Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane did little to hide his immediate ambitions for his club after swinging a mid-October trade for five-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Amari Cooper. The veteran executive appeared on The Pat McAfee Show one day after executing the deal, telling the former punter that his team is “all in” and is, thus, open to making another move ahead of the November 5 trade deadline.
“We’re still all in,” Beane said. “If this didn’t happen, if Cleveland was not ready to do it, we were going to continue to monitor. Listen, we’ve still got a few weeks for the deadline. If we feel there’s something else that we need or can help us get over the top, we have been all in all along.”
Buffalo finds itself in a unique—and potentially precarious—situation with regard to making additional trades, as it currently finds itself backed up against the salary cap; the team, per OverTheCap, currently has just $2.7 million in available cap space, meaning that any potential addition would have to occupy a minute ‘goldilocks’ of not only being available for a non-astronomical price, but also having an affordable contract.
Though he realizes that the list of potential acquisitions is quite small, Beane is still open to swinging a trade before next Tuesday’s deadline. He reiterated his willingness to strike a deal during a recent appearance on the Ross Tucker Football Podcast, telling the host that placing calls is part of his job description and that trades, at times, don’t present themselves until deadline day itself.
“I’m always going to naturally check around and look,” Beane said. “To me, I feel like that’s my job. I’ve got to look under every rock to see if there’s anything that makes sense. Will there be some player that fits everything? Fits our scheme, whatever side of the ball it is, fits the parameters of what compensation that that club would want to move him, and then the biggest piece of all, does his contract fit with where we are tied up against the cap? All of those things would have to work, which makes it say, probably the Vegas odds are probably not high. But we’re still going to swing for the fence.
“Last year, we got Rasul Douglas with about an hour to go in the deadline. It was the same thing; we were tight against the cap, but Green Bay had converted him, as well. We were definitely having some injuries at corner, and so that move, getting Rasul here, the thing about his deal, which really worked out, we had a second year on it, which he’s on that second year now.”
While the list of players who check every single one of Buffalo’s boxes likely isn’t a lengthy one, that’s not going to discourage Beane from looking ahead of this year’s trade deadline. The Bills are currently projected to have 10 selections in the 2025 NFL Draft and are, thus, well-equipped to exchange draft capital for immediate contributors; the trade deadline is scheduled for November 5 at 4:00 p.m.
