A little more than four years ago, at the end of the 2017 season, the Bucs and Bills were teams with obvious needs on opposite sides of the ball.
Tampa Bay had struggled to a 5-11 record with the NFL’s worst defense, giving up a league-high 378 yards per game. Buffalo had gone 9-7 and made the playoffs for the first time in 18 years, but it did so despite ranking 31st in passing offense. The Bills would muster only three points in an opening-round playoff loss.
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Then came the 2018 NFL Draft — and that rare draft-day trade that ends up making both sides markedly better.
Tampa Bay sat at No. 7, knowing exactly who they wanted to spark their defensive front but wondering if they could gamble and still get him later. Buffalo was down at No. 12, desperately wanting to move up to get the franchise quarterback they needed.
With one deal, the Bills landed Josh Allen, who at 25 is already one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks, having led Buffalo to the AFC Championship Game last year. On the other side, the Bucs not only got massive defensive lineman Vita Vea, but extra picks that yielded two starting defensive backs who played a central role in the team’s Super Bowl championship last year.
Bucs proud to introduce first-round pick Vita Vea, who will wear his college number 50 in the NFL. pic.twitter.com/fLAkmupPO0
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) April 27, 2018
Both general managers from that deal are still in place today, and they’ll no doubt exchange pleasantries on the field before Sunday’s matchup between the Bills and Bucs at Raymond James Stadium, remembering a deal that helped both teams because both sides nailed their picks.
“It’s a great deal to look back on because it’s a win-win deal,” said Bills general manager Brandon Beane. “Those are the best. People on the outside, I got ripped for this deal, for what we gave up. But it is what it is. I said, ‘If I’m right, they’ll understand why I did it. If I’m wrong, it ain’t going to be my problem anyway.'”
Bucs general manager Jason Licht has known Beane since 1998, when he was a scout with the Carolina Panthers and Beane was a training-camp intern. The two men talked by phone that draft weekend, aware of the potential magnitude of the deal before any player involved had so much as a practice with their new teams.
“We talked the next morning and he said something to the regards of, ‘That was a hell of a trade on your part.’ And I said, ‘Hey, if this guy works out for you, it doesn’t matter what you gave up — it’s going to be viewed as a great trade.’ And they’ve got a franchise quarterback right now.”
The Bills had already traded to move up to No. 12, sending their No. 21 pick and starting tackle Cordy Glenn to the Bengals to move up in the first round.
Beane felt certain about the top three picks in the draft, expecting the Browns to take quarterback Baker Mayfield, the Giants to take running back Saquon Barkley and the Jets to take another quarterback in Sam Darnold. Cleveland also had the No. 4 pick and obviously wouldn’t be taking a quarterback there. That gave Beane his pick of the rest of the quarterback class, and he had talked extensively with Browns general manager John Dorsey, who had acquired quarterback Tyrod Taylor from him in March.
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Beane had asked him not to deal the No. 4 pick without consulting with him first, but by the night before the draft, he knew that the cost to move up to No. 4 was prohibitively high.
“He was going to take everything I had and then some,” Beane said. “I wasn’t going to have a family when John got done with me.”
The Bills knew it was foolish to think Allen would fall to them at 12, with “good intel” that Miami would take him immediately before them at No. 11, or that other teams such as Arizona at No. 15 might trade up ahead of them. He knew that Licht had worked with Cardinals general manager Steve Keim, so he feared that connection would help forge a deal for Arizona to jump to 7.
So the question became: How high did the Bills need to move up to get the quarterback they wanted?
Buffalo Josh Allen on how he plans to address his teammates after his tweets: Bills pic.twitter.com/8eC1sD72ue
— Matthew Fairburn (@MatthewFairburn) April 27, 2018
Denver sat at No. 5, and talks with general manager John Elway led to an agreement in principle as the draft started on a deal that would give the Bills that pick in exchange for a package that included the No. 12 pick and Buffalo’s other first-rounder at No. 22. Elway’s caveat was that there was one player, a non-quarterback, that he wanted enough to keep the No. 5 pick, and if that player was still there, the deal was off.
Cleveland took cornerback Denzel Ward at No. 4, and Elway called Beane with bad news: “Brandon, our guy’s still there.” It was edge rusher Bradley Chubb, who would get 12 sacks as a rookie and made his first Pro Bowl last year. Indianapolis was picking at No. 6, but general manager Chris Ballard had already told the Bills he wasn’t trading down, thrilled to get guard Quenton Nelson, a Pro Bowler and first-team All-Pro selection in each of his first three seasons with the Colts.
The next option was Tampa Bay, sitting at No. 7.
Licht is the kind of general manager who will trade up to make sure he gets the prospect he wants, having done so last year with tackle Tristan Wirfs and in 2015 with guard Ali Marpet, among others. The 2018 draft presented the opposite challenge: Knowing who he wanted but challenging him to gamble on his team’s knowledge of the rest of the league and how far Vea might drop.
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Licht had assigned each of his top assistants a number of teams to communicate directly with before the draft, to assess potential trade partners. John Spytek, his top assistant and now the team’s vice president of player personnel, had the Bills on his list and had talked with Buffalo’s assistant general manager, Joe Schoen.
On the day of the draft, the Bucs had their board set, including a short list of the players they’d run to the podium for at No. 7, not listening to any outside offers. They liked Nelson, who went to the Colts with the pick directly before theirs and had generated much internal debate as to which side of the line of scrimmage they should address.
“There was a lot of conversation there,” Licht said. “We thought Quenton was a great player. It’s both sides of the trenches, and we thought (Nelson and Vea) were both players who would become, could become dominant players at their respective positions.”
This was a Bucs team with multiple needs, so for each available player, there was a consensus of how far they’d be willing to drop in the draft and still have a strong chance of getting that prospect, and what they’d want in return to justify taking on that risk.
“We knew they wanted a quarterback,” Licht said of the Bills. “It was pretty obvious. I thought it would be Josh but didn’t know.”
For Vea, that line was the 12th pick. In the four picks between 8 and 11, the Bucs were confident that the 49ers wanted an offensive lineman (they took tackle Mike McGlinchey at 9) and that another quarterback would go, leaving two spots as potential Vea suitors. And if Vea went, there were other prospects they liked at 12, including safety Derwin James, who went 17th to the Chargers.
But if the trade talks had fallen through, they liked Vea enough they were willing to take him right where they were.
“If we had stayed at 7, we would have taken Vita,” he said.
While the Colts were on the clock at 6, the Bills and Bucs were talking about a potential trade, but it seemed like the Bucs’ initial asking price was too high — they wanted the Nos. 12 and 22 picks from Buffalo to move up five spots.
“I don’t blame them, it’s a quarterback,” Beane said.
We wrote about Bills as Bucs’ first trade option in Wednesday’s paper, and even then thought they’d only net a second and third. https://t.co/Aqllki5txT pic.twitter.com/XL33yTnHXp
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) April 27, 2018
Buffalo was in contact with picks 8 through 10 (Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland) trying to find a trade-up partner before another QB-hungry team did. The Bucs had former No. 1 pick Jameis Winston entering the fourth year of his rookie deal, so they weren’t a threat to take a quarterback, but they could trade their pick to someone else that was.
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The Bills knew who they could get at 7, but the Bucs were taking a risk, knowing that in dropping to 12, there were four teams who could grab Vea before they were back on the clock. Getting both of Buffalo’s second-round picks, at Nos. 53 and 56, in addition to the No. 12 gave them a clear win on most “draft pick value” charts, which is often consulted in such deals.
Video: Bucs GM Jason Licht talks about the decision to trade down from 7 to 12 and still get a coveted player in Vita Vea. pic.twitter.com/LakW5fT0i5
— Greg Auman (@gregauman) April 27, 2018
The conventional draft-value chart, which goes back to Jimmy Johnson and his Cowboys days, gives the original No. 7 pick a value of 1,500 points. The 12 pick is worth 1,200 and the 22 pick 800, so what the Bucs were asking was 2,000 points for a 1,500-point pick, an impressive return. The same chart valued the 53 pick at 370 points and the 56 pick at 340, so that package would still net them 1,910 points for their 1,500-point pick, an upgrade of 27 percent.
When Beane wasn’t sold on giving up his two second-rounders as the clock ticked away, Licht sealed the day with the smallest of sweeteners, throwing in the No. 255 pick in the seventh round, the next-to-last selection of the draft. Buffalo would take receiver Austin Proehl, who they cut before he played a snap that fall. He’s yet to play in a regular-season game, and actually returned to the Bills for two weeks on their practice squad in November.
The trade was made and Buffalo got its quarterback. Allen threw for 4,544 yards and 37 touchdowns last season. The Bills are just 7-5 with five games remaining, but much of the optimism around their playoff potential begins with him.
That left the Bucs to wait and see if their gamble would pay off — and if Vea would fall to 12. The Bears took linebacker Roquan Smith at 8 as a bit of a surprise, the 49ers took a tackle as expected and Arizona traded up for quarterback Josh Rosen at 10, leaving just Miami at No. 11.
“We didn’t know which direction they were going to go, and I was getting stared at in the draft room,” Licht said. “We could have used some draft picks to move up, whatever it was. There was some temptation to do it, to slide up one just to ensure we get our guy. For whatever reason, I held firm and said, ‘Don’t make any calls. Let’s just wait.’ Once it went, it was a big relief.”
The Dolphins took defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick, and the Bucs knew they had Vea.
“We got our guy,” Licht said. “It’s always a gamble. I have a great staff. It was awesome as a collective effort there.”
The rest of the draft 2018 worked out amazingly well for both teams. Buffalo, having kept its No. 22 pick, packaged it with a third-round pick to move up to No. 16 and grabbed linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, who made the Pro Bowl in 2019 and ’20 and is a fourth-year starter, still only 23 years old and back on a fifth-year option in 2022.
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The Bucs, having added pick Nos. 53 and 56 in the second round, weren’t done trading. They turned one pick into four, trading the 56th pick to acquire Nos. 63 and 117 from New England. They took cornerback Carlton Davis at 63 and safety Jordan Whitehead at 117, and the two have been constants in the Bucs’ secondary, Davis starting 45 games and Whitehead 51.
Licht acquired enough picks that it doesn’t matter much that the No. 53 pick, cornerback M.J. Stewart, didn’t pan out, getting cut in August 2020 after two unremarkable seasons. He was claimed by the Browns and had two interceptions last year.
“If you look at the numbers, it’s 50-50 in the first or second round,” he said. “No matter how good and successful you’ve been at drafting, there’s still a 50 percent failure rate there. So the more chips you have, the more chances you have, the more chance you have at getting players that can contribute. The analytics and the percentages go way down as soon as you hit the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round.”
Licht wasn’t done trading, giving up a sixth-round pick to move up eight spots into the third round for guard Alex Cappa, who is now in his third year as a starter at right guard. The Bucs used their own second-round pick on running back Ronald Jones, their leading rusher last season on the way to the Super Bowl.
It didn’t work as well for other teams. Arizona wanted a quarterback, and after Buffalo grabbed Allen, the Cardinals traded up for Rosen, who was gone a year later, dumped to the Dolphins for a second-rounder after Arizona took Kyler Murray. The drop-off between Allen and Rosen is glaring: Allen has thrown 93 touchdowns for Buffalo, while Rosen threw 11 for Arizona and is now on his fifth NFL team.
The NFL is a cold business. A year after the Bucs and Bills worked together on a trade, they were draft rivals again a year later.
In the second round in 2019, the Bucs were picking at No. 39, and Beane and Buffalo traded up two spots to get ahead of them at No. 38, getting offensive lineman Cody Ford, convinced the Bucs coveted him at 39. (Check out this video at the 4:00 mark to see the celebration in their war room once the trade was completed.)
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The Bills gave up a fifth-round pick to the Raiders to move up two spots, but Ford has fallen into a backup role in his third season. The Bucs ended up taking cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting at 39, and he had interceptions in three straight playoff games last year on the way to the Super Bowl.
The wisdom of hindsight can be a cruel thing, and while Licht has three defensive starters who have combined for 136 starts from a single pick, he also now sees that he could have had a franchise quarterback had he had the foresight to move on early from Winston and just take Allen.
These things work in mysterious ways, and in sticking with Winston for two more seasons, Licht had an opening in spring 2020 that led to the Bucs signing Tom Brady, who led them to a championship in his first season, breaking the franchise touchdown record at age 43.
“Now they have the greatest quarterback ever now,” Beane said. “I know that day when he made that move, he didn’t know Tom Brady was coming. He wasn’t ready to give up on Winston, so he did the next best thing, and he still got Vita. I was glad he still got his guy. I wanted him to be happy with the deal, and we were super-happy with it.”
(Photo of Josh Allen on draft day: Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)