It was wide receiver or bust for the Buffalo Bills even before the season ended.
Analysts, fans and reporters either wanted or thought the Bills should be in the receiver business in the NFL draft and that was prior to trading Stefon Diggs earlier this month. On top of that, this year’s receiver class was projected to be one of the best and deepest offered by college football in years.
There were calls for the Bills to trade up, with many supporting an idea to give up two first-round picks to move into the top-10 or take a receiver with their first and second picks. In the end, Bills general manager Brandon Beane didn’t even want to give up a second-round pick to jump ahead.
It’s because the Bills clearly view receivers like most of the NFL teams: important but not vital. There was enough proof long before the draft, but the Bills put it on display again, disregarding the need to move up, and instead, trading back to get the guy they wanted in Florida State’s Keon Coleman.
“Our board was getting thin as we went down and we just didn’t want to take a chance,” Beane said Friday. “If we could have gone back one or something like that and still thought we could have gotten Keon, maybe would have done that but didn’t want to chance it at this point.”
The Bills weren’t alone, because no one made big moves to take a receiver in the first round nor do teams consistently do that for a receiver. A team has traded two first-round picks to move up for a receiver three times in 30 years.
Instead of taking Brian Thomas Jr., the player many thought the Bills would trade up for in the teens, the Jacksonville Jaguars traded back to No. 23 and still grabbed him. Beane claimed he never tried to move up.
The Detroit Lions jumped from No. 29 to No. 24, a move that normally would have required a fourth-round pick, necessitating giving up a third instead. The price was simply too high to trade up at that juncture in the first round.
And each time a class at any position is touted as one of the best ever, it rarely lives up to the billing, with exceptions being the 1983 and 2004 quarterback classes. But for everyone of those, there’s a 1999 quarterback class that netted no Hall of Famers and three of the five first-rounders played fewer than five seasons.
The 2004 wide receiver class was highly-touted and seven were taken in the first round. While Larry Fitzgerald is headed to the Hall of Fame soon, the other six receivers — which included Bills receiver Lee Evans — combined for four 1,000-yard seasons.
The 2014 class was supposed to be even better and the Bills spent two first-round picks to move up five spots to grab the presumed best, Sammy Watkins. Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans was the only one of the five first rounders to play for the team that drafted him for more than five seasons and the only one still playing at a high level.
Odell Beckham Jr. was a star early, Sammy Watkins seemed headed in that direction and Brandin Cooks had several strong seasons to start his career, but Beckham, Cooks, Watkins and Kelvin Benjamin (another former Bill) have been traded a combined seven times.
Meanwhile, Davante Adams, Jarvis Landry and Allen Robinson are second-rounders who all had solid careers. Receivers can be found anywhere in the draft and the Bills found a guy they clearly liked and picked up draft capital in the process.
“We expressed our mutual interest and stuff like that, and pretty much it’s just like, ‘If it comes down to it, we love you, we would love to have you as our guy,’” Coleman said. “… We met again at the combine, and I went up there for my (top-30 pre-draft visit). It just was great. It was a great connection. We loved what we were doing on the board together. We got a great feel for each other and I think that ultimately played into their decision.”
Perhaps the Bills are in the mix to trade for a veteran receiver, but it certainly seems the Bills are content in going without a No. 1 receiver. Beane mentioned throughout the offseason that he wanted players who had the ability to run after the catch and they wanted to blend different skill sets.
It’s what the New England Patriots did with the majority of their Super Bowl winners. Perhaps they had a 1,000-yard guy on those teams, but rarely had a receiver — not a tight end like Rob Gronkowksi — that was widely considered a top guy.
The Kansas City Chiefs have gone through the same shift since trading Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins two seasons ago. Even after leading the league in drops, the Chiefs didn’t make a major move, adding players like Hollywood Brown and Xavier Worthy, neither of whom seem to be No. 1 receivers.
Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers became all-time great quarterbacks for the Green Bay Packers and had one first-round receiver between them. New quarterback Jordan Love doesn’t have any, but instead a stable of solid receivers at cheap prices.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Beane didn’t want to make the leap for one of the big-time receivers, considering he hadn’t taken one higher than the fourth round in his six previous drafts. That’s simply indicative of how the Bills value receivers.