2011 NFL Draft: Will the Buffalo Bills Draft Blaine Gabbert or Pass on Him?

For the past month, we keep hearing the results of mock draft experts that the Buffalo Bills are going to be drafting either Alabama defensive lineman Marcell Dareus or Texas A&M linebacker Von Miller. Both of those options are something that I completely endorse.

But why is it, that with less than two weeks to go before the draft, I have this uneasy feeling that the Bills will be drafting Blaine Gabbert, the talented Missouri quarterback? In a recent mock draft conducted by SI.com's Don Banks, he had Gabbert going to the Bills with the third overall pick.

Banks' rationale was as follows: "Texas A&M outside linebacker Von Miller seems to have emerged as the consensus choice for the Bills in NFL mockdom, but I still see Buffalo reasoning that it's the right year and the right draft slot to take a franchise quarterback. You could take Gabbert and still play Ryan Fitzpatrick most of this season, following the Jon Kitna/Carson Palmer model in Cincinnati, circa 2003."

Banks is not alone in his assessment. Wes Bunting of the National Football Post also shows the Bills drafting Gabbert with the third pick. According to Bunting: "The Bills can be patient with Gabbert, as the future signal-caller has the skill set to be effective in the nasty Buffalo weather."

More evidence of the Blaine Gabbert-to-Buffalo scenario was reported this week on ESPN by John Clayton. Clayton says that if Cam Newton is not available, the Bills will draft Gabbert.

Clayton went on to say that all the quarterbacks are a risk in this assessment:

"And clearly there is no safe pick in this year's quarterback class. Cam Newton was a one-year phenom at Auburn, but how long will it take for him to convert those raw skills into efficiently running an NFL offense? Blaine Gabbert threw 267 shotgun passes in Big 12 play last season but didn't take a snap under center and completed only 44 percent of his passes on third downs. With Jake Locker, you worry about accuracy. Ryan Mallett worries teams because of his personality."

Bills head coach Chan Gailey was asked recently to compare Cam Newton to Blaine Gabbert. Here was Gailey's reply:

"They’re both extremely talented. They’ve been in two different types of offenses. Neither of them have been in a pro-style offense. One of them was in a spread and ran the football out of the spread and was a little bit more throwing the ball one-on-one at times instead of reading a bunch of coverages.

"The other one was in the spread, four wides, five wides most of the time, in the gun the majority of the time and was reading a few more coverages, throwing a few more concept routes. You have concept routes in the NFL and a little bit more experience in that. They just come from different offenses. Both of them are going to have an adjustment period once they get to the NFL.”

Chris Brown of Buffalo Bills.com followed up the Gailey interview comments by assessing that Gabbert does have the advantage of throwing more of the intermediate routes in the 11-to-20-yard range in his offense—the kinds of throws that are very common in the pro-style offenses of the NFL.

So if there is one area where Gabbert may have a leg up on Newton, it’s there. But Gailey believes both will have learning curves to travel before being NFL-ready so to speak.

The Bills feel more than content with starting Ryan Fitzpatrick for the 2011 season. If we take that statement as a given, the next question to ask is who are the Buffalo Bills prepared to use as the primary backup to Fitzpatrick?

Right now, that answer is Levi Brown, and that is just not acceptable from a NFL experience standpoint. The Bills will either have to draft a better quarterback prospect than Brown, make a trade for a veteran or hope to snag a free agent whenever free agency begins.

Those are the question marks concerning the 2011 season. 2012 is a whole different story. We then have the prospect of Andrew Luck and Matthew Barkley, among others, that will be prepared to enter the NFL.

So, the question is, do the Bills go ahead and take the plunge by drafting Gabbert with the third pick now (knowing that they have control over his selection) or do they gamble that they will be in a reasonably advantageous position to draft a top quarterback in 2012?

The other fallback option is to pass on Gabbert or trade down from the third pick and take your chances at pick 34 or with whatever top pick you received in the trade. How far a difference is there in the quality between a Blaine Gabbert and a Christian Ponder or a Colin Kaepernick?

If you look at the numbers that they produced in college, Blaine Gabbert did not set the world on fire. If you want to examine the numbers more closely, here is a link to a story I wrote last month that takes a detailed look at what each of the draft class quarterbacks produced in college and how they all compare to each other.

I understand that there are no guarantees in the first round. Gabbert appears to be an intelligent, well-spoken mobile quarterback that would be a very marketable player to rally behind. But his numbers at Missouri were just not that impressive. Understandably, he was impacted by the talent level around him, but that is also what was said about Trent Edwards when he left Stanford, and we know how that turned out.

Drafting Gabbert would mean that you are totally turning your back on all of the elite defensive athletes that are sitting there waiting to be drafted with the third pick. They are productive, they want to win and you can plug them in to your lineup for as long as you have them signed to a contract.

It is not intended to throw water on those Bills fans that are hoping Gabbert is the long term answer, but you have to consider the following stats from his final season at Missouri. Gabbert threw less touchdown passes (24 to 16), his QB Passer Rating went down (140 to 127), sacks went up (19 to 23), passing yardage went down (3,593 to 3,186), and his TD to INT ratio was 16 to 9. His average yards per pass attempt went down from 8.07 to 6.71.

The only thing that went up was his completion percentage, (58.9 to 63.4), but then again it should have gone up since he was throwing the ball closer to the line of scrimmage. These areas should be of concern to Gailey, Nix and to the Bills fans.

I don't predict to know what will happen. General Manager Buddy Nix says that he is prepared to do whatever is right for the short-term and long-term needs of the organization. Chan Gailey echoes those exact sentiments.

So, the question is, does Blaine Gabbert fit the long-term needs of the Bills or not?