I’m not known as someone who’s militantly positive about the personnel moves made under Buffalo Bills general manager (and now president of football operations) Brandon Beane. The receipts are there, whether in written or audio form. I’m not going to defend every pick as being great and every signing as being solid, and I think that absent the Josh Allen grand slam (mixed sports metaphors are the best), the decisions have largely been an assorted bag for the last almost-decade; some good, some not-so-good.
But when news broke this past Saturday night that the Cincinnati Bengals had acquired stud defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II from the New York Giants in exchange for the 10th overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, I didn’t spend more than a brief second being bummed out that my preferred team failed to land the multiple-time Pro Bowler before just shrugging my shoulders.
“I mean, what did you want Beane to do?”
When I’m evaluating Buffalo’s personnel maneuvers, whether during the offseason of while the bullets are flying during an increasingly long regular season, “what they should have done” is always a subset of “what they could have done.” If I can’t reasonably outline an argument that the Bills could have made a specific move, I can’t in good faith criticize them for not making it.
At the regular-season trade deadline, listeners to “The Bruce Exclusive” and my followers on social media have heard/read the same question for years: “What moves that were made would you have wanted the Bills to make?” We have to establish first the likely boundaries for what a team could have done, and the easiest way to do that is to evaluate what was done. “We should have traded a fifth-round pick for Bob Smith” is not a useful criticism if we don’t know whether Bob Smith was available to be traded for a fifth-round pick, and the only way we know for sure that Bob Smith could have been had for a fifth-round pick is if Bob Smith was traded for a fifth-round pick or lesser compensation.
Is it a foolproof method of establishing the boundaries of what was possible? No. Maybe Bob Smith could have been had for a fifth-round pick, and Buffalo offered a fifth-round pick, but Bob Smith would have rather played for the Miami Dolphins and so Bob’s team (with both offers being similar) elected to send Bob to South Beach. Maybe Miami just didn’t want to trade inside the division unless the compensation was markedly better from Buffalo. But, without being in the actual rooms themselves listening in to phone calls between teams like we’re watching the classic (and oh-so-realistic) film “Draft Day”, we have to choose our available personnel maneuvers from some other sampling than “literally anything.”
We know that Dexter Lawrence was available for draft capital equaling the 10th overall pick in this year’s draft. We know the Bills do not have the 10th overall pick in this year’s draft to offer. So what could Buffalo’s front office have offered to equal or best the offer from the Bengals?
Under the Rich Hill draft value chart, the 10th-overall pick is worth 369 points. The 26th overall pick is worth 223 points (about 60%). When consider the devaluation of future year draft picks, even the Bills’ first this year and their first next year is likely not enough to match the value of the 10th-overall pick.
You’re likely looking at 1.26 this year, the Bills’ 2027 first, and also a 2026 fifth just to get the conversation started. Even then, in a class considered by some to be thin at impact players compared with years past, the Giants very easily could have taken the premium pick over the collection of lesser picks, forcing even more compensation from the Bills to make up for the lack of an available top-10 pick.
Bills content creator UberHansen built his own proprietary draft chart titled “UberDV” using data from the past few years and came up with the same conclusion:
I believe strongly that a player like Dexter Lawrence is exactly who/what the Bills’ defense needs at a position they currently lack even an above-average starter. However, I can’t in good faith offer strong criticism to Brandon Beane for not making a deal that I’m not sure he could have made for a price I’d support.
…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!
