Why the Bills need to draft a wide receiver in first or second round

ORLANDO - Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott was talking about corduroy pants the other day at the NFL owners’ meetings at the posh Ritz Carlton Grande Lakes.

Seriously, he was making a point about how the game is constantly evolving and you have to stay ahead of the trends in order to have success, and what better way to explain that than to reference corduroy pants, an apparel choice that has certainly evolved and devolved through the years?

“It’s changing offensively, right?” McDermott said when he was asked about the Bills’ need to continue adding weapons for Josh Allen beyond the signing of free agent wide receivers Curtis Samuel and Mack Hollins. “It’s like wearing corduroys. Every couple years, it’s like are corduroys in or are they not? And so … actually you should be wearing them when they’re not in to really be ahead of the curve. Right?”

Right. I think?

Sign up for the Bills Blast newsletter Delivered straight to your inbox, additional Bills analysis, insight, stats, quotes and team history from Sal Maiorana.

“I think that’s kind of what we want to do,” he continued. “And we have to make sure we do that both roster wise and schematics as well. That’s where you find advantages. The margins are so small in this league, that you’ve got to be … when people are expecting you to zig, you’ve got to zag and vice versa. We’ve just got to be ahead of that.”

If you require a translation, the whole point of this was that in Samuel, Hollins, Stefon Diggs, Khalil Shakir, and maybe K.J. Hamler and Justin Shorter, the Bills have a potentially very productive wide receiver room. But they need more, and here’s why.

Diggs will be 31 in November, it seems like he’s starting to go into gradual decline, and there’s a possibility the Bills could move on from him after the 2024 season, even though the dead cap hit would be steep. If not 2024, certainly after 2025. Hollins is on a one-year contract and he’s likely nothing more than a special teams contributor as opposed to a reliable offensive option.

Shakir is a solid player but not a gamebreaker or elite difference maker, and he can become a free agent after 2025. Like Shakir, Samuel is not a guy defenses need to be game-planning specifically for. His contract is for three years, but it is escapable after 2025 if need be. And Hamler and Shorter are unproven commodities at this point.

“I’m confident with the guys in that room, all of the guys in that room,” McDermott said.

And that’s great, but general manager Brandon Beane has to address the position early in the NFL Draft, if not in the first round, definitely in the second round. As McDermott said, the Bills have to stay ahead of the curve roster wise, and that must include tapping into a rich receiver class and setting in place a foundational player for the next four or five years, a younger version of what Diggs has been since he came to Buffalo in 2020.

Now that the owners’ meetings have wrapped, it’s full speed ahead over the next month on the draft as Beane and his personnel staff continue to watch tape, bring players in for visits at One Bills Drive, attend pro days, and build their board.

If he stays put at No. 28 in the first round, the consensus top four receivers in this class - Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers, Rome Odunze and Brian Thomas - will all be gone, and trading up to get one would be a costly venture because the Bills’ would be starting so deep in the first round. Not many teams will want to go that far back. Here’s where that third-round compensatory pick the Bills thought they were getting might have come in handy in a trade package.

There is a group of players who might still be there such as Keon Coleman, Ladd McConkey, and Adonai Mitchell, all of whom have been pegged as late first or early second round picks.

But if a run on receivers happens in the teens and early 20s which is entirely possible, Beane’s best move would be to hold off and not over-draft a receiver. He should pivot to picking the best defensive lineman - edge or tackle - who happens to be there at 28, then get his receiver in the second round at No. 60, or perhaps a little sooner if he can find a partner that allows him to trade up in the second round.

In fact, that might be the best strategy, picking a defensive lineman first and then taking a swing at second-round graded receivers like Troy Franklin, Roman Wilson, Xavier Worthy, Xavier Legette, Jermaine Burton, Ja’Lynn Polk or Devontez Walker, among many.

“You gotta be smart, and you want to be versatile, you start there,” Beane said when asked what he looks for most in receivers. “That’s how we’re going to value them. We talked about a Curtis Samuel and the value that he brings - the more ways that we can line you up in different spots, whether you’re inside or outside. Are you smart enough to play more than one spot? Those are high value things that in this offense we think are very important.

“And then obviously, you gotta be able to catch the ball and (run after catch), red zone. What is your skill set? Does it offset what we already have with the guys we have? Just giving Joe Brady another weapon, another piece, always looking for how we can attack defenses and giving Joe as many options as possible.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out every other Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Why the Bills need to draft a wide receiver in first or second round