If you were guessing what the Buffalo Bills were going to do prior to the 2011 NFL Draft - hey, I was right there with you - you probably didn't need to be. All you needed to do was listen to Bills GM Buddy Nix. In February.
I was digging through the archives here last night, and came across this item from the 2011 NFL Combine, dated February 25, where The Buffalo News and other media entities got a chance to talk to Nix in Indianapolis. After that interview, we wrote the above linked piece, extrapolating Nix's perceived defensive needs from his words. It turned out not just to be surprisingly accurate, but also unusually honest and straightforward. We wrote at the time:
Tallying everything up, Nix would like to add two defensive ends, two inside linebackers, a cornerback, a safety, and possibly an outside linebacker this off-season. Maybe Gailey's assertion that the team is thinnest defensively really was a team-wide opinion, and not his own.
You can cross the vast majority of that off of the to-do list. The team didn't add an outside linebacker, and they don't have a second five-technique end, either. Everything else? Mission accomplished - in the form of Marcell Dareus, Kelvin Sheppard and Chris White, Aaron Williams (and Justin Rogers) and Da'Norris Searcy.