The Buffalo Bills, like every team in the National Football League, have 30 pre-draft visits that they're allowed to conduct with individual prospects at One Bills Drive in Orchard Park.
To this point, only two have been quarterbacks and both are projected to be Day Two picks. According to the latest report, the Bills invited a quarterback with some first-round buzz to Western New York.
Jason LaCanfora of CBSSports.com reported that Michigan State quarterback Connor Cook made his visit with the Bills over the weekend, giving the team an up close look at a player that some teams have as the third-best quarterback in the draft.
Cook, a three-year starter for the Spartans, is projected to be a late first to early second-round selection in the 2016 NFL Draft. He joins Mississippi State's Dak Prescott and Ohio State's Cardale Jones as the quarterbacks that the Bills have had in as pre-draft visitors so far.
Joe B.'s Take
Connor Cook is quite the intriguing prospect and one that a lot of the upper echelon teams in the draft are considering taking with a late first-round selection, and a player that some believe can start fairly soon in the NFL.
With that draft range in mind, that means in order for the Bills to get him, it would have to be with either their first round selection at 19th overall, to trade down from 19th and pick him later in the first while adding an additional draft pick, or if Cook remarkably was still on the board for the team's second-round pick.
This comes on the heels of the report last week that the Bills had dinner with Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch the night before his Pro Day, which is declaring a heap of interest in the upper-tier quarterbacks of this draft class.
However, despite the reported interest and pre-draft visits, if the Bills stand pat at 19th overall, it's all about defense and finding a player that can come in and contribute right away to a unit that needs additional starters and depth. Perhaps if the Bills moved down in the order, accrued an additional second-round pick, and selected Cook with that later first-round pick, they could possibly get two starters in the second round of the draft.
The likeliest of scenarios is this, and it's two-fold: First, the Bills are doing their due diligence on Cook in the event that he's there at 49th overall -- albeit an unlikely scenario, but in the draft, you just never know. Second, the best thing the Bills can do with an unsettled long-term future at quarterback, but a starter for the here and now in Tyrod Taylor, would be to convince the world that they're actually in the quarterback market.
By doing so, they'll try to get another team to either trade up ahead of them to get a quarterback, which would move another defensive player down another spot. Or, that quarterback-hungry team would pick up the phone and call the Bills wondering what it would take to land someone like Lynch or Cook.
I don't discount the notion of them being genuinely interested in selecting a quarterback at some point, but at 19th overall, all signs have pointed to a defensive player to this point in time.
