ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane chose to add draft picks rather than make a selection by completing three trades and move entirely out of the first round of the NFL draft on Thursday night.
Buffalo’s first scheduled pick is now 35th overall after the team opened the draft holding pick No. 26. In the process, the Bills added two selections, and improved their positioning in the third round.
The Bills moved up 25 spots in the third round — from No. 91 to No. 66 — while also adding the first pick of the fourth round (101).
The wheeling and dealing by Beane came after Buffalo had already traded its second-round pick to acquire receiver DJ Moore in a deal with Chicago last month.
The Bills now have nine selections, including four among the top 125 picks. Buffalo entered the draft with a total of seven selections, and just two in the top 125.
This marks the second time in three years Beane has traded back in the first round to add picks. In 2024, the Bills traded back twice before selecting receiver Keon Coleman with the first pick of the second round.
The Bills are in transition with offensive coordinator Joe Brady promoted in January to replace Sean McDermott, who was fired after nine seasons. With much of the Josh Allen-led offense returning intact, Buffalo had needs on defense, with the team making the switch to a 3-4 style under new coordinator Jim Leonhard.
The trades began with Buffalo passing up making the 26th pick and moving back two spots in a trade with Houston. The Bills also gave up the 91st selection to acquire two picks, Nos. 69 and 167, from the Texans.
Beane then traded the No. 28 pick to move back to 31 in a deal with New England. Buffalo also acquired a fourth-round selection (125) in the trade.
And Buffalo completed the night by trading picks No. 69 and 165 to Tennessee, and in return landing picks 66 and 101.
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Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane addresses the media during an NFL football news conference Monday, April 20, 2026, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane addresses the media during an NFL football news conference Monday, April 20, 2026, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
ŠIAULIAI AIR BASE, Lithuania (AP) — When NATO's call came, the French fighter pilots scrambled with practiced urgency, already suited up to shorten their response times.
They dashed in vans to hangars where their prepped and armed Rafale jets awaited, clambered into the cockpits and fired up the engines, which puffed and screamed.
Within minutes of takeoff from the Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania, they were over the Baltic Sea, first intercepting a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft and then tailing supersonic Russian bombers and their fighter escorts that neared the airspace of multiple NATO countries.
In a conflict situation, things could quickly get heated. But for the moment, with Russia and the military alliance at odds over Ukraine but not at war, pilots on both sides just watched and filmed each other — keeping their distance like wary tomcats with claws unsheathed, their missiles visible but not used.
One of the points of the posturing — in aerial ballets that take place away from public gaze hundreds of times a year — is to try to ensure that the frostiness between NATO and the Kremlin over Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine doesn't tilt into open hostility.
Commanders and pilots flying NATO air-policing missions on the eastern flank of the 32-nation military alliance say that their goal is to deter, not provoke. They believe their presence is reassuring for Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — that border Russia and its ally Belarus but don't themselves have airpower to fight off any Russian attack, if it ever came to that.
“It's a game of cat and mouse, or rather cat and cat,” said Lt. Col. Alexandre, commander of a French air force wing of four Rafales that is sharing the Lithuanian base with another fighter detachment from Romania. Citing security concerns, the French military withheld the commander's surname.
“We watch each other, scrutinize each other and try to make sure that it doesn't go any further," he said.
Alliance members take turns policing Baltic skies around the clock, seven days a week. The French inherited the building that now serves as their temporary headquarters from a Spanish detachment. They will hand it over to Italian replacements in August. Successive teams leave plaques and badges on a wall that records their passage.
NATO scrambles jets to identify and possibly take other action when Russian planes fly in Baltic airspace without switched-on transponders and without filing flight plans or communicating by radio with air traffic controllers.
“There are plenty of times in which, on purpose or not, they’re not really respecting the ICAO — the International Civil Aviation Organization — rules, regarding flight plans and behavior," said Col. Mihaita Marin, commanding the Romanian detachment of six F-16s.
“So obviously we are forced to take off and just make sure that they are who they say they are and their intention is peaceful,” he said.
The arrival of spring, bringing better flying conditions, means French and Romanian flyers have been busy since they deployed at the start of April on four-month NATO rotations.
Marin said interceptions “are getting close to daily" and "that will definitely increase as the weather is getting better."
French aircrews — watched by an Associated Press journalist who was reporting at the airbase — had their busiest day so far on Monday.
Scrambled under NATO command, French Rafales met and observed a pair of Russian Tu-22M3 bombers carrying supersonic, anti-ship missiles from their bellies that Russia has also used in Ukraine, repurposing them to attack ground targets, and which can be equipped to carry a nuclear warhead.
The strategic bombers' more than four-hour flight from an airbase near St. Petersburg, escorted by Su-30 and Su-35 fighters, remained in international airspace but took them past the coasts of NATO countries Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, doubling back when they approached Denmark.
The French detachment said the Russian planes didn’t have switched-on transponders, file flight plans or enter into radio contact. Fighter jets from Sweden, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Romania also went airborne to keep watch, according to the French. NATO didn't respond to requests for comment.
The French commander, Lt. Col. Alexandre, said it isn't clear why Russian pilots behave in ways that could endanger other users of Baltic airspace.
“We don’t know if it’s lack of professionalism or just a means for them to test us," he said.
“But what is sure is that we need to go every time," he added. "We cannot say, 'OK, that's usual, this time we will just let them pass.'”
French air force Commander Dorian (surname withheld by the French military) uses his hands to shield his ears from the scream of the jet engines of a Rafale fighter preparing to take off from the Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania on a NATO air-policing mission on Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/John Leicester)
Members of a French air force detachment of personnel and Rafale jets stationed on a monthslong deployment at the Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania on a NATO air-policing mission play chess in the detachment's headquarters at the base on Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/John Leicester)
A member of the French air wing of Rafale fighters jets deployed on a NATO air-policing mission at the Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania wears a mission badge on her arm on Sunday, April 19, 2026 (AP Photo/John Leicester).
Romanian air force Col. Mihaita Marin, commander of a Romanian air wing of F-16 fighter jets deployed at the Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania on a NATO air-policing mission, speaks during an interview on Monday, April 20, 2026. (AP Photo/John Leicester)
A flight-crew member climbs into the cockpit of a French air force Rafale fighter jet stationed on a NATO air-policing mission at the Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania as another member of the French detachment stands at the foot of the ladder on Sunday, April 19, 2026 (AP Photo/John Leicester)
