The Buffalo Bills have been making moves to shore up their offense for the last three days, adding six players on that side of the ball including two receivers. At the same time, they’ve now been linked to two stud receivers on the trade market: Antonio Brown and Odell Beckham, Jr.
We know the Brown situation by now: He nixed a trade to Buffalo before it could be completed. The Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills may have had a rough outline of compensation in place, but we’ll never know.
When Beckham was traded on Tuesday night, Charles Robinson from Yahoo! Sports dropped this nugget:
One interesting development that didn’t happen with Odell Beckham Jr.? I’m told the #Bills also checked in with the #Giants on the trade availability. Nothing materialized.
— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) March 13, 2019
That report was quickly altered by several in the local Buffalo media.
At 9:40 pm Eastern, John Wawrow of the Associated Press said it was the Giants who had contacted the Bills, not the other way around. Five minutes later, Tim Graham of the Athletic reported the same thing. Finally, Sal Capaccio from WGR 550 added that all of those conversations happened last week.
It’s certainly worth noting that all of these reports from Buffalo should be taken with a grain of salt. After the Antonio Brown blow up, the Bills wouldn’t want to appear like they were going hard at two top-flight receivers who said no to Buffalo in favor of the Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns.
Robinson mentioned Beckham’s desire to play with former teammate Jarvis Landry in Cleveland and he had a short list that included the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos due to personal connections with players in the locker room.
In the end, Buffalo signed two free-agent receivers, the Giants shipped Beckham to Cleveland, and Brown is in Oakland. We probably won’t ever know the truth about how interested Buffalo really was.