The first round of the NFL draft played right into the hands of the Buffalo Bills despite the fact the team had no first-round pick after the Stefon Diggs trade.
The draft started out as predicted with generational talents in quarterback Joe Burrow and defensive end Chase Young going first and second overall, but things took a turn with the picks of Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Herbert for the fifth and sixth picks. Tagovailoa was mocked anywhere from the bottom of the first round up to the second pick overall, variance explained by worries that his injuries would persist from his college career into his time as a professional. He has suffered lower leg and hand injuries, as well as a severe hip injury in November 2019 that ended his time with the University of Alabama.
To see him go to the Miami Dolphins without the team trading up should make it clear to NFL fans just how serious the worries over his injuries are. Tagovailoa dominated in his college career, to the point that Herbert seemed like barely a consolation prize for the Los Angeles Chargers.
This leads into the main problem with the draft; the complete lack of understanding of what makes a player successful in the league.
Quarterbacks with huge accuracy problems and unproven track records like Herbert and, sorry to say this, Josh Allen of the Bills, should never be picked over players with proven track records of success like Tagovailoa or Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson.
This isn’t just for quarterbacks, as evidenced with the pick of speedster Henry Ruggs III of Alabama over players with much more proven success such as his teammate Jerry Jeudy and University of Oklahoma’s CeeDee Lamb. This is a classic case of looking the part as opposed to playing the part, as Jeudy and Lamb did in their dominant college years.
For the Bills, this meant that they had the chance to sit back and wait for a talented player to fall into their laps and, with their first pick in the second round, that is exactly what happened with the selection of edge defender A.J. Epenesa at the 54th pick overall.
Epenesa was widely considered a first-round talent and sat at 20th overall in draft board rankings by both Sportingnews and Pro Football Focus. He also racked up impressive stats over his three-year career with the Iowa Hawkeyes, as evidenced by his 26.5 sacks and 36 tackles for loss that he managed while only being a full-time starter in his final year.
Whether it was because of poor combine numbers or injury concerns, teams decided to pass him up. This trend continued with the Bills’ selection of University of Utah running back Zack Moss in the third round.
Moss was the victim of a mediocre 40-yard dash with a 4.65 second finish—putting him in the low tier for running backs. Moss, however, has game speed and elusiveness on par with few in the draft.
The Bills had to be thanking their lucky stars to get a guy who can run over and through defenders like Moss does.
While the picks of wide receivers Gabriel Davis out of University of Central Florida in the fourth round and Oregon State’s Isaiah Hodgins in the sixth round were designed to fill the glaring need for size in Buffalo’s wide receiver corps—considering that Hodgins is 6’4” and Davis is 6’2”—the pick of University of Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm in the fifth round marked another strong value selection.
Fromm did nothing but win in Georgia and managed to beat out both 2021 top prospect Justin Fields and 2020 fourth round pick Jacob Eason for the school’s starting position. He was consistently able to match up with and outsmart the best defenses in college football considering he spent much of his time playing SEC teams.
For Fromm to fall to the Bills shows the value NFL teams place on intangibles and potential versus production in college, as Fromm likely would have been a much higher pick if he was 6’5” and equipped with a rocket arm.
The Bills rounded out the draft with kicker Tyler Bass from Georgia Southern University in the sixth round and University of Pittsburgh cornerback Dane Jackson in the seventh round in what was an exceptional draft overall.