When it comes to building a championship-caliber roster through the NFL Draft, few GMs have generated as much buzz as the Buffalo Bills' Brandon Beane. But how does his draft performance actually stack up against the league's elite front offices?
We recently crunched the numbers on Beane's draft picks from 2018 through 2023, comparing each selection against historical NFL expectations using Pro Football Reference's Weighted Approximate Value (wAV). That metric measures how impactful a player has been in the league, allowing us to calculate a "residual" — essentially, how much value Beane got above or below what the average GM would have achieved with those same picks.
The natural question from fans: how do the Bills compare to other top teams? So we lined up Beane's results against some of the NFL's most respected GMs — including Kansas City's Brett Veach, Baltimore's Eric DeCosta, Seattle's John Schneider, Philadelphia's Howie Roseman, and the Rams' Les Snead.
The results? It's a tight race, but Beane comes out looking sharp. Against the Chiefs, the Bills held the edge in seven of 13 categories and four of the six draft years examined. Veach's Chiefs won four of the seven draft rounds — though notably, two of those were the less impactful sixth and seventh rounds. And yes, we accounted for the fact that Patrick Mahomes was drafted in 2017 (before our window), and the Chiefs' residual per pick for that class was an impressive 17.44 — still not enough to top Buffalo's Josh Allen-led 2018 class.
Perhaps most surprising was the comparison with Baltimore's DeCosta, long considered one of the NFL's sharpest talent evaluators. The Bills came out on top in nine of 13 categories and four of the six years in the sample — a testament to just how consistently Beane has found value on draft day.
Whether you're rocking a Bills jersey or just appreciate great roster construction, this kind of front-office analysis shows why Buffalo has become a perennial contender — and why Beane's draft board might be the most important piece of equipment in the building.