Brandon Beane isn’t going to do it.
General Manager and President of Football Operations Brandon Beane is approaching his nine-year anniversary with the Buffalo Bills. What feels like a lifetime in NFL time has brought with it one of the most successful runs in terms of win/loss record of any team in professional sports. And through most of those nine years, Beane has been working with Sean McDermott. Given the long-term relationship between the two of them (this period in Bills history even being
referred to as “The McBeane Era”), one would be forgiven for being unable to clearly separate what part of the team’s personnel philosophy was Brandon Beane and what part was Sean McDermott.
With the firing of McDermott and the subsequent hiring of former offensive coordinator and in-house candidate Joe Brady (not to mention the restructuring of the organization to make the new head coach directly report to Beane), the opportunity to isolate the variable has come into play when discussing the Buffalo Bills’ personnel moves. How much different would they be now that the team’s general manager and head coach were not both reporting to the owner of the team? Would be a Brandon Beane-centric vision look different than the one he shared with Sean McDermott?
As it relates to a traditional two-gapping nose tackle and the backup quarterback position, the answer appears to be a resounding “no”.
There are two specific personnel philosophies that some Bills fans have come back to every offseason: 1. will the Bills seek an answer to their traditionally suboptimal run defense by investing in a traditional two-gapper at defensive tackle, one with the ability to not just add mass to a starting front that includes undersized Ed Oliver but also to free up linebackers to run to the ball and 2. will the Bills invest in a cost-controlled rookie backup quarterback instead of shuffling through the free agent likes of Mitchell Trubisky, Kyle Allen (we are now here), and Case Keenum? If ever there was going to be an answer to those two questions that would have confirmed that a pure Brandon Beane philosophy, absent any equal influence from the head coach, would be in the affirmative, it went out the window when the 2026 NFL Draft concluded.
The Bills came into this specific offseason with perceived holes at both positions. 2025 backup quarterback Mitchell Trubisky left for the Tennessee Titans and a two-year, $10.5 million contract in March, and the Bills signed Kyle Allen to a two-year, $4.1 million deal in response. Former starting one-technique defensive tackle DaQuan Jones remains unsigned as of this writing after an expiring contract, and the Brandon Beane has gone on record as stating that 2025 fourth rounder Deone Walker (not a two-gapping player through college or his rookie season) would start at nose tackle if the team were to play today. No free agent signings were made at defensive tackle and the only drafted player this year was 6’1”, 290 pound sixth round selection Zane Durant (whom Beane has mentioned getting snaps at the nose along with 2024 third round selection DeWayne Carter).
While the Bills could still sign unrestricted free agent D.J. Reader (at which point only half of this article will actually hold true moving forward), the most apt phrase to describe these two personnel phenomena moving forward is “Beane-Biblical”. We (myself included) can all save ourselves a lot of time and pointless discourse as long as Beane remains in charge of personnel acquisitions by simply assuming that the lack of a traditional two-gapping nose tackle and the lack of essentially any draft picks utilized on backup quarterback (save a fifth-round pick on Jake Fromm in 2020 when he was used as a “quarantine quarterback” sequestered from the rest of the team during the COVID year) is a feature, not a bug. They are fundamental core parts of Brandon Beane’s philosophy that, barring an outlier situation, can be effectively banked on.
If they were going to do it, they would have done it.
…and that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive and look for new episodes of “The Bruce Exclusive” every Thursday on the Rumblings Cast Network — see more in my LinkTree!
