New Bills coach Sean McDermott makes his mark in NFL Draft

• The Bears may have made one of the worst trades in draft history - or not, we'll see.
• There were some pretty good players the Bills passed on at No. 10, but you can't look back.
• The PGA Championship may be moving to May in the near future, which impacts Oak Hill Country Club in 2023.

ORCHARD PARK – Outside of the fact that they blew our newspaper print deadline Thursday night, there wasn’t much for me to complain about regarding what the Bills accomplished the first two days of the NFL Draft.

For anyone who knows me, that’s saying something because complaining about the Bills has come rather easily in light of how they have bungled the first 16 years of the 21st century.

Perhaps a change is taking place before our eyes, though. In a bold, well-calculated, and wonderfully prosperous move, the Bills traded down from No. 10 to No. 27 in the first round Thursday and picked up a third-round pick in this draft plus, drum roll please, Kansas City’s first-round choice in 2018. And, while we all had to wait a couple hours 17 spots down the board, the Bills were still able to fill a glaring need at cornerback by selecting LSU’s Tre’Davious White.

The wheeling and dealing in the Bills’ war room didn’t end there. Friday, the Bills consummated two more trades that landed wide receiver Zay Jones and offensive lineman Dion Dawkins, picked No. 37 and 63, respectively, in the second round.

I’m still rubbing my eyes to make sure I saw it all clearly, because it was pretty smart execution by a franchise that has rarely been called smart since former owner Ralph Wilson fired coach Wade Phillips and general manager John Butler at the end of the 2000 season.

The draft is new coach Sean McDermott’s official coming out party. He was on display at the NFL scouting combine and the NFL owners’ meetings, but the draft is really his first opportunity to show us who he is, and what his vision is for the Bills. When he met the media at those earlier events, it was all talk, talk, talk, something we’ve heard plenty of from the past six Bills’ head coaches in their first months on the job.

Thursday and Friday, McDermott sprang into action in his first draft as an NFL head coach, and he came off looking like a guy who knows what he’s doing.

► The Bills pick CB Tre'Davious White

► Trading down was the smart play

Make no mistake, this is McDermott’s show. He carefully snuck in a line Thursday about the good work general manager Doug Whaley did in helping to pull off the trade with the Chiefs as well as the scouting job he and his staff did on White, but don’t be fooled. McDermott was the driving force behind the first-round trade, and he admitted he and his old mentor, Chiefs coach Andy Reid, had discussed possible scenarios leading up to the draft. It was more of the same Friday.

He’ll never say it publicly, but the roster McDermott inherited from Rex Ryan has more holes than a target at a shooting range. With salary cap issues, the Bills couldn’t do too much in free agency. They had to make progress via the draft, and with their first three picks, they did, as all three players will be in the mix to win starting jobs at St. John Fisher College.

If we focus solely on the first-round trade, there will be a flip side that bears watching: What if the Bills really blew it by not picking top-rated cornerback Marshon Lattimore who was surprisingly available, and then went to the Saints one pick after the Chiefs used Buffalo’s No. 10 slot to grab quarterback Patrick Mahomes? What if Mahomes goes on to become a star and, likewise, quarterback DeShaun Watson who was also available to quarterback-starved Buffalo and ultimately was picked 12th by the Texans?

Look, there are what-ifs in every draft. What if all 32 teams hadn’t passed on quarterback Dak Prescott at least three times before the Cowboys chose him in the fourth round last year? What if Sammy Watkins wasn’t constantly hurt and had produced three Pro Bowl-type seasons since the infamous trade up with Cleveland in 2014?

I’m not interested in what players will do on other teams; I’m interested in how White, Jones and Dawkins do for the Bills, and what McDermott does with that first-rounder in 2018 which is a nice chunk of currency to be carrying around.

Taking my shots

► I loved Buffalo’s first two trades, but I’m not sure about the third trade, the one they pulled off to get Dawkins. I had just praised them for gaining picks in the White deal, but the Dawkins trade cost them two fifth-rounders. Granted, they’re fifth-rounders, but the Bills need picks and it just feels like Dawkins would still have been available 12 picks later, early in the third round for Buffalo. Also, it’s not like Dawkins is a clear-cut right tackle, which is the position the Bills need to upgrade. He’s more of a jack-of-all-trades type.

► Mitchell Trubisky may go on to have a great career, and the Bears better hope he does because their trade with the 49ers Thursday night was simply bizarre, if not awful. I’d expect lunacy like that from the pre-McDermott Bills, but it just proves the Bills aren’t the only team that comes off as clueless sometimes. To move up one spot - one spot mind you from No. 3 to No. 2 - the Bears gave the 49ers picks No. 67 and 111 in this draft, plus next year's third-rounder for a quarterback who started 13 games in college and who many believe isn’t even a first-round talent. This is what college quarterbacks do, they tease teams and make them do crazy things.

► As I said earlier, there were some very interesting players available to the Bills had they stayed put at No. 10, all of whom would have walked in as starters from day one, Lattimore first and foremost. Another guy who there seemed to be some smoke around for the Bills in the days leading up to the draft was Temple linebacker Haason Reddick and sure enough, he was gone by No. 13 to Arizona. Alabama tight end O.J. Howard ultimately went 19th to Tampa Bay. And Alabama’s Jonathan Allen, the second-rated defensive lineman behind only Myles Garrett who went No. 1 overall the Browns, slid a bit to the Redskins at No. 17. With Kyle Williams likely retiring after 2017, he would have looked good in Buffalo.

If it were up to me …

The PGA of America would stand firm and keep its August date for the PGA Championship, though it may be tough to do. There has been talk that the PGA Tour wants to rearrange its schedule in order to get the Fed Ex Cup playoff events completed before the start of the pro and college football seasons.

Right now, with the PGA Championship slotted in its normal mid-August date, the playoffs don’t end until the completion of the Tour Championship on Sept. 24, or Week 3 of the NFL season.

Naturally, TV is the driving force because the networks get killed in the ratings when golf goes against football. The scuttlebutt is that the Tour would like to move the PGA Championship (which will be at Oak Hill in 2023) to mid-May, freeing up August for the Fed Ex playoff events. I talked to PGA of America chief championships officer Kerry Haigh about this the other day, and he was diplomatic.

“We are very happy with the date we have currently in August, but there is, and has been, some discussion about changing the entire golf schedule down the road,” Haigh said. “Right now, we’re in the process of analyzing all the issues, of which there are many – TV, weather, golf course availability, the players’ schedule. Ultimately, we are happy with where we are in August, but we will do what’s best for the PGA Championship and the PGA of America.”

Moving to May seems like a bad idea because northeast venues like Oak Hill would face very iffy weather conditions. Stay tuned, golf fans.

This week in baseball 

Thirty-five years ago, on April 27, 1982, Reggie Jackson returned to Yankee Stadium for the first time since leaving to join the Angels in free agency when George Steinbrenner declined to re-sign him. Naturally, Reggie rose to the occasion and hit a two-run homer to help California beat the Yankees 3-1. The roared with delight, and then began chanting “Steinbrenner Sucks” as Jackson rounded the bases while the Yankee owner stood in his box with that famous Boss George look of disdain on his face.

The numbers game

Courtesy of Elias Sports Bureau

► The Yankees pulled off an incredible comeback for the ages Friday night. It was just the second home win in team history in which they trailed by at least eight runs in the sixth inning or later and came back to win. The first was on May 27, 1933 against the White Sox. In that game, New York was down 11-3 in the eighth but Babe Ruth had a two-run single, Lou Gehrig a RBI double, and Bill Dickey hit a game-winning grand slam.

► Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner had quite a two-night performance at Coors Field earlier this week. He hit for the cycle in the first game, then went 3-for-5 in the next game, both one-sided Nationals victories over the Rockies. He became just the second player in the last 40 years to total five extra-base hits, seven runs scored, and nine RBIs in a two-game span. The other was Mike Piazza of the Dodgers on May 6-7, 1995, also at Coors Field.

► Edmonton defenseman Adam Larsson pulled off a rarity in the Oilers’ 5-3 victory over Anaheim in Game 1 of their second-round series. He became just the third defenseman in the NHL’s modern era (since 1943-44) to score a pair of third-period goals, including the game-winner of a playoff game. The others are Boston’s Bobby Orr (April 11, 1971 at Montreal) and Calgary’s Randy Holt (April 20, 1981 vs Philadelphia).

MAIORANA@Gannett.com