The Buffalo Bills signed two interior offensive linemen with starting experience last week, bringing Austin Corbett and Lloyd Cushenberry into a room that retained starting center Connor McGovern to a four-year, $52 million contract before the start of free agency in March. If the Buffalo free agency/draft trend holds and is proven to be a Brandon Beane strategy and not a Sean McDermott strategy, Bills Mafia should probably turn their attention on first or second-round prospects in the defensive
front seven.
The Bills came into the offseason with needs at wide receiver, interior offensive line, edge rusher, defensive line, linebacker, and safety (order them how you like) apart from more niche needs like punter, backup quarterback, and punt returner. They traded for D.J. Moore from the Chicago Bears, giving their second-round pick to Moore’s former squad in exchange for the talented veteran wide receiver and a fifth-round pick. They signed two safeties with starting experience in C.J. Garder-Johnson and Geno Stone. They signed the recently-released Bradley Chubb (previously of the Miami Dolphins). After the above-mentioned interior offensive line signings last week, there are only two positions yet to be addressed: defensive line and linebacker.
Could the team still draft a receiver at 26 overall if a player like Texas A&M’s K.C. Conception was available? Could they make a move there for an edge rusher like Malachi Lawrence from UCF or R Mason Thomas from Oklahoma? Absolutely they could. But there’s been a trend with the Bills where they’d left a need unaddressed in free agency, telegraphed their first pick, and then immediately went and picked a player at that position anyway high in the draft.
They did it the year they drafted cornerback Kaiir Elam out of Florida. Despite telling us that they were comfortable with Dane Jackson in the CB2 position, they traded up two spots in the first round to select Elam. (They also drafted Christian Benford in the sixth round of the same draft, who promptly became the Kyle Williams to Elam’s John McCargo and has since become a highly paid and highly effective starting cornerback.) They did it the year when Gregory Rousseau was selected in the first round as well. Mario Addison and Jerry Hughes were aging out and the team had seen little from A.J. Epenesa to that point. They had signed no defensive linemen to a contract over $1.5m that season. Sure enough, they devoted their first AND second-round picks to the defensive line that year (Rousseau and Boogie Basham). They did it again when they traded out the first round and picked Keon Coleman with the 33rd overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft. The Bills signed wide receiver Curtis Samuel to a three-year, $24 million contract, but they had traded away their number one wide receiver in Stefon Diggs shortly thereafter. Wide receiver was widely believed to still be a notable need for the team entering night one of that draft.
The credibility of production that D.J. Moore brings compared to Curtis Samuel means that while plenty of people (myself included) wouldn’t turn down a playmaking wide receiver with the Bills first pick, the complete lack of defensive line moves, combined with only one edge rusher and no linebacker additions to this point, strongly suggests that if the tendency above is a Brandon Beane special and was not somehow heavily influenced by former head coach Sean McDermott, the probability leans toward the Bills selecting a front seven defensive player with their first pick. The wide receiver need could be considered crossed off in pencil, rather than in pen. The same would go for the safety need. The stance would hold true for interior offensive line: the team has bodies with starting, productive experience and an acceptable floor in positions that they (and we) deemed as needs prior to free agency. Edge rusher may still count as a need; while the signing of Bradley Chubb gives the team a high-motor, powerful and technical pass rusher, the team’s pass rush was so poor at the end of last season without blitzing that, when combined with the fact that Michael Hoecht is coming off an Achilles tear, the position can still be considered a need. The Bills could have incredibly high opinions of T.J. Sanders and Deone Walker as starters with Ed Oliver on the defensive line, but they haven’t historically put that much hope in previous Day 1/2 picks on the defensive line when headed into their sophomore seasons with limited or no sample size of strong production.
So with all this, the biggest needs remain defensive line, edge rusher, and linebacker (not necessarily in that order).
We’ll see if history holds, but I’m certainly devoting a lot of my own attention in those directions as we enter the final few weeks before the 2026 NFL Draft.
…and that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive and look for new episodes of “The Bruce Exclusive” every Thursday on the Rumblings Cast Network — see more in my LinkTree!
