Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane has been asked numerous times this offseason about what he plans to do to add speed to the team’s wide receiving corps.
While he has acknowledged that speed is certainly nice to have, he has repeatedly stopped short of agreeing with reporters and fans that the Josh Allen-offense needs a track star to become a fully functioning unit.
“I would say our offense did pretty good last year,” Beane said at last month’s owners’ meetings, repeating what he said in late February at the scouting combine. “I think when you look across the board, scoring, all that stuff, I think what Joe Brady and Josh and our offensive team did was pretty good. We like the addition of Josh Palmer to our group. We feel like he's a guy who really fits what we like to do, kind of another 'positionless' wide receiver. Am I sitting here going, ‘Man, we've got a hole there?’ No.”
It’s hard to argue with him. The Bills set a franchise record by scoring 525 points, and they didn’t even need the 17th game to top the previous mark of 501 set by the 2020 team in a 16-game season. They proceeded to add 87 more points in three playoff games, Allen was named NFL MVP, and there was no one in the receiving corps that anyone would consider a true speed merchant.
As the Bills get ready for next week’s draft, they have a receiving corps with a solid top four of Palmer, Khalil Shakir, Keon Coleman, and Curtis Samuel. Their top two priorities in the first round should be either defensive tackle or cornerback, but if the board falls a certain way, it wouldn’t be crazy if Texas wide receiver Matthew Golden was gettable.
Given his 2024 performance, plus the way his draft process has gone - he ran a 4.29 in the 40, the fast time among all receivers at the combine - there’s probably zero chance he makes it to Buffalo’s scheduled pick at No. 30. His stock has soared from originally being considered a late second or early third-round pick to now averaging pick No. 20 in the first round according to NFL Mock Draft Database which gathers information from dozens of mock drafts.
The Cowboys at No. 12, Chargers at No. 22 and Rams at No. 26 seem like his most obvious landing spots, so if the Bills covet him - they did meet with him at the combine - then they’ll probably need to trade up to get him. With their more obvious needs on defense, they may not have the appetite to do that, but if he were sitting there when they go on the clock, well, then ...
