INDIANAPOLIS – There are going to be some good wide receivers on the draft board when pick No. 25 comes around for the Buffalo Bills.
It’s a lock.
Will the Bills take one? It’s way too early for even the Bills to know.
But there is going to be a lot of debate among fans right up through first-round draft day April 28 on whether the Bills should take or pass on an elite wideout.
A big reason it’s going to be an option is the wealth of edge-rush talent in the 2022 NFL Draft class. Indications are that six edge rushers could be taken in the first 20 or so picks. ESPN analyst Mel Kiper has seven edge rushers going in the top 24 in his latest mock draft.
Throw in two quarterbacks and five or six offensive linemen in the top 24, and some position is going to get pushed down the board.
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“Wide receivers will be punished,” NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said. “They’re going to get punished because there’s so many of them.”
The current consensus among draft analysts has Southern California’s Drake London and Ohio State’s Garrett Wilson as sure-fire top 20 picks.
Arkansas’ Treylon Burks, who is 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds, also is a popular top 20 pick, although Jeremiah slotted him for Buffalo in his latest mock draft. Burks reportedly will run the 40-yard dash in the 4.3s, remarkable for a man that big. Burks wears size XXXXL gloves. Nike only makes gloves that go up to XXXL, so he needs to have them custom made. He has been compared to Tennessee star A.J. Brown and has been called a giant version of San Francisco star Deebo Samuel.
It probably would be a big upset if Burks lasts to the 25th pick.
Yet that still would leave top-rated wideouts Chris Olave of Ohio State, Jahan Dotson of Penn State and Jameson Williams of Alabama as first-round draft candidates.
There is a strong chance two of those three will be on the board at Buffalo’s No. 25 pick.
“It's a great wide receiver draft,” Jeremiah said. “I feel like we could copy and paste the comments on wide receivers and use it for the next 20 years, because the college game is giving us a ton of these guys every year.”
Olave, listed at 6-1 and 188, is a polished route-runner with deep speed. He ran the 40 in 4.38 in the spring at Ohio State. He posted good seasons each of the last three years for the Buckeyes. He can play outside or in the slot. He’s not very physical, maybe below average in the blocking game.
Jeremiah compares him to Dolphins wide receiver Will Fuller, a speedster who has been good in the NFL, but hasn’t stayed healthy enough to make a consistent impact.
Olave counts the Bills’ Stefon Diggs among the NFL receivers who he watches the most, along with former Ohio State star Terry McLaurin of Washington, Devante Adams of Green Bay and DeSean Jackson of Las Vegas.
“I met with the Bills on Monday,” Olave said. “It was a great meeting. They had a lot of people in there. We went over a lot of things. Got on the board, watched some film, and it was a great meeting overall.”
Dotson, listed at 5-11 and 184, also is a good route-runner with over-the-top speed. He reportedly ran 4.33 last offseason and was a Pennsylvania state long-jump champion in high school. Dotson caught 91 passes for 1,182 yards and 12 TDs in 2021 and had only two drops all season.
He also met with the Bills, although not too much should be drawn from that fact. Like all teams, the Bills are doing their due diligence on everybody in the draft.
“Just getting to know me, putting a face with the name, talking about the previous year, watching my film,” Dotson said of his Buffalo meeting.
Asked what he knows about Buffalo, Dotson said: “It's very cold there. Stefon Diggs is someone I truly look up to. One of the great receivers in the league right now. Very young, talented quarterback. It would be a great opportunity.”
“Both these guys are going to run in the 4.3s, so they're going to fly around in Indy, and maybe that helps elevate them up the board a little bit,” Jeremiah said of Olave and Dotson. “Both those guys are pristine route runners with big-time speed. ... Both of them are going to be under 190 pounds, and you just wish they were a little bit physically stronger.”
Williams might be the fastest receiver in the draft, estimated in the low 4.3s. But he tore ligaments in his left knee in the national championship game against Georgia on Jan. 10.
There’s a good chance he lasts to the 25th pick because he might not be ready to play until October. Would the Bills be willing to draft a player who might be a “redshirt” his first NFL season? The argument for doing so is they’d be getting a top-10 caliber player, and Buffalo is not likely to be drafting in the top 10 any time soon.
The argument against the Bills taking a receiver at No. 25 is the talent is so deep, the Bills could get a speedy prospect in the later rounds.
Bills coach Sean McDermott was asked about the depth of receiver talent that seemingly exists every year in the draft.
“That’s a great point,” McDermott said. “I think that, just the way that they're playing at the college level, that you're always going to have some options. But I would tell you, I think it goes back though to the history of the NFL. Without giving away philosophy here, I think there's been a lot of good receivers that have been found in not only the first round, but other rounds as well.”
