The Buffalo Bills head into the 2025 NFL Draft with three picks in the first two rounds (but no third-round pick). That should allow them to get three impact players. However, using the Pro Football Network 2025 NFL mock draft simulator with trades, Buffalo turns those three picks into two, which seems perfectly on-brand for general manager Brandon Beane.
The PFN 2025 NFL mock draft simulator may use an algorithm to determine how the draft will play out for each team, but in this simulation, it seems like the site is perfectly channeling what Beane will do in real life.
Since Beane took over for Doug Whaley just after the 2017 NFL Draft, he’s traded the Bills’ first-round pick nearly every season. Here’s a look at the moves he’s made.
Obviously, these trades have worked out in varying ways. Trading up to snag the 2024 NFL MVP was an all-time great move, while moving up two spots to take Elam, who was destroyed in the AFC Championship Game by Patrick Mahomes, was a bad move.
The verdict on the rest of these trades varies, and the jury is still out on some.
The point is, though, that smart GMs don’t give away draft capital to target specific players in the draft because the process is such a crapshoot, and even the best talent evaluators are about 50/50 on success rate. The best GMs know that the more bites of the apple you get, the better chance you have of hitting a gem.
That’s simply not how Beane operates, and it may be why he’s only hit on one Pro Bowl alternate (Dawson Knox) since his first Bills draft.
So, Beane doing exactly what he seems to do every year in the Bills’ three-round PFN 2025 NFL mock draft simulator with trades is so perfect.
In a vacuum, this is not a bad pick by any means. The Bills drafted Cole Bishop in the second round last year, and he had a solid rookie campaign, playing 358 (34%) defensive snaps for the team.
However, who can forget Xavier Worthy — the wide receiver Beane gave to the Chiefs with a trade in the 2024 NFL Draft — wrestling a red zone catch away from the safety in the second quarter of the AFC Championship Game?
Still, Bishop is in line to start next year, but Damar Hamlin is a free agent, and Taylor Rapp...