Buffalo Rumblings
Does the Buffalo Bills’ time commitment in this year’s prospects suggest anything about their draft desires?
I’ve been doing this long enough where I think I can cut to the chase with the premise. Despite vast amounts of wealth, all humans are equal when it comes to the resource of time. Not even Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark are rich enough to get more of that. Wait. Scratch that last one. Though his time travel did come with complications.
Anyway, teams like the Buffalo Bills only have so much time to allocate meeting with possible draft picks. With little time to waste, perhaps the time spent can give us a clue about where they’re leaning.
The reason for looking at trends by school is that there could be some merit to talking to a player’s teammates or competitors. Generally speaking, it’s been tough to glean much from the data on this so let’s give some quick notes on it for 2024.
Of the 45 players known to have met with the Bills at least once, there were 35 different schools represented. Only seven schools had more than one player who met with Buffalo. Most of those were limited to two players. Only Florida State and Texas had more than two players represented. Four from Florida State and three from Texas. Do I have any thoughts on this?
It’s still tough to take much from this. The repeat visits with both schools could simply be due to their being successful programs with plenty of talent to look at. The four visits with Florida State players, for instance, covered three different positions (two for Texas).
Some quick facts:
This is quite straightforward — and remember my personal draft philosophy is BPFU. That stands for “Best Player For Us.” Draft picks have to fit the team. An incredible player who won’t work on your team isn’t actually incredible for you. Meeting players can help determine who will and won’t be a fit. Repeat visits should indicate that Buffalo saw something they liked. Why waste time on a player who was unimpressive the first time around?
Anyway, here’s a chart.
This chart shows the number of players Buffalo has met with per position. I don’t think anyone is shocked that wide receiver tops the list, but it’s pretty glaring with the visual. Want it to be more glaring? Let’s look at the same chart, but count the total number of visits by position, not just unique players.
Of course the main point is that wide receivers accounted for 17 of the total 58 meetings....
