“We’ve got the picks, we’ve got the draft capital.” – Buffalo GM Brandon Beane
By Darin Gantt / ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports
Perhaps the two easiest dots to connect in the looming quarterback draft market is between Buffalo and New York.
But Bills General Manager Brandon Beane’s not ready to connect them, at least not yet.
With the Jets trading to the third spot, the Bills would have to go to No. 2 to make sure they get the quarterback they need. That might not be hard since Beane and Giants G.M. Dave Gettleman are close, but Beane said he still doesn’t know enough about the labor pool to make that call, since he and coach Sean McDermott only have a handful of brief combine interviews with the top prospects to go on.
“The truth? Most of these quarterbacks I’ve only spent 15 minutes with,” Beane said, via Peter King of SI.com. “I haven’t spent enough time to have an opinion about any of them yet, honestly. I actually sent a little note to our [scouts] yesterday. We got six weeks to get our board together.
“I am not there yet, knowing if we can or will move up again. I want Sean to get to know all of them. We’re just keeping an open mind. Where we’re at, we’ve got the picks, we’ve got the draft capital. I’m not ready to pull the trigger.”
Honestly, there’s no real rush, as they put their board together with more than a month before they’d have to work. It’s still likely that the Bills will draft a quarterback somewhere, as they have A.J. McCarron and not much else of note.
They need the flexibility of cheap and young quarterbacks because they’re eating so much dead money, as Beane said he’s going to take about $45 million of his cap room to account for deals for guys no longer in Buffalo. It’s a deliberate strategy, as the tries to clear the books for 2019.