ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — We should have known better.
Yeah, Bills general manager Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott met with the media on Monday afternoon at the stadium, but what we got was pretty much …. uhhh, nothing.
Oh, that’s not an indictment of Buffalo’s two highest-ranking roster architects … it’s epidemic in the National Football League.
Each year that passes, NFL teams become more and more secretive about their approach to the draft.
Indeed, Beane dealt with that very question when he was asked about the size of the circle that knows the Bills draft plans and priorities.
“It doesn’t leave this building, so my wife doesn’t know,” he admitted. “It’s very tight. (And) I’m not talking about guys in the second round, either, the third round, or whoever, at any position. It’s bad form. You’re competitively hurting yourself (and) that’s bad. We keep it pretty close to the vest what we’re doing.”
And even then, Beane, conducting his first draft as Bills’ GM, worries.
“You think about it all the time, even when you don’t want to think about it,” he admitted. “We’re competitors, and you want to win every pick. You want to feel like, ‘Man, we got a steal in the first round’. That’s natural; (but I) can’t always say that it happens that way. There’s different things that have been in my head. I’m sure (McDermott] probably the same thing; guys that he’s looked at (and thought) ‘Man, that would be a great fit for us.’”
Of course, the real pressure is on Beane and his scouting staff.
“I’m a competitor, I love my job, I love everything about it,” he admitted. “This (draft) is huge. This is where my staff and I show that we’ve done the work and we’re competent people. My job at the end of the day is to give (McDermott) the resources to lead the team and his coaches to produce on the field. If I do my job, it helps him do it. If I don’t, that’s when I lose sleep; I feel like I’ve let him down.
“I won’t be sleeping for the next 10 days. Every draft (is) different. We’re at 12 (in the first round), and I don’t know what’s going to be there. I don’t know what quarterback will be there, I don’t know if we’re going up, going down. That’s really how it is.”
He added of the NFL Draft, which will conduct its first round a week from Thursday, “I know everybody assumes we’re trading up. (But) I said it before, even if I wanted to trade up right now, even if I said ‘I know the guy I want to get, and I need to get to this spot’, it takes a partner to do it and be willing to move out.
“I’ll lose sleep every year going into the draft because you’re always going to have holes, you’re always going to want to make your roster more competitive and better..”
But he did emphasize the Bills’ draft could be a success, even if Buffalo doesn’t draft a quarterback in the early rounds.
“There’s a lot of good players in this draft and that was the big thing moving from 21 to 12,” he said. “The natural assumption, is (we’re) moving up to get a quarterback, yada-yada. No, we improved our draft position. That was a second-round value jump to go from 21 to 12. We’re excited about where that moves us on our draft board, the players that we see would be available there.”
Actually, all the questions weren’t directed toward the draft.
Beane was also asked about veteran guard Richie Incognito who retired last week, then on Friday recanted with a tweet “Made you look.” There was also a query about wide receiver Zay Jones, a second rounder last year, who was arrested last month for damage he caused in a Los Angeles condo during what appeared to be a mental meltdown.
“I’m not really going to get into details,” Beane said of Incognito. “ Richie is on the reserved/retired list, which is not a part of our 90-man roster.
(Players) have to request through the commissioner to be reinstated (from the retirement list). It’s kind of like the Anquan Boldin thing, if you guys remember (last summer); he was on the reserved/retired list. He would have to be reinstated.”
As for Jones, he added, “We did have some communication and, to this point, we’re satisfied with where that is. The biggest thing right now is where we go moving forward and how we handle our business. People go through situations and, like I said before, I was disappointed. The biggest thing is that we were able to talk about it and come to a point where we all agree we need to move forward. I’m excited about the future for Zay.”
We’ll see.
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimeshdrald.com)
