Bills’ Kyle Williams named among most valuable draft picks of century

Buffalo Bills DT Kyle Williams was named one of the NFL’s best draft picks of the entire 21st century by The Ringer.

Well, you know Tom Brady is leading this list. That’s not surprising. But The Ringer did include one draft pick by the Buffalo Bills in their 32 most valuable draft picks made by NFL teams in the 21st century.

That drafted player by the Bills played his entire career in Western New York: defensive tackle Kyle Williams.

Williams, who retired following the 2018 season, will often remind you he was a first-overall pick. But in the fifth-round of the 2006 NFL Draft. The pick was originally viewed as a throwaway pick when the Bills sent star wide receiver Eric Moulds to the Texans. Instead, the pick turned into Williams.

The 13-year pro landed at No. 23 overall on The Ringer’s list:

Kyle Williams is one of those guys we feel obligated to mention whenever possible, just to make sure his career doesn’t get lost to history. Williams fell through the draft cracks for the same reason most defensive tackles do. At 6-foot-1 and 298 pounds, he was undersized for a traditional 3-technique, but his college numbers (4.5-plus sacks in each of his final three seasons at LSU) showed he had plenty of upside as a one-gap tackle. Williams played 13 seasons for Bills and tallied at least five sacks in six of them. That’s tremendous production—and staying power—for a guy Buffalo drafted 16 spots after the Patriots took Stephen Gostkowski.

While Williams’s career could potentially be lost to league-wide history like most players see happen to theirs, he won’t be forgotten in Buffalo any time soon. Williams spent his entire career in the red, white, and blue, most of which went without a playoff berth. Still, he never left.

But it was all made worthwhile when the Bills cracked the postseason in his second-to-last season in 2017. The first image that comes to mind in the minds of Bills fans when Buffalo made the playoffs after a near two-decade drought was Williams celebrating with his family and teammates in the Bills locker room. Still gives one chills watching:

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