The Buffalo Bills keep adding to their roster for the 2024 NFL season in interesting ways. This time, it was signing Olympic gold medal wrestler and former WWE superstar Gable Steveson to a contract.
“Gable Steveson, an Olympic gold medalist and one of the most dominant college wrestlers in NCAA history, is signing with the Bills, per his agent Carter Chow,” ESPN insider Adam Schefter reported on Friday. “Steveson now will try to join Bob Hayes as the only athlete to win a Super Bowl ring and an Olympic gold medal.”
Steveson has never played football before in his life. In fact, according to another Schefter report, it sounds like the former Minnesota Golden Gophers wrestling champion has never played a sport on grass.
“The 6-foot-1, 275-pound Gable Steveson is expected to play defensive line, something he hasn’t done before during his athletic career. In fact, the first time Steveson ever put on a pair of cleats was at a recent workout for the Bills.”
Before signing with the Bills, Steveson won a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in freestyle wrestling (125 kg). Then, he was on track to become a WWE superstar, signing with the professional wrestling company and following in the footsteps of Olympic gold-medal-winning WWE legend Kurt Angle.
However, Steveson didn’t catch on in the pro wrestling world. He had one televised match against Baron Corbin at NXT’s The Great American Bash before the WWE released him.
Now, Gable Steveson will try his hand at pro football, and he won’t be the only outside-the-box prospect trying to make the Bills roster.
The Bills are making some intriguing roster-building moves this offseason
Going from NCAA wrestling to Olympic wrestling to the WWE to an NFL training camp would usually give a person the most unique story of the team. However, when the Bills head to Rochester in late July, Gable Steveson will have to compete with Travis Clayton for the most unusual NFL backstory.
The Bills took Clayton in the seventh round of the 2024 NFL draft as a developmental offensive tackle. The 6-foot-7, 301-pound Englishman has also never played a down of American football, but the semi-pro rugby player impressed scouts with his athleticism in the NFL’s International Pathways program.
Bringing in Steveson and Clayton are fascinating moves from the Bills, a team that jettisoned a large chunk of its veteran roster this offseason.
Heading into the 2024 campaign Buffalo will be without incredibly familiar faces like Stefon Diggs, Gabe Davis, Mitch Morse, Jordan Poyer, Micah Hyde, and Tre’Davious White among others.
This is a full admission from the Bills front office that now that Josh Allen is off his rookie deal and is fully one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in the NFL, stocking the roster with high-paid veterans is no longer an option.
General manager Brandon Beane has to get creative with how he goes about putting pieces around Allen, and he’s doing that in several ways, including with Steveson and Clayton.
Beane traded back twice in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft, getting out of Day 1 entirely before selecting Florida State wide receiver Keon Coleman. While he didn’t pick up any extra picks to do so, he did improve the Bills’ selection spots by a round or two for a handful of picks.
This, in theory, allowed the Bills to nab better prospects, and the franchise still took 10 players, tied for second-most of any team in the league coming out of draft weekend.
The GM is also taking chances on low-risk, high-reward players in free agency. The best example of that is WR Chase Claypool. The former Notre Dame pass-catcher was incredible as a rookie with the Pittsburgh Steelers before his attitude, antics, and inability to produce like that first year doomed him there and then with the Miami Dolphins.
If the Bills can get an older, more mature, more focused Claypool back to his former self, they could have a real steal on their hands.
Despite all these interesting moves, signing “players” like Gable Steveson and Travis Clayton, who have never played the game before is by far the most intriguing gambit by Beane and will be fascinating to watch as their careers — as long or short as they may be — play out.
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