With only one week to go until the 2025 NFL Draft, plenty of questions hover over the Buffalo Bills and what they’ll do with their ten picks this year.
In a bit of a tradition to the draft day buildup, I wanted to answer some of your most pressing questions, mailbag style. Draft day trades? Roster theory? Where could they be leaning this year? It’s all part of today’s Q&A session.
Advertisement
And one of the most popular topics across the mailbag? The future of running back James Cook. Let’s start there and work our way through some of the other pertinent Bills draft questions.
Eric W.: “Joe, does Cook get dealt on April 24th?”
I don’t think he will get traded, Eric. I suppose it’s a never-say-never situation, but them moving their top running back before a championship push in 2025 does not appear to be a part of the plan. I’m sure someone could counter saying, “Well, they traded Stefon Diggs last year,” though that was an entirely different situation. Diggs was moved as part of an effort to vastly improve their 2025 cap situation, along with freshening up their offensive structure. Cook’s removal from the roster wouldn’t give them any cap savings in 2026, and he is a significant piece of the puzzle they want to build on from 2024 heading into the 2025 season.
Plus, the Bills haven’t ruled out a long-term deal with Cook at some point. Might they have to mend some hurt feelings over seeing four other young players get lucrative long-term extensions this offseason? Sure. That seems inevitable. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed away from the voluntary portions of offseason workouts because of it. But Cook’s best path to arrive at his eventual payday is by proving he can get to an even higher level of play in 2025. He knows the offensive system, he thrived in it last year and being in it again is his best chance to prove his top value, either to the Bills or to another team in free agency next year. The Bills need Cook in 2025, and Cook needs the Bills all the same. Plus, with such a great running back class this year, why would another team give up a draft pick plus the cap space it would take to sign him to the long-term deal he wants? As much as the Bills need Cook in 2025, they likely have the leverage in this situation.
Louis T.: “Franchise tag as a possibility for James Cook?”
I’m sure it will be a consideration, but Over The Cap’s projected franchise tag figure for running backs in 2026 is an eye-opening $14.23 million. That dents the likelihood they’d play that card, especially after not being on the same page as Cook’s $15 million per year request. The Bills could always go the transition tag route, which they project to be $11.42 million. It still isn’t an ideal figure, especially since they’re already pushing up on the projected 2026 salary cap already, but it could serve as insurance next offseason to let Cook test the market while still having the right of first refusal to keep him. However, if Cook signs an offer sheet elsewhere and the Bills don’t match, they wouldn’t receive any draft compensation from the transition tag to let him walk. Despite that, it’s a possible solution to many problems.
Matthew R.: “How likely do you believe it is that the Bills will draft a running back this year?”
Advertisement
I wouldn’t call it likely, but given the strength of the draft class, how many picks the Bills have and how general manager Brandon Beane has made it a point to come away from past drafts by taking advantage of value at a particularly strong position that year. It’s a way to get the most out of your draft choice by selecting a player, who in most other years, would have been selected anywhere from half-a-round to two rounds earlier. Two prime examples of this happened in 2020 and 2022 when the Bills took Gabriel Davis and Khalil Shakir in the fourth and fifth rounds, respectively. If Davis and Shakir were prospects in this year’s draft class, they likely would have been second or third-round selections.
But it will take a specific type of running back, I’m guessing. The lean could be toward a player with a good receiving profile and some home run ability. It would make the most sense to draft someone with that profile who can also positively impact special teams one way or another. That way you can stomach having four running backs on the 53-man roster, providing insurance to move on from Cook next year and still taking advantage of the running back value of this year’s class.
Sa S.: “It looks like a good DT or CB should be available at 30. Would you trade both 56 and 62 to go back up to around that same spot and get one of each?”
It’s an interesting concept, though Beane likely loves having three selections in the top two rounds this year. I do think there’s solid depth to find some versatile defensive tackle and boundary cornerback prospects on Day Two at some point. There’s a good chance Buffalo sticks with those two seconds and has the chance to address one or both of those positions there. In Dane Brugler’s seven-round mock draft, Buffalo hit both needs, selecting Florida State defensive tackle Joshua Farmer at 56 and ECU cornerback Shavon Revel Jr. at 62.
If they feel good enough about the group of them still available, along with some other positions, I wouldn’t even rule out them moving down from No. 62 to improve one of their Day Three picks into the third round. Beane has a lot of flexibility this year in moving around the board.
William S.: “How likely are Bills to drop back out of the first round knowing there are fewer first-round graded picks? I think a QB needy team might want to jump back into the first for that extra year of a rookie contract.”
Advertisement
This is absolutely a possibility again this year for Beane. Those late-20s and early-30s picks in the first round could become a real target should Shedeur Sanders see a draft-day slide, or teams targeting someone like Jaxson Dart, Jalen Milroe or even the suddenly buzzy Tyler Shough. It all depends on how far the Bills would need to drop back to do it, but if it’s not that far of a fall and they can get something worthwhile out of it, I wouldn’t rule out this possibility at all.
One team to keep an eye on for this could be the Giants. The Giants’ want and need for a young quarterback has been well-documented over the last two years. The close relationship between Beane and Giants GM Joe Schoen could come into the picture here. As of now, the Giants hold the No. 34 selection. By sliding back to that spot, the Bills would know the Giants are moving up to select a quarterback, and since the Bills have no need for one that early, that means they would effectively slide back and potentially miss out on only three players while picking up something of value. The Giants have two third-round selections (Nos. 65 and 99), and if the Bills can extract one of those, it would easily be worth a three-pick wait if they don’t feel strongly enough about someone on the board.
G.R.: “Why haven’t safeties been prioritized more since the end of Poyer/Hyde?”
I wouldn’t necessarily agree that they haven’t prioritized it. The first chance they got with Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde no longer on the roster, last offseason, they used their second-best draft resource to address it by selecting Cole Bishop. Before that pick, the earliest they’ve used a draft choice on safety was a sixth-round selection. The team also brought in a veteran free agent in Taylor Rapp the year before the Poyer and Hyde exits to get Rapp acclimated with the defensive scheme, with an eye on the potential end for their longtime starters. Then, with Rapp’s value as a full-year backup at a low point, they signed him to an extremely team-friendly three-year contract extension.
Is Rapp nearly as good as Poyer and Hyde were during their prime years in Buffalo? No, he certainly is not. But the Bills believe in Rapp and view him as a vital part of their defense in 2025. I also think in the second half of 2024, he played his best football since arriving in Buffalo. He’s also signed through the 2026 season and is only 27 years old, so the immediacy of finding a long-term partner for Bishop doesn’t seem necessary. There’s always one position in a draft year where there seems to be somewhat of a disconnect to what the potential internal need is and what the outside (mock drafts, national media, fans) believes to be a need, and with Bishop and Rapp the likely starters this season signed past 2025, safety might be that position this year.
Info: “Older prospects, can we rule them out early?”
I don’t think so, no. It just really depends on the prospect. We all know how young Tremaine Edmunds and Greg Rousseau were when the Bills drafted them, but on the flip side, Dalton Kincaid turned 24 in his rookie season and O’Cyrus Torrence was 23 when they drafted him. Youth could be a tiebreaker with two similarly talented players on their board, but I don’t think it disqualifies older players from their consideration in the early rounds. That would be too prohibitive to potentially landing talented players.
Kevin V.: “Do you think DeWayne Carter could play 1T? Do you think they would ask him to bulk up or is he strictly a 3T?”
Advertisement
I don’t know about them asking him to bulk up since he’s already in the 305-310 range, but his position has actually been something on my mind a fair bit this offseason. The Bills drafted Carter to be a rotational three-technique in their scheme who could moonlight as a one-technique. Late in the 2024 season, when the Bills were in need for someone to play one-technique, Carter spent an entire game there. From what I saw on film, he played it pretty well given the circumstances. Now, it’s only one game to sample from, and I don’t think that one performance should make them uproot their entire scouting of him both in pre-draft and during the summer, but it’s worth asking the team ahead of the draft as to what position they see him working at moving forward. Whatever the answer is, though, it shouldn’t persuade the Bills to neglect the one-technique spot in the draft this year. Carter’s destiny might be as only a rotational piece and fill-in starter during his rookie deal, regardless of his home position.
Mark R.: “Is three the magic number for a puntapalooza?”
One of the rules of life is that anytime I do a mailbag, if I can end it with a question about a #Puntapalooza, I will. If you’re wondering if I think the Bills could use a draft choice on a punter this year, my answer unequivocally is yes, I think they could. They wouldn’t have to make an extra roster spot for that rookie player since they would be keeping a punter anyway. If the rookie won the job, the Bills then would have their punter on a low-cost four-year rookie deal, much like they did with Tyler Bass after selecting him in 2020. The new punter would add to Jake Camarda and Brad Robbins on the current Bills roster, and a three-punter competition would be bringing back the days of the extremely short-lived potential #CoreyVsCoryVsKaarePuntapalooza of the past. As fun as a three-punter competition could be, if they drafted a punter, I’m guessing it would be Camarda against the rookie in training camp, with the recently signed Brad Robbins (no guaranteed money) getting released. But as long as we’ve got punters to track, I’ll have my new stopwatch ready.
(Photo: Bryan M. Bennett / Getty Images)
