Maybe you don't like Buffalo's choice of quarterback EJ Manuel, but I can tell you in two words why it makes sense.

Joe. Flacco.

The Ravens chose Flacco with the 18th pick of the 2008 draft when logic said they could have found him in the middle of the second round. But logic had nothing to do with it. The weather did.

Like Buffalo, the Ravens were looking for a quarterback who could overcome miserable conditions, and they believed Flacco could be that guy after watching him work out at the 2008 Senior Bowl.

"It was Thursday at practice," Ravens assistant GM Eric DeCosta told me before Super Bowl XLVII, "and we went to the morning practice. The weather was very bad, windy and rainy, and all quarterbacks had trouble throwing except for Joe.

"I remember all of us sitting up there in a huddle, under the roof, thinking: Nothing is going to faze this guy. If we have to play in Pittsburgh or Cleveland in December, it's not going to bother him."

Three months later, the Ravens drafted Flacco, and the rest you know.

I'm not saying the Bills found themselves another Joe Flacco, but I am saying I understand their thinking. They don't have to play in Pittsburgh or Cleveland in December. They have to play in Buffalo. And they play there seven times next season.

So you'd better have someone who can handle miserable weather, and that someone might be Manuel.

At least that's what Buffalo hopes, with the Bills doing considerable research on bad-weather quarterbacks before targeting him. Coach Doug Marrone mentioned the weather when he explained why Manuel appealed to him, saying experience told him the Bills needed someone who was big and had large hands to handle the elements.

Manuel fits both descriptions.

But there was more. Manuel won over his future team with an impressive workout on a day punctuated by wind and thunderstorms -- a story reminiscent of what happened with Flacco and the Ravens on a gray and blustery March day so miserable that then-offensive coordinator Cam Cameron was reluctant to make the trip to the University of Delaware.

"When you say you want to see a quarterback from Delaware," said DeCosta, "you're not expecting much. It's not like a quarterback from USC. The field was unlined. The grass was not cut. And Joe brought his own footballs.

"Then he started to throw, and the ball never hit the ground. I don't think he threw an incompletion. At one point, Cam looks over to me and says, 'Hey, Eric. Now I know why you wanted me to come over and see this kid.'"

The Ravens gambled on Flacco and won big. In his five pro seasons, he hasn't failed to make the playoffs, has won at least one postseason game each year, reached three conference championship games, was the MVP of Super Bowl XLVII and produced a gaudy 9-4 playoff record -- including 7-4 on the road.

Oh, yeah. He just scored a megabucks contract, too.

Flacco is making the Ravens look smart now, but they were criticized for a reach when they made him their first choice five years ago. Ironically, like Buffalo, Baltimore bailed out of the eighth overall pick to acquire him, first moving down to the 26th spot before trading back up to 18.

"We made a decision to draft him in the first round because we thought he was a first-round talent," DeCosta said. "It was an easy decision to make. We knew he had value around the league, and we had to assess the league -- and taking a chance of waiting around to the second or third [round] was too much of gamble.

"The downside was that we might not get him. So we moved from 26th to 18th. We knew we were taking Joe higher than [most people] thought, but we had conviction about him."

There's a lesson there.

Manuel doesn't have to be Joe Flacco to prove Buffalo right, but he must solidify the quarterback position, get the club out of reverse and push it forward. The Bills have been through 10 starting quarterbacks the past 13 seasons, haven't made the playoffs since 1999 and haven't had a winning year since 2004.

They needed to shake things up. They just did.