The Buffalo Bills held their year-end press conference on Wednesday, and despite a lot of talk on the firing of Sean McDermott and the hiring process for the next head coach, a lot of time was spent on the wide receiver position and Keon Coleman.
Bills’ owner Terry Pegula said Coleman was drafted because of input from the coaching staff, saying he wasn’t the top player available on Brandon Beane’s board. It’s a stunning admission in the middle of the press conference made even more surprising that
Coleman has two years left on his rookie deal. Now he knows that Beane didn’t value him as highly as other players.
“The coaching staff pushed to draft Keon. I am not saying that Brandon wouldn’t have drafted him, but he was not his next choice. That was the coaching staff felling strongly about the player. He’s taken a lot of heat over it,” said Pegula, defending his general manager.
In follow ups, Beane addressed Coleman and implied it wasn’t a talent issue that is keeping the young player from performing. He obviously called out Coleman in this answer, but also by extension the coaching staff designed to motivate him.
“[Coleman’s] issues haven’t been on the field. He doesn’t make excuses which I appreciate,” said Beane. “Some of the maturity stuff got in the way and you can lose confidence in teammates and coaches.”
In the offseason, Beane defended Coleman multiple times as the team’s top wideout option and he had a really nice training camp in 2025.
“The crazy thing is this time last year we were trending up. Had a great offseason…”
Then he started the year hot with a great game against the Baltimore Ravens. They needed to come back to him at the end of the season following injuries at the WR position. Beane does hope he will have another strong offseason and head back in for 2026.
“It’s up to us. ‘Gotta hit the reset again and attack the offseason the way you did and training camp the way you did [last year]. Don’t let these maturity issues get in the way.‘ We still believe in him.”
Bills wide receiver room failed in 2025
One of the more controversial things about the 2025 Buffalo Bills roster was the construction of the wide receiver room. Dating all the way back to April’s NFL Draft when the Bills bypassed the receiver position for defense, Beane has been addressing the depth and the lack of a number one option.
Specifically, Beane vigorously defended his position group on a radio interview with WGR 550 the Monday following the draft. In an interview that blew up on social media, Beane went after the hosts for questioning why the Bills didn’t do more to add to the receiver room. Many felt he went too far in his defense of the team into an attack vs a defense.
He addressed it with a touch of remorse on Wednesday.
“I’m a passionate person. I don’t think that’s new for anybody,” said Beane in a measured tone. “Probably the biggest regret is I probably put pressure on the WR group when I reacted in that way because I felt like they were being picked on unfairly. We had the number two scoring offense [in 2024] and we made some tweaks. So it was more of a reaction.”
Beane turned the attention back to the players he actually did pick on the defensive side of the ball before rejoining the wide receiver conversation.
“Do i regret how that turned out? Sure. It was not meant to be condescending. It was me having too much passion. I have nothing against those hosts. I have done other interviews with those guys. It was more coming to the defense of our players because they were being picked on they couldn’t defend themselves.”
Bills change philosophy at wide receiver
Beane also talked about the devaluing of the wide receiver position over the past few seasons, saying his first goal is to protect Josh Allen and build the offensive line, which in turn helped them be balanced with the league’s leading rusher. When Brian Daboll was here, the Bills ran a spread offense, but as defenses reacted and Daboll left, Buffalo’s offense changed. He didn’t say why.
“At the end of the day, some of it is the eveolution on how you build your roster. In 2020, 2021 before we paid Josh, what Brain Daboll asked for was to spread things out and get mismatches. Then defense started getting smaller and more athletic, so we’re going to bring things in [a tighter formation]. You’ve seen we’ve been more and more tight ends and running the ball more.”
At the same time, he mentioned the big investment the Bills made in receivers when they weren’t paying Josh Allen on his huge contract with Cole Beasley, John Brown, Stefon Diggs, and Gabe Davis among them.
The salary cap crunch is real, and Beane laid it out.
“When you’re paying Josh what you’re paying him now, you gotta make some sacrifices and we’re not picking at the top [of the draft]. When you say free agency… we gotta afford them.
In the end, Beane noted there were a lot of number one receivers sitting at home for the playoffs because their organization’s team-building wasn’t good enough.
“We’re always trying to acquire those guys,” said Beane, acknowledging he was looking at the trade deadline but unable to complete a move.
