Where Does the Buffalo Bills Roster Rank By Position and Overall vs the Entire NFL Entering 2025?

Where Does the Buffalo Bills Roster Rank By Position and Overall vs the Entire NFL Entering 2025?

I spent the last nine weeks studying and grading every NFL roster. Where do the Buffalo Bills rank entering the season? I’m breaking that down today on Locked on Bills. You are Locked on Bills, your daily Buffalo Bills podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network. Your team every day. What’s up, Bills? Mafia, it’s Joe Marino, author of the Herd Mentality Substack, co-host of the Lockdown NFL Scouting Podcast, co-host of the NFL First Read Podcast, and I’m your host of Locked On Bills. Want to thank you for making Lockdown Bills your first listen every day. And a big welcome and shout out to our everydayers. You know who you are. Those of you who never miss a single episode, I appreciate y’all being here very, very much. I’d also like to invite you to subscribe or follow for free on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. We’re part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Today’s episode is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on NFL for $20 off your first purchase. Well, folks, welcome in. I’m excited to share some information with you today because I’ve spent a lot of time this summer studying the NFL and this is a project that I do every single year with Kyle Krabs and Kyle and I we co-host the Locked On NFL scouting podcast together. So, you know that I do Lockdown Bills, a daily podcast on the Buffalo Bills, but I also do another daily podcast for Lockdown called Locked On NFL Scouting where we talk about the NFL through the lens of team building and roster construction. And so, a big part of our summer content calendar is going through every single roster and putting the players into different tiers. And the tiers are you’re either the highest tier is a roster cornerstone, then a quality starter, then a rookie, an sufficient level starter, a replacement level player, a quality depth player, a non-roster caliber player, an incomplete evaluation, or a practice squad caliber player. And so every player gets put into one of these buckets. Every bucket has different points associated with it. every position is weighted appropriately in terms of positional value. And Kyle and I use this as the opportunity to really understand the landscape of the NFL going into a season and you can assess, you know, players in versus player out and really get a an idea for how the rosters across the league stack. So, my objective today is to share with you where the Bills rank relative to the league at each position group and then how the overall project stacks up and where the Bills fall. And I’ll certainly give you some information about the other teams in the AFC of interest. And so we go through the quarterbacks get their own score, the offensive skill players, the offensive line, the defensive line, linebackers, defensive backs, special teams, and your coaching staff is all part of this equation. And so we love to put that consistent lens on the entire project, look at every team through the same lens, and set our expectations for the coming season. So let’s do it. Let’s break this down in terms of where the Bills ranked and I’ll tell you how we categorized uh the Bills players. So, this will be a lot of fun to share that work with you today. At quarterback, the Bills ranked number four. Now, put your pitchforks down, put your tomatoes down. We have Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, and Patrick Mahomes as the best four quarterbacks in the NFL. All of those respective teams got the maximum amount of points that you can get for a starting quarterback. The reason the Bills come in at fourth is because the Bills have a replacement level backup quarterback. And the other three teams, the Bengals, Chiefs, and Ravens got credited with a quality backup. Jake Browning, Cooper Rush, Gardner Mchu, those are better backup quarterbacks than Mitch Trabiscy or Mick or Mike White. So they received a fraction, okay, like a hundth of a point more to their quarterback score because they had a higher caliber backup. So the Bills come in at number four, not because of Josh Allen. We have him as tier one. In fact, Kyle and I both put Josh Allen as quarterback one in the NFL, but the depth piece of that uh puts the Bills as the number four quarterback uh ranking in terms of points earned, while the Bengals, Ravens, and Chiefs all received uh a three-way tie for number one. So, that one’s pretty straightforward. I think that’s understandable for you. Then we do offensive skill positions, which includes running backs, tight ends, and wide receivers. We take all of that and we put it into one category of offensive skill players. The Bills entering the season ranked 15th, 15th out of 32. And I’ll tell you what the different scores are, and then I’ll kind of tell you about some opportunities for the Bills players to jump up within their tiers. We have Khil Shakir graded as a quality starter. Josh Palmer as a sufficient starter. Keon Coleman is an incomplete evaluation. There’s not enough information to truly put him in a bucket. Elijah Moore is a quality depth player. Curtis Samuel is a quality depth player. At tight end, we have Daltton Concincaid as a sufficient level starter and Dawson Knox as a quality depth player. At running back, we have James Cook as a quality starter, Ray Davis and Tai Johnson both in the quality depth bucket. And so the Bills are middle of the pack here as it relates to offensive skill players. And one thing that I’ll say is that the Bills are 15th. The first 12 teams, when you look at the first 12 teams for offensive skill players, every single one of those top 12 have one skill player that’s in the cornerstone bucket. You know, one of those elite, whether it’s Jamar Chase or Justin Jefferson or Bejian Robinson or Saquon Barkley, something like that, they have a guy like that. The Bills are 15th without any skill players put in the cornerstone bucket, which I think speaks to the overall depth that the Bills have with their skill players. No, they don’t have an elite player like an elite tier one player at any one position, but there is a lot of depth throughout running back, tight end, and wide receiver. You also look at the Bills offensive skill players, and there is a lot of opportunity for guys to jump up in tears. I mean, Keon Coleman right now is an incomplete evaluation, which the Bills don’t get any points for that. Um, just like, you know, rookies different across the league, right? There’s a lot of players that are just, hey, not enough information to truly put them in a bucket. You also look at Dalton Concincaid, who we have as a sufficient level starter, and I think there’s a really good path for him to be a quality starter by the time this season is over. I can see Elijah Moore having a big year. I can see Josh Palmer maybe going from a sufficient starter to a quality starter. Uh we can learn more about Ray Davis and put him in a sufficient starter bucket. There’s a lot of opportunity here for upward momentum. And so while the Bills are middle of the pack here, I think it’s understandable and the exciting part is that there’s a lot of room for upward mobility for the Bills and the offensive skill players. All right, coming up next, I want to start working through the trenches, O line, Dline, tell you how we graded the players and where the Bills rank among the league. So, folks, be sure to stick with me. We’ve all been there, logging on early and waiting forever for concert tickets to go on sale, only to lose your spot for a show that you’ve been dying to see. Live music should be about making memories, not dealing with the stress of ticket shopping. That’s where game time comes in. Game time makes getting concert tickets faster and easier than ever. Prices actually drop as it gets closer to showtime. And you can save up to 60% off with killer lastminute deals. Ever wonder what your view will actually look like before you buy? Well, the app shows you a panoramic seat view, so there’s no surprises. And speaking of no surprises, with Game Time, the price you see is the price you pay. No hidden fees. So take the guesswork out of buying concert and show tickets with Game Time. Download the Game Time app. Create an account and use code locked on NFL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply again. Create an account and redeem code Loc for $20 off. Download the Game Time app today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, folks. Welcome back. We’re continuing to work through uh the roster ranking project that Kyle Krabs and I did for the locked on NFL scouting podcast. If you’re curious about any individual conversation about a team, we’re they’re all there. We’ve done every team over the last nine weeks. We’ve done the coaching conversations as well. Uh so you can go back and check out the locked on NFL scouting podcast feed. And if you’re looking for my analysis beyond the Buffalo Bills, you can find it right there. Daily podcast that covers the entire NFL. So, let’s get to offensive line here. We’ve done quarterback and offensive skill players. Obviously, the Bills offensive line is very good and it ranks very well for us in this project. We have the Bills as the number three offensive line in the NFL. We have Deion Dawkins graded as a franchise cornerstone. We have David Edwards, the left guard, as a sufficient level starter. We have Conor McGovern at center, graded as a quality starter. We have Osiris Torrance at right guard as a sufficient level starter and we have Spencer Brown at right tackle as a quality starter. And then we do take your top two backups who I have down as Ryan Vandermark and Alec Anderson. They both grade as quality depth players for us. So the offensive line is an excellent unit. The rankings reflect that. Top three in the NFL, number three. And just like we talked about with skill players, there are players here that I think could climb tiers. Osiris Torrance really stands out to me as a guy that we could be talking about as a quality starter by the end of this year if he takes a step forward in pass protection. And then Spencer Brown, you know, I I have an argument that he should be a franchise cornerstone. And I think if he has another year this year like he did last year, that’s going to be pretty easy to identify him as a franchise cornerstone player. So, uh, I like that. Now, obviously, there could be some shuffling. We’ll see what happens long term beyond this year with Conor McGovern and David Edwards, who are both expiring contracts, but you, uh, have some opportunity for growth with players that are signed through the next two seasons in Torrance and with Brown. So, the Bills offensive line is excellent and our rankings reflect that. Now, let’s get to the defensive side of the football. Uh, when it comes to the defensive line, I know this is a big topic. The Bills have certainly invested a lot here. We have the Bills ranked as the number nine defensive line in the NFL. And the way that that breaks out is Greg Rouso is a quality starter. Joey Bosa is a si sufficient level starter. And you know, some of these guys that have injury stuff are difficult to deal with uh in terms of where to put them because you really haven’t seen them play at their best, but you know what they can do. Uh, so yeah, that’s a sufficient level starter, but we know that he’s capable of making the impact of all the way up to a franchise cornerstone where we’ve had Joey Bosa ranked in previous years. Michael Hoy, we have him as a sufficient level starter. We have AJ Epanessa categorized as a quality depth player at defensive tackle. We have Ed Oliver as a sufficient level starter. We have Daquin Jones as a sufficient level starter. And we have Larry Aenjobi as a quality depth player. Now, there’s a lot of other players, DJ Sanders, Deion Walker, Dwayne Carter, Landon Jackson, Javon Solomon. Those are all incomplete assessments, guys that, you know, they’re there’s just not enough information on those players. Most of those guys haven’t even played a snap in the league. So, there’s no real points awarded for them. But obviously, those are players that will define so much of this year, but also the future of this defensive line group. And so all those young guys um make for some challenging grading because you just don’t know yet. But I think it’s pretty impressive that what we do know was good enough to have this group ranked number nine. Now we just need them to show up in the playoffs, right? That’ll be big. So Bills coming in with the number nine defensive line in the NFL per our grading. Let’s get to linebacker where the Bills rank number 11 in the NFL at linebacker. Uh we take your top three linebackers into this equation. We have Terrell Bernard as a quality starter. We have Matt Milano as a sufficient level starter. And we have Dorian Williams as a quality depth player. You know, the Milano conversation’s a lot like the Bosa conversation where at one point, you know, these are franchise cornerstones. There’s really no doubt about it. some of the most impactful defensive playmakers in the league. However, the last few years haven’t given us enough for us to maintain that level of grade. So, those are both players that are sufficient level starters that are capable of making an impact far greater than what we have them labeled, but we need to see that happen. you know, Dorian Williams is a player that is definitely I mean, it’s he’s a quality depth player that certainly has a lot more ceiling to develop into as he gets more opportunity and continues his upward trajectory. So, that’ll be a player that I’m not sure we’ll learn much more about him this year, but if he does succeed Milano as a starter next to Terrell Bernard, then yeah, he’s going to have the opportunity to elevate his tier as well. So, a lot more to learn about him. I wonder about Terrell Bernard if he can get into the franchise cornerstone bucket. I know for the Bills, like there’s a leadership component and he’s a captain, he’s a defensive play caller. There’s a lot there. Um, and I think he is an upper echelon coverage player. He’s an upper echelon uh space player, um, upper echelon leader, like all that stuff is there, but I I think his skill set is lacking as a true downhill player. um not necessarily as a gap shooter, but hey, just read and process the run and get downhill and take on contact and make tackles. Like I he’s not an up echelon player in that capacity in my view. And so that kind of pulls him out of that franchise cornerstone bucket, but he’s a quality starter that, you know, is at least knocking on the door. We’ll see what type of growth he can have in his third season as the Bills starting middle linebacker. So, the Bills defensive line at number nine, the linebackers at number 11, the offensive line at number three. All right, coming up next, defensive backs, which, you know, kind of a tricky situation for the Bills with a lot of unproven players. We’ll talk about that. Special teams, where the coaching staff ranked, and then of course the overall rank for the Bills and the AFC East and some of the big names in terms of teams in the AFC in general. We’ll break that all down for you here next, folks. Be sure to stick with me. All right, welcome back. Continue our conversation with where the Bills roster ranks among the NFL. Next up is the defensive backfield, which would include safeties and corners. The Bills ranked 21st. We have Christian Benford as a franchise cornerstone. So, tier one NFL corner. Maxwell Harrison’s a rookie. Terren Johnson is a quality starter. Trey White is a quality depth player. We have Taylor Rap as a sufficient starter. We have Cole Bishop as an incomplete assessment. And we have Demar Hamlin as quality depth. So the Bills are a little bit lower here. They’re 21st. And I think this is one of the big question marks of the team. Now you like the answers or you should like the answers. Big investments here. Max Haristen and Cole Bishop to step in and play prominent roles this year. Well, we don’t really know how good those players are, right? So, they’re not helping the score. They’re not hurting it per se, but they’re not helping it either. There’s not really any points that we’re going to give to players that we don’t know much about. But, we do know that those are premium investments and specifically targeted players for the roles that they’re going to be in this year. So, we got a lot to learn about those players that I think both have really high ceilings to be in that quality starter or maybe even franchise cornerstone bucket depending on how things go. So, yeah, you have two out of your five starters, projected starters, not really boosting your score. It’s going to come in a little bit lower, but you still have a lot of quality here with Benford and Taran Johnson and Taylor Rap as sufficient level starters or more. Obviously, Benford, a franchise cornerstone, Taran Johnson as a quality starter. So, that’s the defensive backfield. Special teams, the Bills come in at 27th. We grade your kicker, punter, and long snapper. And we have Bass, Tyler Bass is a sufficient starting kicker. We have Reed Ferguson as a quality starting long snapper, but the punters are replacement level. And yeah, is there a chance that either Jake Kamarda or Brad Robbins can be sufficient starting punters for the Bills? Yeah, but let’s be honest, those are both young punders that were drafted by their original teams that moved on pretty quick. And that the lack of opportunity that both guys got after being released, you know, kind of says something about the way that the league views them. So hopefully the Bills can get it going with those guys, but you don’t really have a lot of guys filling roles as snappers, punters, or kickers that aren’t at least like a sufficient level option. And so when you have one group that’s a replacement level, which you actually lose points for having a replacement level player, that’s going to bring it down a little bit. But obviously special teams is not as big of a overall part of the equation when it comes to how our methodology works for scoring these rosters. So the Bills 27th in special teams, but we’ll see about those punters. If if one of them can be a sufficient punter, then the Bills will be probably middle of the pack. So that’s the different position groups. So then we we grade the rosters only. Then we have a coaching score and then we have an overall score which would include your coaching and your roster. From a rosteronly perspective, we have the Buffalo Bills as the number three roster in the NFL entering 2025. It’s really good. That’s a top three roster. We have the Ravens at number one. We have the Chiefs at number five. We have the Dolphins at number 14 roster only. the Jets at 28, the Patriots at 27. We do have the Ravens number one. And for them, it’s just they got to play good football in the postseason. I maintain that I think Baltimore’s agame is the best in the league and they’re bringing pretty much everything back with some upgrades in the secondary. They added DeAndre Hopkins for to have another piece of their receiving core. Like, it’s a loaded team. It’s a loaded team. And if they play good football in the postseason, they’re going to be hard to beat. The Chiefs at number five, I think, you know, they’re still really good. You know, obviously they won the AFC last year and I I think they had a a really good off season. I think there’s some questions. There’s questions about the Bills, too. But I think there’s some questions with Kansas City, but I still don’t don’t sit there and act like they’re not going to be one of the upper echelon teams in the league. Dolphins 14. One thing about the Dolphins score, um, we’ll see what happens with Bradley Chub and Jaylen Phillips. Those are players that we have graded as quality starters. Um, but obviously coming off injury, it’s hard to really know what to get out of those players. Um, so that that’s boosting their score, but I’m interested. And James Daniels is another one, that guard, good player, but coming off of an Achilles. So, three quality starters for them that I think there’s kind of some question marks about where they’re truly at uh coming back from injuries. Jets and Patriots, I mean, I I think that the Patriots have elevated their team quite a bit. There’s still a lot that needs to come together. Still a lot of young players that we need to learn about. And the Jets, I think, you know, they’re still a work in progress as they’ve transitioned to a new regime, uh, kind of a bottom tier roster at this point. From a coaching perspective, the way that we do the coaching is you get the most points for your head coach and then you get half of the points that you get for your head coach for an OC and your DC. The Bills ranked number seven when it comes to coaching across the league, which uh, interestingly enough, that’s exactly where I personally ranked Shawn McDermott. have ranked Shawn McDermott personally ranked as the number seven head coach in the NFL entering the season. And then you you kind of work it all together. Every team’s play caller on both sides plus their head coach. The Bills come in at number seven. So overall factoring the way that I believe your coaching staff ranks and your roster ranks. It’s well I guess it’s half my belief. Kyle Krabs is the other half. But we come to consensus on everything and there’s you know we we go through and we we look at all this stuff and we we ask ourselves were we you know congruent with the way we were mindful of different elements and you know hey if this player’s in this tier well then that player should be too they’re similar we we go through this. So, while it may may not be every score that I want it to be, you know, I would say over 90% of it reflects exactly how I see it and maybe the other 10% or maybe even less than 10% is me coming to consensus with Kyle um based on the way that he sees it. So, but overwhelmingly it’s we’re aligned. So overall, we have the Bills as number four, the number four situation, number four team coaching and roster entering this season. We do have the Ravens at number one, and then the Chiefs do jump the Bills here. They go to number three. So that’s the value of their coaching. The the Bills were number three in roster. The Chiefs are number five in roster, but when you factor in coaching, the Bills go to number four and the Chiefs go to number three. If you’re wondering, Philly’s number two. So, Ravens one, Chiefs three, Bills four, the Dolphins come in at 16. So, you can see how their coaching brought them down. The Jets 30th and the Patriots 24th. So, you can see how the Patriots coaching brought them from 27 to 24. The Jets coaching that we just don’t know much about because it’s year one of pretty much everything there goes from 28th to 30th. One thing of note here as you see the Bills at four and then the rest of the division is 16th or lower. Look at the AFC West. We have the Chiefs at three. We have the Denver Broncos at six. We have the Los Angeles Chargers at seven. This is shaping up to be the most competitive AFC West race that we’ve seen in a long time. And it was, you know, they produced three playoff teams last year. But the Chiefs, remember last year they the Bills gave them their first loss. Weren’t they like 15-2 or something? And was their other loss like week 18 after they had everything clinched? They won all of those crazy games that made the other two teams having a glow up in Los Angeles and Denver not really matter because Kansas City just didn’t lose, right? So yeah, there’s other good teams, but they didn’t lose. Will they have the same type of fortune this year? I’m not sure. Maybe they’ll be a better team. So, it they won’t have as many close calls. We’ll see how that plays out. But, I do think it’s shaping up to be a more competitive AFC West race. Now, I’m I’m going to stop short of picking the Chiefs to not win it. I think the Chiefs will win the AFC West, but they’ve got some meaningful competition. And then I think with the Ravens in the North, Cincinnati such a wild card. I think the world of Joe Burrow in that passing offense, but I don’t think much of their run game and I don’t think anything of their defense. I think somehow their defense after it was their problem last year somehow got worse this off seasonason, especially if Trey Hendrickson doesn’t play. So, I mean, they’re going to have to score 40 points a game. Maybe they can, but that just makes it tough for Cincinnati as a team that can’t play complimentary football when it comes to offense and defense. And then there’s Pittsburgh in that division. I think I think so highly of the remainder of that team. Their their trenches really love it. Love a lot of their defense. You know, some skilled player stuff that is good, but maybe some questions there. But how does Aaron Rogers factor into this equation? The guy hasn’t played good ball in a while, right? Will he just run the offense? If he will, I I think they got a really good chance of being a a competitive team. I think they’re one that’ll knock on the door of a wild card and get in. We’ll see. But Cleveland’s going to be picking in the top three. So the Ravens path in that division, it’s like you kind of want to see it with Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. But Cincinnati’s got massive questions with their run game and their defense to in total. And then Pittsburgh signed up for the Aaron Rogers circus. I mean, what’s that going to look like? So maybe the Ravens want to run away with that division. We’ll see. But obviously, you know, look, we have we have the AFC East with the Dolphins at 16. and you can convince me that the Patriots are more of a threat to the Bills. So, it’s not like the Bills are in a, you know, a division that you’re expecting multiple playoff teams from. I I’m not sure if anyone gets in besides the Bills this year. So, there you have it. Hopefully, you enjoyed kind of seeing how this project came together, where the Bills fell, and kind of have an idea for what this landscape looks like, at least through the way I see it entering the season. All right, folks. That’s going to do it for us here today on the podcast. Thanks for being here. As always, I kindly ask that you share, subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great rest of your day. Go Bills, and I look forward to catching up with you again real soon.

Buffalo Bills roster ranked top-5 in the NFL? Joe Marino’s in-depth breakdown of the Bills’ roster reveals surprising strengths and potential weaknesses. Position-by-position comparisons to other NFL teams offer a fresh perspective on Buffalo’s competitive standing.
From Josh Allen’s quarterback ranking to the offensive line’s impressive showing, Marino’s study provides crucial insights for Bills fans. The defense also comes under scrutiny, with some positions raising eyebrows.
Tune in to hear Marino’s expert take on how Buffalo’s roster strength might impact their 2025 season and playoff chances. This episode is a must-listen for anyone eager to understand the Bills’ true potential in the upcoming NFL season.
JOIN JOE MARINO’S SUBSTACK: https://herdmentality1960.substack.com/
JOIN THE LOCKED ON BILLS SUBTEXT COMMUNITY: https://joinsubtext.com/lockedonbills
GET YOUR EVERYBODY EATS SHIRT: https://herdmentalityshop.com/

Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms…
🎧 https://link.chtbl.com/LOBills?sid=Yo…
Locked On NFL League-Wide: Every Team, Fantasy, Draft & More
🎧 https://linktr.ee/LockedOnNFL

Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!
Gametime
Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNFL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.
FanDuel
Right now, new customers can get $150 in BONUS BETS when your first $5 BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started.
Monarch Money
Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONNFL at monarchmoney.com/lockedonnfl for 50% off your first year.
FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)