ORCHARD PARK - The Buffalo Bills didn’t really fill a specific need Thursday night in the first round of the NFL Draft when they took tight end Dalton Kincaid.

But when their turn came up at No. 59 in the second round Friday, they added one of the highest-rated interior offensive linemen in the draft by selecting Florida guard O’Cyrus Torrence.

Torrence is a 6-foot-5, 330-pound road grader who should be able to come in and push Ryan Bates for the starting job at right guard, while veteran free agents Connor McGovern and David Edwrads battle it out on the left side.

Sign up for the Bills Blast newsletter Delivered straight to your inbox, additional Bills analysis, insight, stats, quotes and team history from Sal Maiorana

The Bills invited Torrence to Orchard Park for a top 30 visit and that was an indication to him that they were interested in possibly picking him.

“From going up there just for me, from being around the coaches and just the area itself it looked like it was a nice area,” he said. “I liked it. So when I got the call, and I realized it was them, that's when I just started thinking about everything, staying up there, being around the people, all of that stuff was going through my head. Definitely, my heart started racing a little bit.”

Torrence was the second-ranked interior offensive linemen by Dane Brugler of The Athletic. What he likes best about Torrence is his ability to control the man in front of him which, obviously, is a pretty important skill to have.

“Torrence will struggle at times picking off targets in space (climbing or pulling), but he boasts the play strength, body control and competitive appetite to win his matchups,” Brugler wrote. “He is a plug-and-play zone starter in the NFL.”

Buffalo Bills draft picks 2023: Round-by-round selections and analysis

Bills NFL draft live updates: Buffalo upgrades offensive line in Round 2

Look at the great tackles Buffalo’s AFC east rivals have - Quinnen Williams of the Jets, Christian Wilkins of the Dolphins and Christian Barmore of the Patriots. All three were first-round picks who have given the Bills interior linemen trouble.

Torrence is quite a success story given where he started in his football career. He weighed close to 420 pounds when he was in high school, but he got serious about his nutrition and conditioning and he wound up getting interest from mid-major schools and settled on Louisiana-Lafayette.

He played three years there and was a starter as a true freshman for coach Billy Napier. When Napier moved on to Florida, Torrence entered the transfer portal and followed him to Gainesville and in 2022 he started 11 games and was a consensus All-American and first-team All-SEC selection.

“I feel like it was very important not only to show people that I could play in the SEC, but also just for me as a player to prove to myself how good I feel like I am, I believe I am,” Torrence said. “Just being able to go in the SEC and dominate and be able to be as good of a player as I was kind of proved that and showed that my ceiling is higher than I originally thought.”

According to statistics for both schools, he played 1,501 pass blocking snaps and never allowed a sack in his college career.

At the NFL scouting combine, Torrence was given the highest production score by Next Gen Stats in its draft model based on all the success he had as a blocker.

NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein said of Torrence, “Broad guard prospect whose physical limitations are balanced by his feel for the job and ability to use his size in his favor. Torrence is not a natural bender. He is forced to engulf and push rather than leverage and drive as a run blocker, but he’s solid at neutralizing the man across from him.

“He uses his hands well to jab and maintain feel for the rush, but quick interior rushers with well-developed counters could be too much for his limited foot quickness to handle without help. He projects as a future starter for downhill offenses who covet size over athleticism.”

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

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Buffalo Bills select O'Cyrus Torrence in 2nd round of NFL Draft