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The Buffalo Bills’ 2025 season is over, putting the 2026 NFL Draft on tap. Brandon Beane and the front office will first have to handle free agency, but Bills Mafia now has nothing to look forward to until the draft rolls around in April.
Despite their perennial success over the last half-decade, the Bills have several clear roster holes that went unaddressed in the 2025 offseason. Buffalo has still not gotten Josh Allen a bona fide No. 1 receiver to work with, while its offensive line continues to be subpar in pass protection.
The Bills’ most obvious issues will be with their defense, which fell off a cliff in 2025. Bobby Babich’s unit allowed the second-fewest passing yards per game, but gave up the fifth-most rushing yards in the league.
Beane has been hit-or-miss in the draft since taking over in 2017 and now prepares for his ninth rodeo with seven picks in 2026. The Bills are not projected to receive any compensatory picks, according to an NFL.com projection in May, but those will not be officially decided until March.
Regardless of what happens in free agency, Buffalo cannot let another draft go by without addressing its clear roster needs. The Bills have to nail this upcoming draft if they ever wish to get over the playoff hump that currently has them tethered to a leash.
Many Bills fans wanted to see the team take a receiver in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft. Instead, Brandon Beane went with Kentucky cornerback Maxwell Hairston and only took one receiver in the seventh round.
Buffalo cannot afford to take the same course of action in 2026. Receiver is atop the list of positions the Bills need to address in the first round, putting Texas A&M’s KC Concepcion on the shortlist of prospects to monitor over the next three months.
The Bills do not know exactly where their first-round pick will end up yet, but it will be in the range of Concepcion, who is currently rated as the 26th-best prospect of the class by Pro Football Focus and 35th by ESPN. Concepcion is an explosive athlete and dynamic with the ball in his hands, a trait Buffalo covets. His 15.1 yards per catch ranked 24th in the FBS in 2025 among receivers with 50 or more catches.
Once Joshua Palmer and Tyrell Shavers went down, the Bills were forced to turn to scarcely used reserves, Mecole Hardman and Keon Coleman, in the playoffs. That lack of depth played a big part in their unraveling down the stretch.
If it is not a receiver, the Bills need to address their dire linebacker needs in the first round. Buffalo suffered from arguably the worst linebacking group in the league in 2025, which contributed to its finish as one of the bottom-five run defenses.
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