Brandon Beane has hit on 17 of 18 Day 1 and Day 2 draft picks in nine years. From 2017 through 2022, his first six eligible classes in Buffalo, the Bills used 18 picks in rounds one, two, and three combined. Seventeen produced 500 or more snaps in at least one regular season. The one miss, Carlos Basham (2021, pick 61), finished at 428. The league missed 105 picks in those same rounds across the same window. Beane missed once.
That is one headline. The other one is more important: Beane is the best general manager in the league at keeping the players he drafts. Of the 24 Bills draftees from 2017 through 2021 who became 500-snap NFL contributors, 13 are still on the 2025 roster. A 54.2 percent retention rate, nine percentage points clear of second-place Kansas City, and the highest mark of any front office in the league. The Bills are not the league’s best drafter. They are league average plus a little. They are the league’s best at turning a draft pick into a long-term roster anchor, and the gap is not close.
The league does not see Beane the way either headline reads. Yahoo Sports ran a must-fire column after the 2025 playoff loss to Denver. Sporting News asked “Why was Brandon Beane promoted?”. The same Buffalo offices that gave the franchise its quarterback also produced no conference championships in nine years. Both reads are real, and both are sitting in the same case file.
The 53 Report graded all four columns on the scorecard rubric, and read each column against the case the league has built around it. Final letter at the bottom.
Reading the columns
Hit rate
Yahoo’s must-fire column led with the 2024 class. Sharp Football Analysis went deeper, grading Buffalo’s 2025 draft B-minus, and PFF’s pre-draft analysis framed the Bills’ 2025 board as needing immediate help at receiver and corner. The narrative across 2024 and 2025 has been that Beane is missing on the picks the team needed. The eleven-year, eleven-class record at the threshold that matters tells a different story.
From 2017 through 2022, Beane has drafted 45 players. Twenty-nine produced at least one regular season of 500 or more snaps. That is a 64.4 percent hit rate against a league baseline of 58.4 percent for the same window. A six-point lift on the league. Above average, not elite. Buffalo ranks tenth in the league on this metric. The teams ahead include Kansas City (72.5 percent), Baltimore (69.6 percent), Atlanta and Philadelphia (both 69.05 percent), New Orleans (67.65 percent), San Francisco (67.35 percent), the Chargers (65.91 percent), Jacksonville (65.31 percent), and Washington (64.81 percent).
The Day 1 and Day 2 record is where the case for Beane’s drafting actually lives. Eighteen picks in rounds one through three, 17 of them 500-snap NFL contributors. Round 1: Tre’Davious White (2017, pick 27), Josh Allen (2018, pick 7), Tremaine Edmunds (2018, pick 16), Ed Oliver (2019, pick 9), Greg Rousseau (2021, pick 30), Kaiir Elam (2022, pick 23). Round 2: Zay Jones (2017, pick 37), Dion Dawkins (2017, pick 63), Cody Ford (2019, pick 38), A.J. Epenesa (2020, pick 54), James Cook (2022, pick 63). Round 3: Harrison Phillips (2018, pick 96), Devin Singletary (2019, pick 74), Dawson Knox (2019, pick 96), Zack Moss (2020, pick 86), Spencer Brown (2021, pick 93), Terrel Bernard (2022, pick 89). The 17 names include the franchise quarterback, the franchise corner, the franchise left tackle, the franchise nose tackle, the linebacker who has been a top-five coverage backer in the league, and the right tackle who has played 4,795 career snaps. The one miss in three rounds is Carlos Basham, who finished his Bills tenure at 428 snaps before being released in 2024.
The pattern weakens later. Round 5 has run at 38 percent (3 of 8) against a league rate of 46. Round 6 sits at 45 percent (5 of 11), better than the league’s 34 but below where Buffalo’s other rounds sit. Round 7: 2 of 6, 33 percent against a league rate of 24. Beane’s late-round volume has produced more contributors than the league baseline says it should but the rate is closer to coin-flip than the early rounds suggest.
The harder critique on this column is volume. Beane’s 45 picks across six classes is ten fewer than the average GM hit at the same point in their tenure. Buffalo has traded picks to move up (the 2018 trade for Allen used the Bills’ 2018 first-rounder plus a 2019 second-rounder and a 2019 third-rounder), traded picks to acquire players (Stefon Diggs cost a first, two fives, and a six), and let comp picks do thinner work than other contenders. Fewer picks at a higher rate does not mathematically compound the way more picks at a lower rate can.
Sub-grade: A-. Above league average, top-three on Day 1 and Day 2, but a tier below the elite drafters and noticeably thinner volume.
Retention
This is the column where Buffalo wins.
| # | Team | Cohort retention | Retained / Cohort hits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bills | 54.2% | 13 of 24 |
| 2 | Chiefs | 45.0% | 9 of 20 |
| 3 | Eagles | 32.0% | 8 of 25 |
| 4 | Colts | 32.0% | 8 of 25 |
| 5 | Saints | 31.6% | 6 of 19 |
The Bills retained 13 of the 24 cohort hits from 2017 through 2021. Kansas City retained 9 of 20. Philadelphia retained 8 of 25. Buffalo’s gap to Kansas City is nine percentage points. The gap to third place is twenty-two. No other GM in the league is even in the same conversation on this metric.
The 13 names are the spine of the current roster: Josh Allen (2018, pick 7), Tre’Davious White (2017, pick 27), Dion Dawkins (2017, pick 63), Matt Milano (2017, pick 163), Ed Oliver (2019, pick 9), Taron Johnson (2018, pick 121), Dawson Knox (2019, pick 96), A.J. Epenesa (2020, pick 54), Gabe Davis (2020, pick 128), Dane Jackson (2020, pick 239), Greg Rousseau (2021, pick 30), Spencer Brown (2021, pick 93), and Damar Hamlin (2021, pick 212). The franchise quarterback. Both starting corners. The starting left tackle. The starting nose tackle. The starting weakside linebacker. The starting tight end. The starting weakside defensive end. The starting safety after the Hamlin recovery. Four of the eleven cohort hits who left were not let go by Buffalo: Cody Ford was traded, Zay Jones was let walk to Jacksonville, Tremaine Edmunds left in free agency for the Bears, and Devin Singletary went to Houston. The retention churn that does happen in Buffalo is meaningful talent moving for cap-and-fit reasons rather than bottom-of-roster cycling.
The case against this number, and it is a real one, is the Edmunds departure. Buffalo let a top-five middle linebacker walk to free agency in 2023 because the cap geometry around Allen and the trade for Diggs did not leave room. The retention rate counts the fact that Edmunds was drafted and developed by Buffalo. It does not count that Buffalo could not retain him at the second contract. Three of the league’s top retention organizations (Buffalo, Kansas City, Philadelphia) have all hit similar walls on at least one player they drafted, developed, and could not afford to keep. In Buffalo’s case the wall has been higher than in either of the other two.
Sub-grade: A+.
Position construction
The Bills’ 2025 active roster has 81 players. Thirty-seven of them, 45.7 percent, were drafted by the Bills. That puts Buffalo seventh in the league on homegrown rate. The position breakdown of those 37 reads cleanly:
- Cornerback: 7 (White, Johnson, Jackson, Elam, Christian Benford, Kaiir Elam, others)
- Defensive line: 8 (Oliver, Epenesa, Rousseau, Phillips, Cook, others)
- Offensive line: 6 (Dawkins, Brown, Cody Ford, others)
- Wide receiver: 3 (Davis, Khalil Shakir, Isaiah Hodgins)
- Tight end: 3 (Knox plus depth)
- Linebacker: 3 (Milano, Bernard, others)
- Safety: 2 (Hamlin, others)
- Running back: 2 (Cook, others)
- Quarterback: 1 (Allen)
The pattern is a defense-and-trenches identity carried by Beane’s drafted defenders and offensive linemen. Of the 37 homegrown roster spots, 24 (about two-thirds) are defense or offensive line. The defense Sean McDermott runs is identifiable by the names Beane drafted. The offensive line that protects Allen is identifiable by the names Beane drafted. The skill positions are where Buffalo has gone to free agency and to the trade market: Diggs, Cole Beasley, Dalton Kincaid as a R1 trade-up. The position construction is consistent with the team’s apparent identity, and the identity is built on draft picks Beane made. That is the column working.
The miss in the position construction picture is the receiver room. Beane has drafted three wideouts in the cohort window who became 500-snap contributors and only one of those three (Davis, since departed) was a top-three target during their Buffalo years. The 2025 roster has Khalil Shakir (2022, pick 148, fifth-round) as the homegrown leader at the position. The receiver investment has been external and inconsistent. Diggs cost a R1 plus four mid-round picks and was traded after four seasons. Beasley was a free agent. Kincaid was a trade-up first-round pick at tight end, not receiver. The position group that has historically built around the franchise quarterback in winning seasons is the position group Buffalo has built least through the draft.
Sub-grade: A-.
The franchise pick
Josh Allen, 2018, pick 7. The Bills traded their 2018 first-round pick (12 overall), their 2018 second-round pick (53), and a 2018 second-rounder to Tampa Bay to move up five spots and select him. The trade is a top-five franchise QB acquisition of the last twenty years.
Allen has been the Bills’ starting quarterback since week 1 of his rookie season. Eight years in, he has 8,092 career snaps, 8 starts as a rookie and a starter every full season since, the 2024 NFL MVP, six straight playoff appearances, and four straight AFC East titles. He is the only post-Marino quarterback to take the Bills to four consecutive divisional rounds. He is also the reason the franchise has not won a conference championship in nine years, depending on which read of the playoff ledger you accept.
Both reads are real and both go on the same scorecard. Allen is what made the entire Beane era possible. He is also the cap anchor that has made every other retention decision on this scorecard harder to execute. The fact that the cohort retention number is the league’s best with a $43M-and-rising cap hit at quarterback is the most underrated part of the Buffalo build. Most franchises with a top-paid QB have retention rates in the high teens or low twenties. Buffalo’s is 54 percent.
Sub-grade: A+.
How this extends prior work
Sporting News’ must-fire column led with the absence of conference championships and a critique of the 2023 and 2024 first-round picks (Kincaid and Coleman). Yahoo’s column made the same case from a different angle. Both pieces are limited to the last two drafts, both define “miss” implicitly as “did not become a playoff difference-maker in year one or year two,” and both elevate playoff outcome above process metrics. We use a longer window (2017 through 2022 for hit rate; 2017 through 2021 for cohort retention), a binary single-season threshold (500 snaps in any one regular season), and the same definitions for every team. The full methodology is at /methodology.
The counterpoint
The strongest case against this scorecard is that the franchise’s metric of success is conference titles, and on that metric Beane has zero. The cohort retention number does not show whether the cohort produced a championship. The hit rate number does not show whether the hits were the right ones for the playoff games. A defender of the must-fire columns would point out that drafting and retaining well are necessary conditions for a championship and not sufficient ones, and that nine years is a long time to be necessary-but-not-sufficient.
The cleanest version of the critique is that the Bills’ draft pattern has been heavy on positions that play big snap shares (defensive line, secondary, offensive line) and light on the positions that decide January games (top-tier receiver, second-tier quarterback in case of injury, edge rusher capable of carrying a defense). The 2025 roster has eight homegrown defensive linemen. It has one homegrown receiver who was a top-three target on his own team. The metric this scorecard runs does not weight position scarcity, and the bills’ churn on receiver is exactly the kind of pattern that does not show up on hit rate or retention but does show up on conference championship rosters. A sub-graded retention column at A+ does not address whether the right cohort hits were retained.
The smaller and more honest version of the critique is volume. Beane drafts fewer picks per cycle than any of the elite-rate organizations. Forty-five picks in six classes is at least seven below the average for a cohort of that vintage. A higher rate on a smaller sample is harder to compound into a roster than the inverse, and the volume gap shows up in the bottom of the depth chart by the third year of a contract.
What it means
Brandon Beane is the league’s best at retaining the players his organization drafts and the league’s best at landing Day 1 and Day 2 picks who become starters. He is not the league’s best drafter overall, and he is not building the receiver room or the second-tier quarterback room the way most championship rosters do. The case for keeping him is the case for the model that built the most reliably playoff-ready Bills team since the early 1990s. The case for firing him is the case that nine years without a conference title is the metric that should override every column on this scorecard.
The shape of the next two cap windows around Allen is the thing to watch. The 2026 second-contract decisions on the 2022 cohort (Cook, Bernard, Shakir, Christian Benford) and the cap room available to add at receiver are the two specific lines on which the Beane era will be judged in the next 18 months. Process scores over outcomes. The columns on this scorecard hold.
Final grade: A-. Best in the league at retention, top-three on Day 1 and Day 2, an above-average drafter overall and a franchise pick that anchors the entire era. The grade drops from a top-tier A on the volume and the receiver-room critique. The case file remains open until the cohort coming off rookie deals in 2026 either gets extended or walks.