After landing in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. for the NFL owners meetings last month, I joined a national writer who covers the NFL on the bus to pick up my rental car. Naturally, our conversation centered around the Buffalo Bills, and in particular their problems in finding a franchise quarterback since Jim Kelly retired following the 1996 season.
"I don't understand why those teams don't just draft a quarterback every year," the writer opined, adding that quarterback-needy teams should even consider picking a quarterback in the first round each spring. The NFL is such a quarterback-driven league, he believed, that not finding a surefire long-term starter is the biggest obstacle to any team succeeding.