“Bills considering moving Rookie DE Aaron Maybin to Linebacker”

FoxSports is reporting that Maybin, the 11th overall pick in the draft, could be moved to OLB.
The Buffalo coaching staff feels the the 6-4, 250-pounder may prove to be too small to stand up against NFL offensive tackles, especially on running downs. In college, Maybin was often pulled for the same reason. Maybin would join rookie DE’s Robert Ayers (Denver), Larry English (San Diego) and Brian Orakpo (Washington) as collegiate ends moving to OLB in the pros.

Hoops view:

This is just ridicilous to me. The Bills need a top-flight pass rusher from the DE spot to go along with Aaron Schobel. (Nothing wrong with Chris Kelsay at all, but he’s not exactly a player opposing teams have to game-plan around). So they draft Maybin with their first pick, and now suddenly this late in the game they wake up to the realization that he’s an undersized DE? Did they go to a meeting one day, toss back a couple cups of joe and think “you know, that Maybin is awfully light; maybe we should move him to OLB?”. If you wanted a pass-rushing OLB to fit your SLB slot, there were bigger and better suited players they could have selected later in the draft to fill that role. This is idiocracy.
The three players mentioned earlier were originally drafted with full intent to play them at OLB. Maybe the rumors that Maybin has been slow to pick up on the defense, and his struggles against the run are starting to appear more than just a learning curve. If that’s the case, then Maybin is going to have that “bust” tag firmly attached before the year is out. This whole situation really throws a kink into his fantasy value. Just speculating, but it looks like he’s going to get spot work at SLB, then rotate in at DE on passing downs. I was pretty high on Maybin’s long-term future in this league going into the season, and now I just soured a little. Short-term? If he stuck at OLB and somehow got his way into a three-down starting role (nothing but a pipe dream), he would have some redraft fantasy value as a player labeled a DL playing LB. But that’s unlikely to happen, and he dropped well down my ranking boards this week.

Rivera’s View

The Bills’ defensive game plan has been so confusing that I’ve almost thrown in the towel attempting to figure out what they’re doing most of the time.

They’re been running a version of the Cover-2 defense with Perry Fewell for the past couple of years but it seems as if Fewell left the Cover-2 manual back in Chicago.

In order to run the scheme successfully, a team needs athletic linebackers in the middle and the weak side. Paul Posluszny simply isn’t athletic enough to produce like other Cover-2 MLBs like Brian Urlacher or E.J. Henderson. Kawika Mitchell is a strong side linebacker who isn’t fast or skilled enought to play on the weak side and the other option, Keith Ellison, is a converted safety and is simply not a good football player.

The team can’t figure out how to use its best safety, Donte Whitner, and shuffle him back and forth between strong safety and free safety. Whitner has the talent to be an IDP stud but the Bills’ inability to figure out what they’re doing will hever let that happen.

Am I surprised by the Bills’ potential movement of Maybin to SLB? Nothing suprises me about that front office and coaching staff. The main problem for fantasy owners is that the Bills don’t operate a hybrid defensive scheme similar to what the Ravens and 49ers run where Terrell Suggs and Justin Smith can play LB/DE while being designated a DE in most software. If Maybin plays SLB, he’ll be designated a LB rather than DE. As Hoops said, Maybin won’t be a fantasy factor in that scenario unless he plays three downs.