ESPN.com periodically surveys the NFL landscape by polling those within the clubs' analytic departments to gauge which NFL teams are ahead of the curve when it comes to committing resources and applying models and results into their game-day decision making.
Buffalo ranked third in the league for the quality of their analytic work. They also ranked fourth for being the most analytically inclined.
Bills Director of Football Research and Strategy, Dennis Lock, also received a vote for current NFL analytics staffers who could become an NFL GM in the future.
"I've always just held him in high regard," one analytics staffer in the NFL told ESPN.com. "PhD in statistics, as bright as they come."
As for the likelihood of an analytics staffer becoming an NFL GM down the line, most of those polled believe it will come to fruition in the near future.
"It's going to happen soon," a senior staffer told ESPN.com. "I think you're going to have owners wanting GMs who have it all. There's really no reason you can't have a football person who is data fluent and data interested. It's not an either/or."
