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The Buffalo Bills close Week 1 of the coming NFL season with a Monday night matchup with the New York Jets on September 11. This game is a must-win right out of the gates in the loaded AFC East, so Buffalo has to put its strongest team on the field, especially on defense. And that is why Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Devin White is the one last-minute Bills trade the franchise must make before Week 1 of 2023 NFL season.
The Bills must trade for LB Devin White before Week 1 of the upcoming season
The Bills let linebacker Tremaine Edmunds walk to the Chicago Bears as a free agent this offseason. Buffalo decided it didn’t need the 25-year-old, two-time Pro Bowl LB with Matt Milano — one of the best coverage LBs in the league — already locked up and young defenders behind them.
General manager Brandon Beane drafted Dorian Williams out of Tulane in the third round of this year’s draft and added him to the mix to compete with 2020 undrafted free agent Tyrel Dodson, 2022 third-round pick Terrel Bernard, 2022 seventh-round pick Baylon Spector, and veterans A.J. Klein and Tyler Matakevich.
So, how’s that working out? Not well.
Williams is battling a calf injury, Bernard missed two weeks with a hamstring injury, and Spector, Klein, and Matakevich all look like backups at best (although Matakevich is a special teams standout).
The point is, none of these players look ready and able to fill Edmunds' shoulder pad this coming Bills season, and that’s a problem with Week 1 just over two weeks away.
What’s the solution? For the Bills to trade for Buccaneers linebacker Devin White.
White was the No. 5 overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft and has one Pro Bowl and one second-team All-Pro nod under his belt in his first four NFL seasons. He’s had 125 tackles or more in the last four seasons and is generally one of the best young off-ball linebackers in the game right now.
Plus, we know he wants out of Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers star asked for a trade this offseason, and although he’s backed off that request, it still happened. And even if the Buccaneers say they are looking to compete in the (admittedly dreadful) NFC South this season, the fact that they just named Baker Mayfield their starter for this season says they are tanking for USC’s Caleb Williams of North Carolina’s Drake Maye.
White is in the fifth-year option of his first-round rookie deal, so he’ll make $11.7 million this coming Bills season. That’s about $3 million less than Edmunds, and if he’s good, the Bills can likely get him on a similar deal to their former LB.
To get White to Buffalo, the Bills will likely have to give up a future third-round pick and one or two later-round selections. That’s not a bad price for a young defender coming into his prime.
The biggest issue with this Bills trade is that it would signify Beane admitting that he made a mistake by not re-signing Edmunds. He could have had a similar player for $3 million more and kept all his picks. However, that’s not what happened and so the Bills GM should pull the trigger on a Devin White trade before Week 1 when Aaron Rodgers has the chance to exploit this major weakness on the Bills D.
