The Buffalo Bills locked up their front office leader for the foreseeable future on Thursday, inking general manager Brandon Beane to a contract extension. The team announced the move on Thursday.
According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the contract links Beane to Bills head coach Sean McDermott. Both are tied to Buffalo (9-3) through the 2025 season, which comes as little surprise after the coach signed on the dotted line of an extension in August.
On Friday, Beane reflected on extending his time in Buffalo via video conference. Naturally the executive is happy about job security and what’s likely a nice pay day, but we got a couple of other nuggets sprinkled in there.
Here are five takeaways from Beane’s recent video conference:
The ‘opportunity’
Beane was asked a million different ways and times to reflect upon choosing to take his job initially in Buffalo in 2017. Prior to coming to western New York, he did spend 19 years with the Carolina Panthers in various roles. That’s a big life change.
Hindsight 20/20, things have worked out. Still, of all his responses on Western New York, one stood out. Beane discussed that he saw what he described as an “opportunity” in Buffalo.
Let’s not beat around the bush here, the Bills were bad for a long, long time. Some young adults never even knew of a winning Bills team making the playoffs. Instead of being afraid of that, Beane was chomping at the bit to change that.
“It’s unique here for so many reasons. I think the NFL is probably different in a lot of ways, but this community and what this team… they had a great tradition in the late 80s and early 90s, to where it fell to in the early 2000s, to where Sean and I got here… I think that’s what was exciting. This was an opportunity in a place that’s been down for so long that’s had such a great tradition and still has a great fan base. How exciting would it be to get this thing turned around and to host playoff games here?” Beane said.
“That’s what Sean and I want, the goal hasn’t changed. We want to win the AFC East so that we can host games here and that’s been the goal all along. At the end of the day, hopefully we get that done,” he added.