The Buffalo Bills get a freak physical presence at pick 33
The Buffalo Bills stayed put at the 33rd overall pick to select Florida State wide receiver Keon Coleman with their first pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. Last night, the Bills knew they could move back and take him. The team’s building blocks at the position had shifty inside-outside versatile receivers, but none have the alpha body type and physicality of Keon Coleman.
If you’re building a basketball team, Keon Coleman is a new piece to the puzzle as a power forward to couple with the shifty guards you have to work the short and intermediate areas of the field. His highlight tape is as good as anybody’s in this draft class littered with impossibly difficult catches, punt returns, and flashes of yards-after-catch ability. Coleman has flashy upside, but he’s certainly not a picture-perfect prospect.
Mannn, I can’t wait to see this in Buffalo.
Performance ceiling remains through the roof for Keon Coleman.
— Ryan Fowler (@_RyanFowler_) April 26, 2024
There are some questions with a player like Coleman as he ran a 4.61 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine. There is some lack of separation on his tape in college and he’s certainly not one to run away from anyone. He’ll also need to polish up his route running in the NFL as he hones in on maximizing his short-area twitch by creating as much separation as he can with the deficit of speed he carries.
There’s a lot to like about Coleman who has been perceived as a “bad athlete” for his mediocre 40-yard dash — and we can admit that it’s an alarming number. But what he does is show off every bit of his basketball background as he’s only had two years to focus on this one sport after he was both Division-I basketball and football player as a freshman at Michigan State. Once again, a testament to his athleticism.
Don’t let anyone tell you Keon Coleman is a bad athlete — he’s not. Coleman has short-area twitch to escape press and enough yards-after-catch ability to provide the Bills with a very useful skill set from day one. You’re selecting Coleman for the physique and ball winning alpha mentality with the hopes he can be an X receiver for you from day one. His complement to the top receivers the Bills currently have in Curtis Samuel and Khalil Shakir makes all the sense in the world.
Admittedly, I’m higher on Coleman than some others. He’s a polarizing prospect. But he has a super power and those are hard to come by in Round 2.