Ashton Jeanty and 2025 NFL Draft Picks That Teams Already Regret

Replacement: S Nick Emmanwori

The Buffalo Bills had the right idea, just with the wrong position.

The organization needed to improve its secondary. The front office tried to do so by selecting cornerback Maxwell Hairston with the 30th overall pick.

Hairston has yet to play this season due to a knee injury. He’s set to return in the near future, but the issue with this selection doesn’t revolve around the cornerback’s inability to contribute up until this point.

Instead, the Bills went through this process with a bigger hole at safety than cornerback. Buffalo already had corners Christian Benford, Taron Johnson and the returning Tre’Davious White on the roster before selecting Hairston.

At safety, the Bills haven’t been set since the tandem of Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer broke up two years ago. In fact, the Bills brought back the 34-year-old Poyer in late August to try and help the position. Last season, Damar Hamlin and Taylor Rapp struggled mightily. The organization planned to work Cole Bishop, whom the team selected in last year’s second round, into a bigger role during his sophomore campaign. Even so, nothing was settled and certainly not solved.

Buffalo should have chosen safety Nick Emmanwori with its first-round selection to give the team a potential difference-maker in the secondary. Hairston may have enough upside to grow into an elite cover corner, but he’s also not the most physical defensive back. Whereas, Emmanwori brings even more upside to the table, with the versatility, size, athleticism and physicality to completely rewire an entire secondary, as he’s starting to do with the Seattle Seahawks.

Corner certainly holds a higher positional value compared to safety when all things are considered equal. In the Bills’ case, the issue at safety far outweighed another investment in a cornerback.