Buffalo Bills give scouts Easter week off prior to 2014 NFL Draft

Only a year ago, the idea of a NFL team giving their scouting department a week off in mid-April would have been a highly misguided notion. This year, thanks to the league moving the draft back to early May, the Buffalo Bills are doing exactly that.

Peter King of Sports Illustrated spoke to Bills GM Doug Whaley from the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, who told the reporter that the Bills plan on giving their scouting staff Easter week off (the week prior to Easter Sunday, April 20).

"We want our guys to be fresh," Whaley told King. "There’s only so long you can study guys."

NFL scouts are employed year-round by teams, and they spend the bulk of their work weeks traveling to schools near and far for an up-close look at, essentially, every draft prospect imaginable. The workload is demanding, and is cited as the reason that Daniel Jeremiah, now a draft analyst for NFL Network, left the business in the first place.

With an extra two weeks to prepare for the draft this year - the first round begins on the evening of Thursday, May 8 - the Bills evidently saw fit to give their scouts a little time off before the final push. The scouting staff will be back in the building more than two weeks before the draft begins.