Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane took to the podium for the first time in months Tuesday morning, breaking down his team’s successful season with a 40-minute year-end press conference.
Though disappointed with a Wild-Card round postseason exit, Beane was still pleased with the progress he saw within his team throughout the 2019 campaign.
Here are eight takeaways from Beane’s end-of-season press conference:
Wants overall improvement: ‘We’re not one player away’
Buffalo took a step forward as an organization in the 2019 season, constructing its first double-digit win total of the 21st century.
Despite his team’s 10-6 record, postseason berth, and consistently stout defensive play, Beane does not feel as though his roster is complete.
In fact, he does not see an area that’s not in need of at least some improvement.
“We have to keep our defense strong,” Beane said. “They had a really good year. I would say you have to be strong in all three phases, we want to be better on special teams. Our special teams, I did think improved from a year ago, but we’re not happy with that. Offensively, we did show some improvements statistically, and Josh [Allen] improved and we scored more points. At the end of the day, we didn’t score enough points.
“A lot of times, if you make the playoffs, your last game is kind of emblematic of, if you don’t win at all, whether you go to the championship game or you lose like we did, a lot of times it kind of shows you how your season went, and where you’re good and where you need to get better. I thought we saw that, we just didn’t score enough points.”
With a roster that’s in need of offensive firepower and overall depth, Beane does not feel as though the Bills are one splash signing away from cementing themselves as Super Bowl contenders.
Since taking over as Buffalo’s general manager in the 2017 offseason, Beane’s roster additions have been consistent and concentrated, often making under-the-radar moves that prove to be more impactful than initially thought. With roughly $90 million in cap space to play with in the offseason, Beane again plans to make careful and well thought out moves that may not steal headlines, but will improve the team’s roster.
“I don’t think we’re one player away,” Beane said. “I never think you are, and I definitely don’t think we’re one player away. You lose the first round of the playoffs, that doesn’t say to me [that] the Bills are one player away from being exactly where they want to be.
“We’re a lot of positions away that we’ve got to clean up or answer.”
GM Brandon Beane is live at our 2019 End-of-Season Press Conference. #GoBills https://t.co/jBgjlJ9ORH
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) January 7, 2020
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