in Buffalo.
If our defense shows up to play in any capacity at all, we win this going away.
Congrats to bills fans for having a good team again, but the buck stops here. [Reply]
Originally Posted by notorious:
Allen has looked good and shown a lot of promise.
Do it several years in a row before we crown him, though.
Promise??? He tied with Mahomes for 2nd team all-pro. That’s a wee bit more than “promise”
It’s way early to even judge this anyway. After a few years Andrew Luck was considered the next Brady and he quickly got injured out of the sport. Wentz went from MVP front runner in 2018 to benched in 2020. Goff tailed off, on and on. Allen + Mahomes are still in the 1st Q of their careers [Reply]
Nobody knew for sure what Mahomes would become. If people had known, he would have gone #1. It was something of a gamble. I'm sure Veach and Reid were very optimistic and saw the potential, but it's always a risk. The Bills just weren't in the right position to take that risk at that time.
I think of Watson with the Texans and the really crappy situation there. They have a fantastic QB that should be their franchise QB for the next 15 years but the owner and management totally ****ed it up.
The Bills did a good job of shoring up the organization and then drafting a QB. There's no way of knowing if things would have worked out better for them with Mahomes, but things have worked out well with what they have. It worked out great for us too. Mahomes and Allen are both good QBs. It doesn't make Mahomes anything less to recognize that Allen is good. [Reply]
I remember the days of being desperate for respect and prematurely claiming equal footing so many times.
And a lot of it is the media's fault.... they pimp the Ravens and these other teams that are 2nd rate at best, so when a team like the Bills beats one of those teams and ends up in an AFCCG, they must belong, right?
We did it every time the Chiefs went 4-0 in September or just because they beat the shit Texans 30-0 in the playoffs, and so on and so forth.
It's all the rage to proclaim things before they're proven, whether it's to call 'game over' or equal footing.
And maybe the Bills are on equal footing.... they just haven't proven it. At all.
And it's not their fault beyond a week 6 loss. You don't get many chances to truly prove yourself, even in the postseason.
Much like the 2018 AFCCG, I'm interested to see if they are in fact on equal footing or if it's yet another case where a team is hyped up far beyond reality. [Reply]