Buffalo Bills general manager, Brandon Beane appeared on Buffalo-area radio station WGR 550 to talk about the 2018 NFL Draft. The wide receiver group in Buffalo was one of the more maligned on the team heading into the draft. The Bills added Ray-Ray McCloud and Austin Proehl in the later rounds, choosing to avoid investing heavy capital into the position during the seven-round, three-day event.
The current top of the chart carries some red flags with Kelvin Benjamin considered to be the number one. Behind Benjamin the Bills are banking on drastic improvement from Zay Jones in his sophomore year and Jeremy Kerley as a veteran safety valve. The list behind these three carries some potential, but heavy question marks.
With a possibly dire outlook on the receiver group, Beane was asked about free agent options. As usual, he provided a small glimpse of his thought process, and mentions one notable player by name.
“Dez [Bryant] is a very good player. Is he the same player he was five years ago? Probably not, but he can still play in this league and still help a team. I’ve never personally met Dez, so we would have to bring him in and visit him and see if he was a fit,” said Beane. “We were generally focused on what we were going to be getting in the draft before looking at that. It’s something we’ll talk about, but that’s probably as far as I can say right now. And I do think there could still be guys out there. Mentioned a couple times [Jeremy] Maclin and [Eric] Decker last year came out there. What happens is teams look at what they’ve drafted and they say, you know what. ‘I don’t want to pay this guy $5 million or $6 million, I just drafted a guy that I want to get on the field anyhow.’ I think offensively, as a whole, and defensively, you’ll see some guys slowly come out back in the free agent waters over the next month.”
The tea leaves are pretty easy to read from this commentary. Bills fans should expect the team to be scouring for releases, looking to add talent under the “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” model. The Bills were able to nail a few signings on defense last year using this strategy.