If the Buffalo Bills seem hesitant to make moves before the November 10 NFL trade deadline — before any trade deadline in recent years — we can probably point to one past trade disaster as the reason why.
Bleacher Report’s Brent Sobleski singled out the Bills for making the “Biggest Trade Deadline Mistake” of the last decade for sending their 2018 3rd- and 7th-round picks to the Carolina Panthers in exchange for wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin in 2017.
“Kelvin Benjamin was 26 at the time of the trade,” Sobleski wrote on November 6. “He posted 1,949 receiving yards during his first two healthy seasons. The Panthers had a glut of wide receivers with upside at the time and decided to move the 2014 first-round pick. For Buffalo, Benjamin was supposed to be a legitimate X receiver with the size on the outside to consistently create mismatches, particularly in the red zone. However, the version of Benjamin seen earlier in his career never showed up in Buffalo. He caught 39 passes and only two touchdowns in 18 appearances before the Bills released him during the 2018 campaign.”
Bills Called Out for NFL’s ‘Biggest Trade Deadline Mistake’