By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Sam Rogers of the Bills

Taken in Round 2 in 1994

Other picks in the round: Buffalo native Vaughn Parker was taken by the Chargers at No. 63 – a spot before Rogers. The round produced three Hall of Famers: Isaac Bruce, Kevin Maewe and Larry Allen, In all, 15 players from Round 2 played at least 100 games in the NFL.

The details: Rogers missed all of the fun of the Super Bowl years in Buffalo. Even so, he played on some good Bills teams during the rest of the 1990s. He took over a starting role in 1995, and held it until after his departure in 2000. Then it was on to San Diego and Atlanta before leaving the game after the 2003 season.

Other 64s: Mike Zigomanis (1999) will always be associated with the Sabres’ fax machine. He signed with Buffalo just before the deadline on June 1, 2001. The terms were sent to the league office, and then it was discovered that there was a typographical error in the contract that nullified the transaction. Zigomanis went back into the draft, and was taken by Carolina. He was something of an NHL/AHL tweener, playing 197 games in the big leagues. Zigomanis played his last season in Rochester.

(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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