During the bill’s farewell week in 2017, assistant general manager Joe Schoen was busy in the west. He and general manager Brandon Beane share the philosophy that if you are going to cast a player in the first four rounds, you will feel much better if you saw him in person during the university season.
Schoen had a busy schedule that started that Thursday. He started with a practice at Stanford, where he saw Bills choose Harrison Phillips in the third round. He watched Washington State and Cal play that night before flying to Utah, where Josh Allen was playing for Wyoming in a Saturday game in Logan. He then got into his rental car and drove to Weber State in Ogden. He wanted to see if the smaller size of the Weber State cornerback looked as good in person as it did in the movie. He wanted to take a live look at Taron Johnson.
“I was happy to have done that,” Schoen told me in 2018.
Imagine how happy Schoen was in the third quarter Saturday night when Johnson …