Brandon Beane: First-round without a pick was “rough”

[Billy Buffalo]

Getty Images

The Buffalo Bills sent their first-round pick to Minnesota for receiver Stefon Diggs. Bills G.M. Brandon Beane had to repeatedly remind himself of that fact on Thursday night, while watching other teams add talented young rookies whom Beane had scouted.

“Yesterday was rough,” Beane told reporters on Friday night. “I was dying watching some of these guys come off the board. You do the work in the fall and you see him and when you’re at these schools or at these games and you’re going, ‘Man. That guy is going in the first round, he can help us.’ It was tough, there were some players we really liked. But as I told you guys a while back, I just gonna have to think of Stefon and I know [Bills P.R. chief] Derek [Boyko] and social media people put some stuff together. That helped me sleep a little bit better. . . . A couple of our guys kept reminding me, ‘Hey, our first-round pick is Stefon.'”

Still, Beane was tempted to try to get in on the first-round action.

“It was hard,” Beane said. “I told everybody, ‘Don’t let me do anything crazy and trade into the first.’ So everybody knew to not allow it, so it was good work by my team.”

The Bills ultimately didn’t trade back into round one, but they have something in Diggs that no team that used a first-round pick on Thursday night has gotten: A proven NFL commodity. Given the bust rate in round one (which NEVER gets discussed during the draft), Beane and the Bills are already ahead of the game.