The Buffalo Bills-Carolina Panthers connection is now a widely-known thing. But it all started with one… or two.
First, the Bills hired Panthers defensive coordinator Sean McDermott to be their head coach. Then the Bills hired Panthers assistant general manager Brandon Beane to be their general manager.
Going down the line of coaching and player connections now between the two franchises, one might think that Beane following McDermott to Buffalo was the plan all along.
As the story goes, the Bills hired McDermott and kept general manager Doug Whaley around until the 2017 draft and then moved on from him and the team’s scouting department. In due time, Beane was hired.
But according to Beane, the answer is no. When McDermott was hired, he never called Beane and told him to pack his bags to be Buffalo’s GM in a few weeks. Appearing on Eric Wood’s What’s Next podcast Beane had no idea that’d come together at all.
“No. Honestly Sean and I never talked about this,” Beane said. “We had many conversations, of [at the end of the Panthers’ 2017 season]… from a personnel stand point of this defense… at the end of the year… sometimes I would go in his office and we would look at what it looks like up front, what it looks like at the linebacker and then the secondary… ‘All right, these are the guys that are free agents,’ and he would try and get my gauge on, ‘is this a guy we should let walk?'”
“Sean and I had those conversations… never, that I can remember, did we say, ‘hey, if I get a GM job, am I going to bring you or if you get a head coaching job are try to sway them to do that?'” Beane added.
Getting even deeper, Beane mentioned how he was actually with McDermott when he got a very important phone call in early 2017.
“Coincidentally, we were interviewing for the San Francisco jobs at the same time. The 49ers were doing an east coast swing when they hired (Kyle) Shanahan, the same time [the Bills] hired Sean…. we were on a plane together and heading back to the airport, (the 49ers) had interviewed both of us along with some other people up in New York and we were flying back to Charlotte and on the way to the airport, (McDermott) got a call from his agent saying that Buffalo wanted a second interview,” Beane said. “I was trying to give him some advice and any questions he may want to ask as he comes back in for his second interview.”
Again, never any mentioned talk of the two becoming a one-two punch in Buffalo’s front office.
“Once Sean got the job I texted him congrats. He came to the Panthers’ building the next day and I gave him a hug,” Beane said.
Just last week this year’s NFL Scouting Combine wrapped up. Teams, media, players, agents and everyone cross paths there. During 2017’s event, Beane likely heard about the Bills’ situation, right? Not even then, the GM said, even despite the Bills and Panthers being neighbors… literally.
“Really… I saw him at the combine, it’s funny, our suites were next to each other at the combine (for interviews). That’s by random draw every year… that’s where you like where you watch the 40 and everything from, and it was weird that Carolina’s was next to Buffalo’s and we talked about a couple of… I asked him how things were going and everything like that… he didn’t give any clue that they may be making any changes. I honestly didn’t think he knew that they would at that point,” Beane said.
Then the story has a classic twist at the end. Where’d he first find out that there might be interest from Buffalo? He got a text… waiting for his food after the 2017 NFL Draft had just wrapped up.
“I was in a Wendy’s drive-thru… I was just wanting a burger,” Beane said. “A few days later Russ Brandon gave me a call and they wanted to interview me and that’s how it all started.”
From there, Beane interview with ownership, not McDermott. Of course, McDermott probably put in some good words for Beane, but the rest is history on the way Buffalo’s original duo came together.
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