Never in his four years as general manager of the Bills has Brandon Beane been flooded with so many issues heading into a season.
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has affected training camp, wiped out the preseason schedule, created unprecedented safety protocols and indeed left in doubt how the regular season will play out.
So, naturally, during a recent Zoom call with the team media, Beane got a number of questions he hasn’t normally heard at this time of year.
IT STARTED with the cancellation of the four-game exhibition slate.
“That’s a challenge I’ve never been around,” he said. “It’s like every day there’s a new challenge. Obviously, when those games got canceled, that’s frustrating for me. I know it’s frustrating for some of our players. I talked to a few of them that are looking for that chance to prove their worth to either make this roster or to win a starting spot or special teams spot.
“We’ve got to come up with various ways to create competition and some situations (that come up) in games … high impact, high pressure moments the best we can make them. We’re not in pads yet (it’s not allowed until Monday), but as we get closer to that first game we’re going to have to try, when we have to cut this roster down, to come up with as many ways to simulate preseason games. Whether it’s seeing how many snaps they played last year in preseason versus some live snaps we have in practice or any types of scrimmage or intrasquad scrimmages we may do.”
Beane admitted, “We’ve got to plan this out and we’ve got to be safe and healthy. We can’t decimate our roster trying to evaluate it, so there’s a fine line, but we do have to get ourselves ready for that Week 1 game against the Jets, but we also have to evaluate to make sure we’re keeping the best 53 players.”
HE ALSO got a similar question to the one that coach Sean McDermott fielded about adjusted prospects for the team given the disruption created by Covid-19.
“Our expectations are always high as we learn how to handle this virus and how to operate, but this is going to be a different camp like no other,” Beane maintained. “I’m usually in the dorm room (at St. John Fisher) right now, but instead having camp at home and trying to adjust to that … yet, at the end of the day, we have to still hold ourselves to a high standard, and Sean and I aren’t going to sit here and say, ‘Oh, it was the Covid year. We didn’t make the playoffs, so be it.’
“Nothing’s changed here. We expect playoff-caliber practices once we get to that point, and it’s our job to get this roster ready to go when we open up against the Jets, so that we can have the best 53 guys out there and not have 10 guys on the Covid list come mid-September. It won’t be easy, but we’ve got to be prudent and if we do that, we’ll find a way to be ready to roll.”
BUT HASN’T the situation with baseball and coronavirus outbreaks on several teams been a cautionary tale?
“Right now it’s day-by-day,” Beane conceded. “Let’s just worry about doing the best we can today. Usually by now you can see that first preseason game (it would have been Friday in Baltimore). You can see when you’re cutting your roster down. You can see what things are going to start to look like for that first game, but that first game, even though it’s almost five weeks off, seems like six months away right now just because every day I wake up and check … is anybody positive?
“What does it look like with the contact tracing? Do we need to have someone else sit out today just to make sure they’re safe? Those are the daily things we’re doing, and once we figure out who we’re going to have in the building that day, how are we going to make the most of it in the weight room, on the field, meeting rooms, etc.?”
And those questions aren’t going away any time soon.
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimeshersald.com)
