Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) - It was an eventful weekend for the Buffalo Bills at the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay, as they shuffled their way around the draft board a few times before ending up with nine new players in the fold.
Of the nine players selected over the course of the weekend, the Bills ended up adding six players on the defensive side of the ball and three on the offensive side of the ball. Of the three offensive players taken by Buffalo, only one of those selections, Kaden Prather, was a wide receiver selected with their final pick in the seventh round.
Over the last couple of years, Jeremy White and Joe DiBiase have helped conduct the "wide receiver train" in Western New York, pushing for the team to select some talent at wideout, particularly near the top of the class.
While Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane can understand where Jeremy and Joe were coming from with receiver talk last year at this time, he certainly does not understand the continued chatter surrounding the position one year later.
"We just scored 30 points in-a-row for eight straight games. ... You just saw us lead the league in points. When you add all the postseason [points], no one scored more points than the Buffalo Bills, including the Super Bowl champions," said a spirited Beane during an appearance Monday on WGR. "You just saw us do it without Stefon Diggs, the same group. How is this group not better than last year's group? Our job is to score points and win games. Where do we need to get better? Defense. We did that.
"I get it, you've got to have a show. You've got to have something to bitch about. But bitching about wide receiver is one of the dumbest arguments I've heard."
Earlier this offseason, Beane was active in free agency adding at the wide receiver position, signing Joshua Palmer to a three-year contract worth $29 million. Along with that, the team managed to lock up 2022 fifth-round pick Khalil Shakir to a long-term extension after another impressive campaign in Buffalo.
Following the draft, the Bills' wide receiver room looks like this:
- Khalil Shakir
- Keon Coleman
- Joshua Palmer
- Curtis Samuel
- Laviska Shenault Jr.
- Tyrell Shavers
- Jalen Virgil
- K.J. Hamler
- Kaden Prather
Beane feels his job is not always to trot out the best receivers. When a team has a player like 2024 MVP Josh Allen under center, he feels the first thing a team has to do is protect the star quarterback.
"You can't have everything. You can't have Pro Bowl wide receivers and have a Pro Bowl offensive line, and an All-Pro quarterback and three great running backs. Sure, I'd love to play fantasy football, but there's one football. There's one ball you can give to so many people," Beane explained. "That's where I don't understand this narrative. I felt it a little bit from a couple of the reporters. Our job is to score points. It doesn't matter what receivers, what quarterback, if you score points at the level we scored, that is winning football."
While this year's class of wide receiver in the draft was not perceived to be as strong as years past, the Bills still had opportunities to draft a wideout leading up to the seventh-round selection of Prather.
"As you get to a certain point on the board, you're going, 'Alright, how does this guy help?' If there was a guy, when we picked it the first-round that we're like, 'Yes, this guy's dynamic, he's going to fit here,' we would have turned it in," Beane said. "And the second round, we would have done it. We went up and got T.J. [Sanders], we weren't dodging receiver. We were going in, 'Hey, we had the guys stacked where it was.' I didn't think it was the deepest class, I'll say that, but if it would have worked out, I would have gladly done it. But I'm trying to make sure we got the best team, not the best receiving core."
Back in 2023, the Bills drafted Dalton Kincaid with the 25th overall selection, trading up a couple of spots to select the coveted receiving tight end. Through two seasons in Buffalo, Kincaid has played in 29 games, recording 117 catches on 166 targets for 1,121 yards and four touchdowns.
While his 2024 campaign was a bit of a step back in production, Beane strongly feels there's more that Kincaid can offer the Bills offense.
"Just the way the Kansas City Chiefs count Travis Kelce, or some of these other teams count their guys; Detroit counts on Sam LaPorta, George Kittle [in San Francisco], you name them. Those types of tight ends that are receiving threat, those guys count in your mix too. You can throw them the ball."
Aside from the wide receiver chatter, Beane did some work to address the defensive side of the ball over the three days of the 2025 NFL Draft. This included bolstering the defensive front with a pair of defensive tackles drafted (T.J. Sanders and Deone Walker), as well as defensive end Landon Jackson.
"You love the versatility piece," Beane said of the defensive tackle additions. "Sometimes you do have a guy, where you're not going to play this guy when you can help it on third down. But we joke internally here, the offense is allowed to pass on first, so it's actually one of the most strategic things to do. Pass on first down, if you've got the arsenal to do that. So we want guys that are not just, what we call, a 'two-down slug in the middle.' That's what I think these guys give you. They've got the versatility to stop the run, but also to get after the pass. I think it's almost like Deone is more like a 1-to-3, but he's got more rush than most ones. And T.J. is probably more 3-to-1. He's more rushed than anchor."
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