With all Bills-related eyes now turned to the offseason, the set belonging to Buffalo general manager Brandon Beane also has his set that way, too.
There’s free agency to consider, but the hot-button topic is the NFL draft. The 2020 one has the Bills picked at No. 22 overall. While a playoff team, the Bills have issues to address.
Of those, the Bills could stand to improve at wide receiver. Beane held his end of season press conference and touched on a ton of topics. On Wednesday, he spoke again on WGR-550 Radio and touched on one topic he didn’t get to the day prior, the 2020 NFL draft class of wide receivers.
Many draft analysts call the wideout class a deep one. There’s Alabama’s Jerry Jeudy, Oklahoma’s CeeDee Lamb, Clemson’s Tee Higgins and Colorado’s Laviska Shenault, who’s of course already a Buffalo.
Beane added on his latest interview that he agrees with the draft gurus. These guys are good.
“It does look strong right now,” Beane said. “It does look like a pretty good class right now on paper.”
But that’s the key for Beane and the Bills: on paper.
Since Beane and Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott joined the organization, they’ve wanted to acquire talent and players who are the “right fit.” The culture, if you will.
While agreeing there’s plenty of skills to admire, Beane spent much of his thoughts on the wideout group explaining how the fit is just as important as talent.
“The one thing I would say is, we haven’t had a chance to meet these young men. It’s important to find out how smart they are. Some of them, you see the skill set, but maybe they have a limited ability to run a full route tree. So how quickly are they going to come in and develop?
“Talent wise? Physical skill set? I do agree, you see what people are talking about, some of these flash players. The next step for us about that position will be to get around these young men and find out their knowledge of the game. We’ve been doing the background on… what type of kids these are and do they love ball? Do they… are they pros? Have they been in trouble? Have they been suspended for marijuana or things like that? There are some guys that are talented that I’m aware of that do have some things that we already know we have to look into. Sometimes that will shrink the field for us,” Beane said.
Based on his explanation, a player that comes to mind is receiver DK Metcalf. The current rookie with the Seahawks had that exact knock on his resume. Big, strong, talented, but can’t run routes. But as he showed this past weekend in his team’s Wild Card round win, he certainly learned how to play at the NFL level. That’s what Beane and his scouting staff have to decide on the upcoming class of playmakers.
The Bills haven’t selected a wide reciever with a first-round pick since trading up for Sammy Watkins in 2014.
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