Bills GM Brandon Beane is at the owners meetings in Orlando, and has been talking with several NFL clubs. He’s also spoken to Zay Jones and assures that there’s time to address the receiver position.
Buffalo Bills Insider Chris Brown provides the details. Here is his report:
Beane talking to lots of teams
Bills GM Brandon Beane is at the owners meetings in Orlando, Florida this week and understands why there’s rampant speculation the Bills are positioning themselves for a trade up into the top five. While he doesn’t deny that he is talking to teams, it’s not necessarily trade talk.
“We’re going to have a lot of discussions with a lot of teams about all sorts of things,” Beane said. “A lot of times you get off on tangents that you didn’t even think you were going to talk about. I’m not going to get into specifics. But we’re right now focused on 12. I’m excited to be at 12 and I think we’re going to get a really good player there.”
Beane said they remain open minded about any potential scenario regarding the draft. Buffalo’s GM even left open the possibility of trading next year’s first-round pick, when asked specifically if he’d be willing to part with it in some kind of trade agreement.
“If it makes us a lot better, or it’s a player worthy of that, yes,” said Beane of parting with their 2019 first-round pick. “We’ll do anything we can to make our roster better. I’m not locked in that I would or I wouldn’t (do that). It would have to make sense and would have to be a player that we really felt strongly about to do that.”
Bills brass has talked to Zay Jones
In the wake of the troubling video that was released by TMZ on Bills WR Zay Jones last week, which involved an arrest of the receiver by Los Angeles police and his subsequent release, Buffalo’s general manager was asked for an update on Jones’ status.
Beane confirmed that he and head coach Sean McDermott have been in contact with the second-year receiver.
“Sean and I did speak with Zay after everything settled down and he’ll be back in Buffalo soon,” Beane said. “It’s an unfortunate situation, but it was a private conversation between me, Sean and Zay and I’m just going to leave it there.”
When asked if he anticipates any discipline being handed down by the league for Jones’ actions, Beane wasn’t certain of where anything stood with respect to the league at this point.
“For us we’re just here to help Zay and work with him and get him back in town, and get things settled with him,” Beane said. “With the league they always investigate anytime there’s an arrest. I’m sure they’re doing their due diligence, but I don’t know what the timetable would be on anything.”
Addressing WR position
Thus far in the offseason the one position the Bills have not yet addressed even with exploratory interest is the wide receiver position. There was a heavy rush at the outset of free agency and a lot of NFL clubs overspent and guaranteed a lot of money to some of the better free agents on the market.
Now a couple of weeks into free agency the market has slowed and options appear limited.
Beane however, is not concerned about addressing the position.
“We’re always looking to find fits and bring competition at receiver and other positions to the roster,” said Beane. “Our focus is on any talent. It’s a 12-month process to build this roster. We have to make sure we have the team the way we want it in September, when our opening game is. There’s always an anxiety, sometimes from people in our own building where they’re thinking, we’ve got to get this, we’ve got to get that.
“There were plenty of times where guys come available after the draft, in June. We saw it last year with receivers like (Jeremy) Maclin and (Eric) Decker. We don’t have to fill that now. We have to be ready to play in September. We’ve still got a lot of time.”
Many NFL clubs do clip veteran talent from their rosters following the NFL draft. Oftentimes if a team capably fills a position void sufficiently with younger, cheaper talent in the form of draft choices, they can, and have released more expensive veteran talent on their rosters.