Bills GM Brandon Beane is open to trading his first-round pick ... under the right circumstance
Brandon Beane is open to any and all ideas as to how to best make use of his first-round draft pick. That includes potentially trading it, the Buffalo Bills’ general manager said Tuesday during his annual media availability at the NFL scouting combine.
Brandon Beane is open to any and all ideas as to how to best make use of his first-round draft pick.
That includes potentially trading it, the Buffalo Bills’ general manager said Tuesday during his annual media availability here at the NFL scouting combine.
Bills general manager Brandon Beane said the team would be open to trading its first-round pick if the right deal presents itself. Derek Gee/Buffalo News
“I say this on the golf course: I'm a lot of things, but scared ain’t of them,” Beane said. “So yes, anything that can help our roster, that can fit and not cripple us in another way, yes, we would definitely do it.”
Beane has done it before, having traded his first-round pick in 2020 to the Minnesota Vikings in a deal that returned wide receiver Stefon Diggs.
Beane’s willingness to make a bold move, the Bills’ sustained run of success and star quarterback Josh Allen’s prime years are all reasons Buffalo is frequently mentioned as a possible destination for players rumored to be on the move.
Most recently, that has been the case with Browns edge rusher Myles Garrett, who earlier this month went public with a trade request. Browns general manager Andrew Berry reiterated Tuesday that his team has no plans to trade Garrett, but until the 2025 season actually starts and he’s on the field in a Cleveland uniform, those rumors will persist.
“Obviously I can't talk about specific players, but there are times that I've called on players at the trade deadline,” Beane said. “I did that with Stefon before we got him. ... I've called on the deadline and just said, ‘If anything changes, it doesn't mean only if it changes for this year; if it changes in the offseason.’ So you keep constant communication. ... So it kind of depends on each situation, but it is our job to always monitor that.”
“They're keeping a pulse, or they're checking with agents, or they're reaching out to their contact with Team X. Whether they see something on Twitter, whether they hear it in the scuttlebutt behind the scenes, if it's a player that we think would fit the Bills, we're going to check into it,” Beane said. “I would say we ... name gets thrown out there a lot, and sometimes we're checking into it. … If you don't call, you don't know.”
If Beane ultimately makes a trade, be it for Garrett or someone else, a big part of making it work will be fitting the new player under the salary cap. The Bills got some good news last week when the NFL informed teams the 2025 salary cap is expected to land between $277.5 million and $281.5 million – an increase from what teams were expecting.
Despite the projected cap increase, the Bills are still estimated to be over the final number.
That means Beane will have to make financial decisions before the start of the new league year March 12. That could involve restructuring contracts, releasing players and/or asking them to take a pay cut. All three options are on the table.
One of the biggest looming decisions centers on what to do with veteran edge rusher Von Miller, who has a 2025 cap hit of about $23.8 million. The Bills could save about $8.4 million of that by releasing Miller.
“We're still looking through all that. We really are,” Beane said.
Miller took a pay cut last season below what he was actually guaranteed – an unusual move by a future Pro Football Hall of Famer – so it’s possible another pay cut is in play.
“A lot of respect for what he did to come back and try and help us chase this trophy,” Beane said. “I thought as the year went on, he continued to show that he could still play. As far as any decisions, we're still working through all that.”
Anytime the Bills restructure a contract, it pushes money to future years. Beane likens that to maxing out a credit card, so it’s a step the Bills will take only when necessary.
“We have to be selective, when and where we do that,” he said. “We look at all that as a giant puzzle."