Bills’ biggest mistake in 2025 NFL Draft

The Buffalo Bills has a near-flawless NFL Draft. Over the course of three days and nine picks, the team took players who filled needs and who should be able to contribute right away. However, there is one glaring mistake that general manager Brandon Beane made, and it was the most predictable misstep possible, as he’s done it several times before.

The Bills’ biggest mistake was trading up yet again

It’s no secret that the Baltimore Ravens have been one of the best-drafting teams in the NFL draft over the years, whether it’s GM Ozzie Newsome or Eric DeCosta making the picks.

Baltimore has an interesting draft philosophy based on an economics paper called The Loser’s Curse. The general idea is that, over the years, all teams are equally as good (or bad) at drafting, so the best idea is to either stay put or trade back to get more chances to succeed.

There is a lot that goes into this theory, and your mileage with it can vary, but overall, it seems to play out that the consistently best-drafting teams don’t trade up all that often. That’s because the truth is, no one truly knows if a prospect is going to hit or not.

For every Payton Manning, Matthew Stafford, and Joe Burrow picked No. 1 overall, there are equally as many JaMarcus Russell, Tim Couch, and Jameis Winston top selections. Not to mention the fact that Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold were drafted ahead of Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, while Mitchell Trubisky went eight slots ahead of Patrick Mahomes.

Now, those last two examples are interesting because the Bills, Chiefs, and even the Ravens traded up to get Allen, Mahomes, and Jackson.

That can be explained in two ways. One is that trading up for a potential franchise quarterback is worth the risk because of how much more important grabbing that type of player is than any other player in the sport. Two is that they got lucky in those three specific cases, and you shouldn’t use positive results to justify bad process.

One person who does not subscribe to this theory is Bills GM Brandon Beane.

He loves to trade up, consequences be damned, because (apparently) he knows ball and wants the guys he wants in the round he wants them.

Unfortunately, the results in Beane’s case have helped prove the theories behind The Loser’s Curse as much as anything else.

After trading up to get Allen in 2018, the Bills have traded up in the first or second round several times, almost always with pretty bad results.

In 2019, they traded up two spots in the second round to draft offensive lineman Cody Ford, who started 29 games in three forgettable seasons in Western New York. In 2022, it was two slots in the first round to get Kaiir Elam, who was a massive bust, and Beane just traded away this offseason. The next year, the Bills moved up two picks again to take Dalton Kincaid, who is fine, but isn’t the game-changer that, say, Sam LaPorta is, who went nine picks later.

The point is, it seems as though Beane should have learned a lesson by now and stayed put in the draft. When he’s done so in recent years, he’s drafted players like Ed Oliver and Gregory Rousseau, who are core members of the 2025 team.

In the 2025 NFL Draft, it seems like Beane was going to behave and make his picks at the selection he had. In Round 1, instead of trading up once the run on defensive tackles happened, he stayed put and got a really interesting prospect with a lot of upside, Kentucky cornerback Maxwell Hairston.

However, early in Round 2, Beane struck again, trading away two incredibly valuable second-round selections (Nos. 56 and 62, along with 109) to the Chicago Bears to move up to No. 41 to take South Carolina DT T.J. Sanders.

Now, Sanders may be an excellent DT for the Bills. He wins with speed and is a penetrating pass-rusher who can also meet the ball-carrier behind the line. He is a little heavier than Oliver, which should help in run defense, but he also might give the Bills one of the best pass-rushing DT duos in the NFL over the next few years.

However, he may have also fallen to 56, or the Bills could have taken DTs like Shemar Turner, Omar-Norman-Lott, Darius Alexander, or Vernon Boughton, all who went between picks 62 and 71.

Whether or not Sanders becomes a top player is in material. This was, once again, bad process in the early rounds for Beane and the Bills.

If the GM wants to wheel and deal throughout the draft, do it on Day 3. Those picks are far less valuable, so trading up for fit or upside at that point isn’t a big deal at all. In the first two rounds, though, the trading up needs to stop.

All that said, let’s once again reiterate that the Bills had an excellent draft all around, and Beane should get a lot of credit for that. Still, he did make one major mistake, and if it ends up hurting the team, Bills Mafia will have to wait even longer for that return trip to the Super Bowl.