AFC Draft Performance Assessments

These are the AFC Draft Performance Assessments. They are like draft grades, only better, because I am committed to a 20-year old bit they accurately reflect how trades and needs impact each team’s roster.

You can find the NFC Draft Performance Assessments here.

AFC East

Buffalo Bills

Improved Roster: B

Used Resources Well: A

Met Needs: C

Brandon Beane is very good at sliding around draft boards and at managing in-house veteran contracts. He’s mediocre-to-bad at choosing players. Both his strengths and weaknesses were on full display this weekend.

The Bills traded down twice and out of the first round, stockpiling Day Three draft picks. That was wise for a veteran team that needs to churn the middle-to-bottom of its roster.

Beane added some players I like, including safety Jalon Kilgore and DT Zane Durant. The Bills also added some Beane specials: another traits-over-stats edge rusher (T.J. Parker), yet another polarizing square-peg receiver (Skyler Bell), and another specialist (punter Tommy Doman) for the franchise that now has drafted three of them in the 2020s.

The Bills traded up for CB Davison Igbinosun, a lanky three-year regular at Ohio State who committed 13 penalties (9 DPIs) in 2024. Igbinosun committed just three DPIs last year, but he never really stood out when I watched Ohio State film, and I watched a lot of it. To be fair, it’s good when cornerbacks don’t stand out when watching a safety or linebacker. Toriano Pride, a mighty mite from Mizzou with a late-round grade on the boards I checked, came aboard in the fourth round.

The Igbinosun and Pride selections are particularly interesting because the Raiders traded a seventh-round pick in 2027 to the Bills to move up one spot so they could select Jermod McCoy. So the Bills, a cornerback-needy team, let another team cut the line for (practically) free to take a cornerback with Pro Bowl upside if modern medical science can figure out what “bone plugs” are, opting instead for a likely role player to pair with the penalty machine they drafted earlier. If McCoy pans out and the Bills keep getting only as far as Josh Allen can drag them, that little move could cement Beane’s legacy forever.

Oh, and were you looking for more help than Bell at receiver? Nope. Beane is talking up Keon Coleman as having “matured.” Add “rationalizing his worst decisions” to the list of things Beane is good at. Or bad at, depending on your perspective. Final DPA: B

Miami Dolphins

Improved Roster: B+

Used Resources Well: A

Met Needs: A

Holy crap: the Dolphins drafted 13 guys. And a lot of them were pretty darn good! They traded all over the board, making use of picks they acquired from the Broncos (Jaylen Waddle) and Eagles (Jaelan Phillips), plus some extra goodies they picked up for letting the Cowboys cut the line for Caleb Downs.

Chris Bell and Kevin Coleman will remind no one of Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle. But they should make the Dolphins offense functional, giving Malik Willis a well-built possession guy who might develop into WR1 (Bell) and a slot specialist (Coleman) with some YAC juice.

TE Will Kacmarek was a third-round reach, but everyone reached for tight ends this year. Kacmarek is a blocking H-back type to help redesign the offense in new coordinator Bobby Slowik’s image. Fifth-round pick Seydou Traore, who grew up in England and came to American football late, is not my kind of prospect (overaged “mismatch guy” at tight end), but the Dolphins clearly want new/better options.

Jacob Rodriguez’s Omni-Man moustache generated some memes on Friday night. Rodriguez is so Zach Thomas-like that Dolphins fans already adore him. CB Chris Johnson was a safe selection, and the Dolphins had the excess resources to move up for him. Kyle Louis was one of my favorite players in this draft class. He appears to be moving from linebacker to “strong safety,” which probably means nickel/dime linebacker.

The Dolphins still have one of the weakest rosters in the NFL. But Kadyn Proctor, Rodriguez and Bell all have very high upside, and everyone else will at least foster competition at key positions while the team pays down its Tua/Tyreek debts. We can now at least make out the outline of what the new regime plans to build. Final DPA: A-

New England Patriots

Improved Roster: C

Used Resources Well: C

Met Needs: C

Caleb Lomu was a fine selection with the 28th pick. Eliot Wolf tried to assert that Will Campbell will remain at left tackle, but couldn’t get through a few sentences on Thursday night before saying “I don’t think either side will be a problem“ for Lomu.

Gabe Jacas was a safe pick and a system fit. The Patriots traded up for both Lomu and Jacas, in part because some decision makers had pressing plans for Saturday. The Patriots had extra picks to burn, but it’s noteworthy that two of the picks they traded became Skyler Bell and Genesis Smith, players they could have found uses for.

Bonus Prospect Capsule: Notre Dame tight ends always warrant a second look during the scouting process, because so many of them became NFL stars over the decades. A second look at Eli Raridon revealed a tight end who is kinda-OK at everything.

Raridon caught just 32 passes in 2025, his only season as a starter. Most of his big plays came on leak concepts: Raridon initially stays in to block, then sneaks up the sideline after the defense has forgotten about him. Josh McDaniels loves using such tactics. Raridon is a lumbering runner but a big target who can take a licking after the catch. He’s a wall-off blocker who does just enough to get by. He’s a meets-minimum-requirements guy who can be a useful role player. The third round seems too high for him, but not after taking a look at all the gnarly tight end prospects drafted in the second round.

Wolf got some pizza money and the house to himself on Saturday because Daddy had an important errand to run. Wolf turned the draft board over to Key & Peele, which is the only possible explanation for names like Karon Prunty, Dametrious Crownover and Namdi Obiazor.

Wolf spent a sixth-round pick on Texas Tech QB Behren Morton, a Bailey Zappe-like pesky ball distributor with a C-minus arm and happy feet under pressure. Mike Vrabel will be taking the car keys with him next time.