When the Buffalo Bills entered the 2022 Draft, they understood that the cornerback position was one that needed to be addressed efficiently during the process.
Buffalo may have solved that need, but with a very unorthodox way of doing so.
The Bills took two cornerbacks during the 2022 Draft - Kaiir Elam late in the first round, and Christian Benford in the sixth-round. At the time, the belief was that Elam would be a plug-and-play performer while Benford would be a borderline roster player focusing more on special teams.
Boy, did analysts and even the Bills get that wrong.
Benford has become one of the top lockdown cornerbacks in the game today while Elam has been traded to the Dallas Cowboys.
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With Benford signing a new deal at over $76 million total, the Bills are able to celebrate the commitment to one of the top steals in the cornerback room.
"A moment like this, like all the extra work -- outworking, feel like you're outworking everybody in this building, outworking everybody in this country, and then doing the extra mile, like being different from yourself, like your old self, like breaking your old self and adding some more to your new self," Benford said. "That's hard to do. And then seeing something like this -- it means a lot. Because it means, like, 'All right, all this work I'm putting in means something,' it's not just going to waste, because sometimes, that's what you can feel sometimes, like you can feel like I'm doing all this for nothing."
If Benford can continue to dominate at a high level, that steal will only grow moving forward for Buffalo.
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This story was originally published April 3, 2025 at 3:23 PM.