By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Sean McNanie of the Bills

Taken in Round 3 in 1984

Other picks in the round: Jeff Hostetler went to the Giants at No. 59. He went on to play a role in Bills history during Super Bowl XXV. Linebacker Kyle Clifton played 204 NFL games after he was taken by the Jets at No. 64.

The details: McNanie’s timing was all wrong. He was one of the Bills’ trio of third-round picks in 1984 – just when Chuck Knox was leaving and the team as about to crumble. Sean was a reserve for two years and then started at defensive end in 1986 and 1987. Just as the Bills were starting to rebuild under Marv Levy and Jim Kelly, McNanie left for Phoenix for a season. He finished his career with Arizona.

Other 79s: The Sabres’ only No. 79 was Jeff Hamilton (1982), a forward who spent two years in Rochester in the mid-1980s.

He got away: Chuck Mercein was drafted by the Bills in 1965 out of Yale, but the Giants signed him. Mercein is best remembered for playing for the Packers against Dallas in the “Freezer Bowl” – the NFL Championship Game on Dec. 31, 1966.

(Follow Budd on Twitter at @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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