Buffalo Bills: Why the Chiefs traded with the Bills for Patrick Mahomes
Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller recently dropped a hint into why exactly the Kansas City Chiefs traded with the Buffalo Bills for Patrick Mahomes.
The NFL Draft is always an interesting peak into gamesmanship and strategy from GMs and NFL front offices. The team’s that are able to decipher between legitimate interest and smokescreens are the ones that typically “win” the NFL Draft, something the Buffalo Bills have done pretty well under Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane.
Prior to Brandon Beane joining the franchise, the Buffalo Bills were part of one of the more talked about trades in recent memory. The trade took place in the 2017 NFL Draft as the Kansas City Chiefs traded from 27th all the way up to tenth to select Patrick Mahomes, who has won an MVP and a Super Bowl after only three years in the league.
The Buffalo Bills, while they don’t have Mahomes, certainly got pretty good value with getting the 27th overall pick in that year’s draft, a third round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft, and a first round pick in the 2018 NFL Draft in return for trading back.
It is always interesting to know why the Kansas City Chiefs felt the need to trade up 17 spots and give up all the draft capital they did to select Patrick Mahomes. This past week Bleacher Reports’ Matt Miller provided some context into that move.
https://twitter.com/brgridiron/status/1251302133808467968
Based on Miller’s commentary, it appears that the Chiefs, as well as the Houston Texans, were competing for Patrick Mahomes. The Texans were sitting at 12th overall and that is why the Buffalo Bills spot became of interest to the Chiefs as they were two picks ahead of the Texans.
It was also interesting to hear that the Chiefs were floating the idea out there that they wanted a linebacker, and not Patrick Mahomes, which at the time made sense. The Chiefs had a decent quarterback in Alex Smith, who just led the Chiefs to a 12-4 record, and was coming off a Pro Bowl season.
The fact that the Texans had Mahomes number one and reports starting coming out that the Kansas City Chiefs were trading up to select a linebacker, wouldn’t create any urgency on the Texans part to move up past 10.
Next. Worst first round picks made by the Buffalo Bills. dark
The strategy and gamemanship is certainly going to be a little bit different this year with the NFL Draft being conducted entirely remotely. It will be interesting to see how much that impacts trading over the seven rounds.