By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

No. 57: April 25, 2013 – The Bills trade a first-round draft choice in 2013 and a third-round draft choice in 2013 (T.J. McDonald) to St. Louis for a first-round draft choice in 2013 (EJ Manuel), a second-round draft choice in 2013 (Kiko Alonso), a third-round draft choice in 2013 (Marquise Goodwin), and a seventh-round draft choice in 2013 (Chris Gragg).

The Bills thought they had everything so planned out. After a 6-10 season in 2012, Buffalo was ready to move on from Ryan Fitzpatrick as the starting quarterback. The eventual replacement was scheduled to come from the college draft.

But first, there was the matter of acquiring some extra picks in that draft by moving down. So the Bills dealt their first- and third-round choices to St. Louis for a first, second, third and seventh. Then the Bills took the man they wanted in the first round, EJ Manuel.

But they didn’t plan on coming up relatively empty on Manuel, who was rated as a fifth-round choice by another NFL team. At least Kiko Alonso had a good year and then was turned into running back LeSean McCoy, and Marquise Goodwin had a couple of good moments as a wide receiver between injuries. But Manuel’s play made this deal less important than it could have been.

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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