In the first of a three-part series, we’ll examine a scenario where the Bills and GM Brandon Beane make no trades during the 2024 NFL Draft
With the 2024 NFL Draft rapidly approaching, we’ll soon know which young players the Buffalo Bills will add to their continuing pursuit of a Super Bowl title. In a year where the Bills seem poised to transform the roster after moving on from multiple veteran mainstays, One Bills Drive could truly go in any direction with this year’s draft.
In this series, we’ll look to spark discussion and make the case for the Bills to do one of three things: either stand pat in the draft without making trades, trade down to acquire more picks, or trade up in the first round to select a particular future star. Clearly, the Bills won’t do only one of these things in real life; however, there are legitimate cases to be made for multiple avenues here, and we wanted to explore a few options in the lead-up to the NFL Draft.
Some ground rules and disclaimers before we begin. We used the draft simulator at Pro Football Network to provide a consistent, easy-to-use database on which we could base our scenarios. Obviously, none of the draft simulators available are perfect, and they each value prospects differently, so players who are available at particular spots in the draft very well may not be available at that time in reality. In the specific scenarios written about here, we only followed one strategy — so in the trade-back scenario, we did not trade up at all, and in the stand-pat scenario, we didn’t trade at all.
Finally, a note on how I valued Buffalo’s areas of need. I approached this exercise knowing that the Bills absolutely need a stud wide receiver, someone capable of starting right away. I also know that the Bills need a starting safety, rotational pieces at defensive end and defensive tackle, and a center. Those are my top five needs, and they come in that exact order. I valued a safety higher than the defensive linemen because of the way the Bills rotate along the defensive line — and the way they don’t rotate in the defensive secondary.
And with that, here’s our first scenario, which includes a world in which general manager Brandon Beane makes exactly zero trades in the 2024 NFL Draft.
The Case for Standing Pat
Making no trades isn’t in Brandon Beane’s nature, but in some ways, it might not be a terrible strategy this year. Patience is a virtue, and if the Bills are patient, there is a world where they’ll still add 10 quality football players to their roster this year. Yes, 10 seems like a lot of rookies to expect to make the roster, but given Buffalo’s salary cap situation for the 2024 season, it isn’t the worst plan to assume that there will be multiple low-cost, high-upside athletes who can fill in the back end of the roster.
This also doesn’t mean that the Bills won’t be able to find immediate starters at the spots where they currently pick in the draft. The Bills can still search for high-impact players at No. 28 and No. 60, and given their needs elsewhere, they can fill in the rest of those spots early on Day 3 of the draft.
If the Bills trade up in the draft, they’ll secure a coveted player, but they’ll also limit the number of rookies they can add to the roster. If the Bills trade down, they can add quantity to the roster, but it’s likely that they’ll do so at the expense of quality players. This is the “happy medium” scenario, the one where Buffalo can still address their biggest needs while also keeping draft capital for the future.
The Draft
The Buffalo Bills have 10 draft choices this year, and in pretending to be general manager Brandon Beane for this scenario, I used each of those picks in the exact spot the Bills were slated to select. If that were to happen in reality, it would be the first time in Beane’s career that it did. Thinking about it in that way, that almost makes this piece the least likely one to happen in reality.
We’ll start by looking at the first round. Knowing that I was waiting until No. 28 and hoping for a wide receiver, I wasn’t too excited about this. To make matters worse, five wideouts were drafted in the first 24 picks — Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers, Rome Odunze, Brian Thomas Jr., and Keon Coleman. Given the way the board fell, I broke my own rule, which is that a wideout has to be the pick at No. 28, to select who I thought was the best player on the board: Iowa safety Cooper DeJean.
Yes, I made the pick with multiple receivers I covet still on the board. And actually, that’s why I did it: I wanted to see if one of that “next-tier” group would fall to me at pick No. 60. That group includes Ladd McConkey, Xavier Worthy, Troy Franklin, Xavier Legette, and Adonai Mitchell, though not necessarily in that order. With all of the firepower on the board at wideout, I decided to go with DeJean to solidify the safety spot early on in the draft. He is a fantastic athlete who can help at free safety, at corner, at punt returner, at gunner on special teams — really, he’s the kind of player this coaching staff covets. After selecting him, I waited and hoped.
In the second round, most of the aforementioned wideouts were selected prior to my pick at No. 60. And, while I feared that all of them would be gone, one of my top remaining wideouts was available, and I pounced. With Buffalo’s pick in the second round, I selected wide receiver Xavier Legette from South Carolina. Legette reminds me a lot of DK Metcalf in the sense that he’s thought to be a little tight in his route-running, but he is a physical specimen who can bully defensive backs at the catch point. He’d be a great complement to Buffalo’s current receiver group.
I went into the draft wanting to address wide receiver and safety with those first two choices, and I felt pretty great adding a player like Legette all the way down at No. 60 overall. Now, there may be some people out there who would rather the Bills address the receiver position first, drafting someone like Franklin or Mitchell, and then addressing the safety position in the second round with Utah’s Cole Bishop. In another simulation, that very well may have been the direction I went, too. This time, though, I went with DeJean first and hoped for a great wideout to fall to me in the second round. The strategy worked here.
Without a third-round choice, we skip straight to round four, where the Bills pick at No. 128 and No. 133. I was really hoping for a defensive end here, and the apple of my eye was Houston Christian’s Jalyx Hunt. A 6’4” 250-pound athletic specimen who began his college career as a safety, Hunt would be a great rotational piece for the Bills. Alas, he was gone when I picked at No. 128, so I instead decided to bolster the offense by selecting Tennessee running back Jaylen Wright. Then, I opted to help the defensive secondary again at pick No. 133, taking a big, physical cornerback in Notre Dame’s Cam Hart.
The strategy there was simple: The Bills headed into this offseason knowing that they needed to increase the overall athleticism of the roster. They’re thin behind James Cook, and I feel like Jaylen Wright has the potential to be the best running back in this draft. He’s lightning-fast, having run a 4.38-second 40-yard dash at the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine, and he’s built well to absorb punishment in a timeshare at running back. Do I think he’ll really be there in the fourth round? No, I don’t. But if I’m Brandon Beane and Wright is there at No. 128, I’m sprinting the the podium to take him, as he adds another breakaway weapon for quarterback Josh Allen to utilize.
In adding Hart, I gave head coach Sean McDermott something he loves: a plus-athlete with size and strength in the secondary. New defensive coordinator Bobby Babich doesn’t need a starter on the outside, but a team can never have enough cornerbacks, and with veteran Dane Jackson moving on this offseason, adding a 6’3” corner with 4.5-speed can only help.
In the fifth round, I really went to work. The Bills have three picks in this round, and I felt like I nailed all of them. At No. 144 overall, I selected another wide receiver in UCF’s Javon Baker. If this were to be the real Bills’ draft, that would mean that the team would go into the season with a receiver room that included Khalil Shakir, Curtis Samuel, Xavier Legette, Javon Baker, Mack Hollins, Justin Shorter, Andy Isabella, and K.J. Hamler. I’ll take it. With our next two picks (No. 160 and No. 163), I addressed the defensive line depth by adding Ole Miss defensive end Cedric Johnson and Baylor defensive tackle Gabe Hall, respectively.
Strengthening the trenches was the theme of the sixth round, as well, and I double-dipped at both the defensive tackle and the defensive end positions. At pick No. 200, I nabbed Northern Iowa defensive tackle Khristian Boyd. Four picks later, I took defensive end Zion Tupuola-Fetui out of Washington State. Here, I prioritized athleticism over sheer production, as I trust the coaching staff to mold these players into usable contributors. Especially given the free-agent signings along the defensive line, no rookie is going to need to come in and play more than 35-50% of the snaps for Buffalo this year, and even those estimates might be high. The only way one of these four would exceed that snap count is if they’d earned it or if there were a wild rash of injuries.
For my last choice, I decided to address the hole on the depth chart at center. I took a project — Florida’s Kingsley Eguekun — at No. 248 overall. He lacks functional strength, but if given a year or two in a professional weightlifting program, there’s no telling how much strength he can add. What Eguekun does well that can’t be taught, however, is fight: the man is extremely competitive, and he’s also great on pulls and traps. That fits right in with offensive coordinator Joe Brady’s run-game design.
So, after running a scenario where the Bills didn’t make a single trade, the potential draft haul for this season looked like this:
- Cooper DeJean, DB, Iowa (No. 28)
- Xavier Legette, WR, South Carolina (No. 60)
- Jaylen Wright, RB, Tennessee (No. 128)
- Cam Hart, CB, Notre Dame (No. 133)
- Javon Baker, WR, UCF (No. 144)
- Cedric Johnson, DE, Ole Miss (No. 160)
- Gabe Hall, DT, Baylor (No. 163)
- Khristian Boyd, DT, Northern Iowa (No. 200)
- Zion Tupuola-Fetui, DE, Washington State (No. 204)
- Kingsley Eguekun, C, Florida (No. 248)
Alright, fellow Bills fans, the moment has arrived. How do we feel about a world where the team doesn’t make a move in the draft? Would the exact haul above be one you’d be happy about? Where would your priorities lie when putting together the draft board? Let’s discuss.