Even though this may be the perfect year to make the attempt, it's looking increasingly unlikely that the Buffalo Bills will be able to trade down from the No. 3 overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft.
That's without considering whether or not the team would even want to do so. If the 2010 NFL Draft wasn't enough evidence for you - when Buddy Nix and the Bills took all of 30 seconds on the clock to make each of their nine picks - Nix spoke about his history of not moving around the draft board from February's NFL Combine.
The lack of definition at the top of this year's draft has many - including, grudgingly, myself - firmly believing that the Bills would be best served to move down. From everything I'm hearing, they're very open to the idea. But that same lack of definition could work against them, as the prospects that in-range teams would move up to pick are fewer and further between than in recent years.
Finally, a quote from Panthers GM Marty Hurney points out that when you're picking that early, money comes into play as well - even with a rookie wage scale purportedly on the way.
"There hasn’t been a lot of action in the past up there, and I’m assuming a lot of it is because of the pay part of it," Hurney said in a recent interview. "When we had the second pick in ’02, the phone didn’t ring before we took Julius [Peppers]."