Who are the Bills best players 25 years old or younger?

Now that the Buffalo Bills are off for the summer, it’s time for some rankings.

We won’t see Josh Allen and Co. for six more weeks until they all converge on St. John Fisher University in Pittsford at the end of the July.

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And because the Bills have a new defense, a unit that features not only a new coordinator but plenty of new, young pieces — heck, Buffalo has spent 12 of its last 19 draft picks on that side of the ball — I felt it an appropriate time to rank the best Bills aged 25 or younger.

To qualify for this exercise, the Bills player simply needs to be 25 at the start of the upcoming 2026 season.

6. Maxwell Hairston

Hairston has the most upside of anyone on this list — along with a former collegiate teammate of his you will see below. We all know what he did at the combine in 2025, and when he recovered from his training camp injury a season ago, he hit the ground running with a stick on a screen play against the Panthers in Carolina then an interception of Patrick Mahomes on a deep ball to Xavier Worthy.

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Hairston was built for the modern-day NFL that prioritizes lightning quickness and separation skills at receiver. He’s the definition of twitchy. He’s fast. He plays bigger than his size as a tackler. He can find the football in the air. All these traits were on full display during his last two seasons at Kentucky when had six interceptions and 10 pass breakups in his final 20 games.

I firmly believe Jim Leonhard’s system will work wonders for Hairston’s development. It will more regularly ask to simply go one-on-one with his assignment on the outside, and that’s where he can flourish.

At the ripe age of 23 (in August), Hairston has his best football in front of him.

5. Jackson Hawes

Hawes is already 25 — he’ll turn 26 in December — and even though I’m typically not a fan of older draft prospects, the Yale-turned-Georgia Tech demonstrated what an older rookie can do in Year 1 in the NFL.

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He asserted himself into the “best blocking tight end” conversation right away.

And it’s not as if Hawes was a lumbering, do-nothing receiving threat. As a rookie, Hawes averaged a hefty 1.89 yards per route run, albeit on a relatively small sample of just 146 routes.

I’m very much intrigued to see how Joe Brady incorporates Hawes into the offense in 2026 — does he absorb some of the fullback duties of the departed Reggie Gilliam? Or does Brady give him more opportunities in the pass game in multiple tight end sets?

We know Hawes is going to demolish in the run game, and given that he’s now a full year into an NFL strength and conditioning program, he can become a major asset when the Bills run the football.

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4. Dorian Williams

I’ve been a Williams fan since his collegiate days at Tulane. He was a distinct draft crush for me in the 2023 class. Detractors will point to the fact that he hasn’t materialized into a high-end coverage linebacker, but he hasn’t been so bad in passing situations that it’s kept him off the field.

Against the run and as a blitzer, Williams has been borderline fantastic. In 2024, when he was thrust into a full-time role filling in for an injured Matt Milano, Williams led the team in tackles and finished 23rd among linebackers in “stops,” which are tackles that constitute a loss for the offense based on down and distance, despite only playing the 50th-most snaps at the position in the NFL.

He was relegated to a rotational role in 2025 and still looked the part of a high-caliber thumper, but his missed tackles were more of a problem than they were in the previous season. As a dedicated inside linebacker with less rangy responsibilities, I very much feel like Williams can improve under Leonard’s tutelage.

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3. Cole Bishop

Bishop’s rookie season was essentially a wash because a training camp injury lingered into the regular season, which caused him to sit squarely behind the 8-ball from a developmental perspective in his first year in the NFL.

It wasn’t until the last few weeks of the regular season that he regained full-time status on the defense — he had only previously played more than 50 snaps in a game in Week 5 of that year — and we started to see some flashes from him in the Bills run to the AFC championship game. And yes, he absolutely either intercepted or knocked down that pass near the end zone to Xavier Worthy.

A season ago, Bishop took a sizable step. His missed tackle rate dipped, he snagged three interceptions, and had truly one of the best performances from a Bills safety I’ve seen in a while — especially relative to the opponent — when he knocked away four passes in Buffalo’s win over the Chiefs in the regular season. His tackle figure jumped from 40 to 85. The do-everything, high-caliber athlete he was at Utah appeared on the field for the Bills in 2025.

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Bishop will only turn 24 in October, so the arrow is distinctly pointing upward for this young safety, and it’ll be fascinating to watch Leonhard — a former versatile safety himself — work Bishop into a key role on his defensive scheme.

2. Deone Walker

One season was enough evidence for me. Walker is an animal. In his rookie season in Buffalo, I was reminded of the Walker I scouted in his second-to-last season at Kentucky that prompted me to write this piece I titled “Deone Walker might be the next Dexter Lawrence — or something even scarier.”

His final season with the Wildcats wasn’t as stunning as his penultimate campaign was in Lexington, yet at just 21 years old in 2025, Walker played like a lot like Lawrence did in his rookie season in 2019 with the Giants. In that season, Lawrence’s pressure rate was 7.0%. In 2025, Walker’s was 6.9%.

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And the rookie wall? It didn’t slow Walker. He had a pair of pressures in both Bills playoff games a season ago and a huge interception against the Broncos in the divisional round. He’s a mammoth human, with a high-energy style, pass-rush moves, and effortless power. He’s only going to get better.

1. Christian Benford

Benford barely qualifies, as he’ll be 26 in late September. But the qualifications are the qualifications. While he hasn’t gotten any individual accolades just yet — Benford has been a lockdown cornerback and is now entering the prime of his career.

Check this advanced-stat nugget: