Buffalo Bills make scouting team changes ahead of 2024 season

In late May, the Buffalo Bills announced several moves within their leadership, hiring new faces or promoting employees from within to give their recruiting staff a real refresh ahead of the 2024 college football season and the 2025 NFL Draft.

To bring those of you up to speed who might have missed the initial report, below is a brief overview of these front-office moves.

The new additions to the Bills scouting department are:

• Matt Bazirgan, director of college recruiting — his previous role with the team was senior personnel director.
• Darius Vinnett, Area Scout – Vinnett joins the Bills after spending 11 seasons scouting with the Arizona Cardinals. Before joining Buffalo’s front office, he was an Eastern regional scout with the Cardinals.
• Vince Magri, Pro Scout — Magri comes to One Bills Drive and the NFL after a stint as general manager of the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts.

Promotions for members of the scout department:

• Asil Mulbah, director of college scouting — Mulbah was previously a professional scout with the Bills.
• Keith Jennings, Regional Scout – Prior to his promotion, Jennings was Buffalo’s BLESTO Scout.
• RJ Webb, BLESTO Scout, working with the college scouting team — Webb was previously a Pro Scout with the Bills.

What exactly is a BLESTO scout and how is he different from other NFL scouts?

Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images

One of the leading subscription tracking services in the United States (National is the other), BLESTO was founded in 1963 by the late Jack Butler (pictured above), a former NFL cornerback with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Membership “would include more than $100,000 in annual dues.” and the assignment of at least one scout to the group.”

BLESTO is an acronym for the original NFL teams (Bears-Lions-Eagles-Talent-Organization) that used such scouts – though the faction actually started out as LESTO before the Chicago Bears were included. Over the years, the BLESTO name underwent temporary changes as the teams’ membership grew, but the BLESTO name ultimately stuck.

BLESTO scouts are resolutely focused on getting a head start on future NFL Draft classes, and more specifically next year’s class.

While other recruiters will attend pro days and workouts for players ready to enter the current draft, BLESTO recruiters will attend junior pro days and also focus on sophomores for information and drafting a basic scouting report that other recruiters can monitor in the fall.

In the spring, BLESTO scouts do the legwork to find the future prospects for the draft class. In the fall, BLESTO scouts evaluate those future prospects, with the process starting again each spring around the time Pro Days begin.

Not all teams use BLESTO scouts, with the majority of the NFL relying on domestic scouts and a small percentage of teams using only in-house talent to scout future prospects. The NFL’s participation in BLESTO changes each year as teams make personnel moves and individuals move into new roles.

You can learn more about BLESTO by clicking to read this article published in 2014 on Cat Scratch Reader.