NFL

Bills GM Brandon Beane Needs to Take Major Blame for Bills-Bengals Debacle

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Buffalo Bills, Bills GM, Brandon Beane, Bills Bengals

The Buffalo Bills were supposed to be the Super Bowl favorite. Instead, they got embarrassed at home in the Divisional Round by the Cincinnati Bengals. There is a lot of blame to go around after this embarrassing loss. Injuries, inconsistency, and questionable play-calling on both sides of the ball took their toll. However, one person who needs to take more blame for the Bills-Bengals game is general manager Brandon Beane. He’s done an excellent job rebuilding the Bills, but in recent years, his moves to create a true championship contender have fallen flat.

Bills GM Brandon Beane has failed to make the Bills a Super Bowl-caliber team 

Buffalo Bills, Bills GM, Brandon Beane, Bills Bengals
Buffalo Bills GM Brandon Beane | Eric Espada/Getty Images

In Brandon Beane’s first two drafts for the Bills, he made incredible picks that turned into the core of a playoff team. He selected All-Pros Tre’Davious White and Matt Milano, and Pro Bowlers Dion Dawkins, Tremaine Edwards, and Josh Allen in 2017 and 2018.

In 2017, the Bills GM also signed Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde, who turned into the best safety tandem in the NFL.

Since 2018, though, the Bills’ moves haven’t moved the needle to the point where the team is now a Super Bowl-caliber squad. The first issue is that Beane hasn’t picked a single Pro Bowl player in the last four drafts:

RND2019 draftRND2020 draftRND2021 draftRND2022 draft
1DT Ed Oliver2DE A.J. Epenesa1DE Gregory Rousseau1CB Kaiir Elam
2OT Cody Ford*3RB Zach Moss*2DE Boogie Basham2RB James Cook
3RB Devin Singletary4WR Gabriel Davis3OT Spencer Brown3LB Terrel Bernard
3TE Dawson Knox5QB Jake Fromm*5OT Tommy Doyle5WR Khalil Shakir
5LB Vosean Joseph*6K Tyler Bass6WR Marquez Stevenson*6P Matt Araiza*
6CB Jaquan Johnson6WR Isaiah Hodgins*6S Damar Hamlin6CB Christian Benford
7DE Darryl Johnson*7CB Dane Jackson6CB Rachad Wildgoose*6OL Luke Tenuta*
7TE Tommy Sweeny  7OG Jack Anderson*7LB Baylon Spector
* no longer with the Bills

There are some really solid players on the list above, and a few — Gregory Rousseau, Kaiir Elam, Christian Benford — have the potential to develop into Pro Bowl players someday. However, there isn’t one game-changing difference-maker in the bunch above, and that showed up in the Bills-Bengals Divisional Round game.

Beane also needs to take some blame for drafting Matt Araiza, despite the horrific allegations he was facing back in San Diego.

It’s not just the draft, either. The Bills GM has made some free-agent moves and trades that are now questionable in hindsight.

The Stefon Diggs trade seemed much needed at the time, and Diggs has been Josh Allen’s best target over the last three seasons. However, he’s on the books for over $20 million in 2023, is un-cuttable the next two seasons with $45.4 and $25.7 million dead cap hits, and his diva tendencies are coming out more and more as the years go by. Yelling at Allen at the end of the Bills-Bengals game and leaving the locker room before talking to reporters is not a good sign.

That’s not the worst part of the Stefon Diggs trade, though. The worst part is that the Minnesota Vikings took Justin Jefferson with the Bills’ pick in 2020. Allen to Jefferson would be a pairing that could have made the Bills a Super Bowl team.

Another quibble with Brandon Beane is his free-agent signings. Von Miller is an incredible player and the Bills’ best pass-rusher this season. However, he’s 33 and giving him a six-year, $120,000,000 contract with $51,435,000 guaranteed that the team can’t get out of until after 2024 was short-sighted.

If the Bills had Miller in the Bills-Bengals game, maybe they would have put up more of a fight. That said, it can’t be a surprise that a soon-to-be (March 26) 34-year-old got hurt during the season and wasn’t available for the playoffs, especially after he played all the way to the Super Bowl last season.

It’s not time to panic and call for the Bills to fire Brandon Beane. It is, however, time to put more of the blame for the Bills’ failed campaign on him. And to ask him to draft better on a more consistent basis and make better short- and long-term roster moves before crowning him one of the better GMs in the NFL.

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Tim Crean
Sports Editor

Tim Crean started writing about sports in 2016 and joined Sportscasting in 2021. He excels with his versatile coverage of the NFL and soccer landscape, as well as his expertise breaking down sports media, which stems from his many years downloading podcasts before they were even cool and countless hours spent listening to Mike & The Mad Dog and The Dan Patrick Show, among other programs. As a longtime self-professed sports junkie who even played DII lacrosse at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, Tim loves reading about all the latest sports news every day and considers it a dream to write about sports professionally. He's a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan from Western New York who mistakenly thought, back in the early '90s, that his team would be in the Super Bowl every year. He started following European soccer — with a Manchester City focus — in the early 2000s after spending far too much time playing FIFA. When he's not enjoying a round of golf or coaching youth soccer and flag football, Tim likes reading the work of Bill Simmons, Tony Kornheiser, Chuck Klosterman, and Tom Wolfe.

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Tim Crean Sports Editor

Tim Crean started writing about sports in 2016 and joined Sportscasting in 2021. He excels with his versatile coverage of the NFL and soccer landscape, as well as his expertise breaking down sports media, which stems from his many years downloading podcasts before they were even cool and countless hours spent listening to Mike & The Mad Dog and The Dan Patrick Show, among other programs. As a longtime self-professed sports junkie who even played DII lacrosse at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, Tim loves reading about all the latest sports news every day and considers it a dream to write about sports professionally. He's a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan from Western New York who mistakenly thought, back in the early '90s, that his team would be in the Super Bowl every year. He started following European soccer — with a Manchester City focus — in the early 2000s after spending far too much time playing FIFA. When he's not enjoying a round of golf or coaching youth soccer and flag football, Tim likes reading the work of Bill Simmons, Tony Kornheiser, Chuck Klosterman, and Tom Wolfe.

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