Bills take Ray Davis in fourth round: What to know about the Kentucky running back

ORCHARD PARK - With a depth chart that was sorely in need of replenishment, the Buffalo Bills selected running back Ray Davis from Kentucky in the fourth round of the NFL Draft Saturday afternoon.

The 5-foot-8, 211-pounder is a squat, powerful runner who had a ton of production in college as he carried 746 times for 3,626 yards and 29 touchdowns during a 44-game, five-year career.

“Davis has racked up a lot of miles and lacks explosive long speed, but his vision, cutting skills and competitive toughness are translatable traits,” Dane Brugler of The Athletic wrote in his draft guide. “Although he doesn’t offer much on special teams, he can be a productive rotational back for an NFL offense.”

And that’s exactly the role he’ll have in Buffalo behind starter James Cook and backup Ty Johnson.

Davis, who developed a strong relationship with Bills' running backs coach Kelly Skipper during the pre-draft process, began his career at Temple where he played two seasons, then transferred to Vanderbilt where he played his next two years, though he missed all but three games in 2021 due to an injury.

He bounced back to rush for 1,042 yards in 2022 for Vanderbilt, then transferred yet again to Kentucky for the 2023 season where he gained 1,129 yards. He is believed to be the only player in NCAA history to have amassed at least 1,000 yards rushing for three different schools, and he is the first player in SEC history to top 1,000 yards in a single season for two schools.

Last year he was a second-team All-America choice by Sports Illustrated and won first-team All-SEC honors.

Ray Davis had 'rough times' as a youth

Davis has quite an interesting back story. He is one of 14 siblings born to parents who both spent multiple years in prison, so the children were passed along to various San Francisco-area family members and friends.

When he was eight years old, Davis entered the California foster care system and became a ward of the state.

“You know I grew up in the foster care system in San Francisco for eight years,” he said Saturday on a Zoom call. “I had to become a man at 12. I think just having to adapt to my situation and my environment, understanding that I have to raise myself, and not only my decisions affect me but they affect others.

“It was about just staying focused and trying to continue to just survive. That’s the biggest thing I lived by was just surviving, surviving. That’s what made me the man I am today just based on the things I went through. I knew the things I was going to face, the trials and tribulations.”

Speaking on this topic a few months earlier to The Athletic, he also said, “I know how it feels to be that kid on the outside looking in, to not be wanted, to not be with your real family, to have others look out for you and to live that double life where you go to school every day and act like things are normal but when you get home it’s back to reality. Those were rough times for me. It just made me look at the bigger picture of life. There’s always a lot of people going through way worse things than me.”

Long before his father, Raymond, fell into the circumstances that resulted in his incarceration, he played high school football at Galileo in San Francisco. Long-time Bills fans may think that school name rings a bell, and it does.

That’s where O.J. Simpson played his high school football and Ray Davis Sr. broke Simpson’s single-season school record for touchdowns in 1998 and was named player of the year by the San Francisco Examiner.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out every other Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Ray Davis drafted by Buffalo Bills in NFL Draft 2024: What to know