Q&A: Bills GM Brandon Beane breaks down why no trades happened at the deadline

The Buffalo Bills’ coach anxiously watched as the minutes ticked away to the NFL’s trade deadline at 4 p.m. Tuesday. Unlike the rest of us, however, McDermott was in a position to do something about it – so he paid general manager Brandon Beane a visit.

“I just walked into Beane’s office to make sure he wasn’t sleeping in there,” McDermott said Wednesday. “I knocked first and then he didn't answer. Had to make sure he wasn’t sleeping.”

McDermott, of course, was just kidding. Nevertheless, the lack of a move can be taken as a vote of confidence for the current roster.

“We always trust our players,” McDermott said. “We like who we have. Still, I think the thing for a coach in this position is we got work to do. Brandon does a great job handling all the personnel things and I know he looked and he's always going to look to try and improve our football team.”

Even though the deadline has come and gone, that job never stops. Beane spoke Wednesday with The Buffalo News about the inactivity in the trade market, the team’s start to the season and a variety of other topics. The conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, is below:

The Buffalo News: The trade deadline came and went Tuesday and you guys decided to stand pat. What went into that decision?

Brandon Beane: "You know me. We looked at a lot of things, and took calls, but just where our roster is at, it had to be something that, if we're going to lose this player, that makes sense. Either something that's going to help us now, or we know we're going to turn it into something in the future that makes sense. Not a late pick, when you get down in the draft. So we looked, but at the end of the day, the deadline brings all this stuff, but the one thing people don't realize is, you've got a 17-game season. You've got seven teams that now make the playoffs, and you've got certain teams with GMs and head coaches that are fighting for their job. It really narrows the pool of guys and teams that are actually willing to do something that I will call a win-win.”

BN: So you got calls. Did you make any calls?

BB: "Yeah, definitely made calls, and I didn't just pick up the phone Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. We've had calls with teams. The deadline is the deadline, and maybe it puts some urgency on it, but we've gotten calls all season and we've made calls at certain times to check in and say, 'Hey, if your situation changes' ... like, you might call a team, knowing it's three weeks before the deadline, 'Would you guys ever move anyone off this position?' Maybe they tell you, they wouldn't do player A, but we'll do player B or C. Or we would consider it. Or, you tell them, 'This is the player I'd like. If anything changes on your end, let me know.' And we track them. That's a lot of the conversations. Some of that was follow up Monday and Tuesday, of, 'All right, I know we talked a few weeks ago, is this a player you'd be willing to part with?' Either it was, but it was too premium of a price, or it was 'No, we're fighting our butts off for our own team.' "

BN: In your mind, was anything close?

BB: “No.”

BN: Is it tougher to make player-for-player trades in season, as opposed to player for draft picks?

BB: "Probably, yeah. You've got to find a team that has a plethora at a certain position, and if they're looking for a player, that means they think they're still in it. The contracts have to work, too. That came into play. With the cap going backward this year, people had to convert more salaries this year than normal to stay under the cap, so teams overall have less money to deal with. That's why you saw some teams having to pay extra to eat money that couldn't afford it on the cap.”

BN: If player for player is tougher, and if you went player for pick, you'd have to cut a player. That has to factor in too, right?

BB: “Yeah. You've got to make a move, whether it's injured reserve or cut a guy, whatever. It gets built up as 'the deadline,' but candidly, if they moved it back a little bit, I think you'd see a few more deals. There is so much left in the season. A lot of teams have 10 or nine games left, and with seven teams making the playoffs, there are very few teams that can say today, 'We're out of it.' And some of those that are borderline, they might be fighting for their job.”

BN: There is no true midway point of the season anymore with 17 games, but we're pretty close right now. You're No. 1 in points scored and points allowed. What's your general consensus when you hear that?

BB: "It's a good start. It's a scoring league, and whether you're preventing the other team or you're doing it, you know me – we're not satisfied. I definitely don't want Bills Mafia to think – or even our locker room to think – that we're satisfied with where we're at being 5-2 or satisfied with some of the stats in first in points and first in points allowed. We're looking all the time (to better our roster), but it's got to make sense now and/or long term for us to do something. We've done some really good things. We've done some things that we've got to clean up, especially in the two games we lost. They were very close games. I did like this week. You don't want close games. I'd love to win them all big, like we've won some of them, but you do need to win some close games. Especially in the division. They know you, you know them. That's a prideful team. After what happened Week 2, we knew we were going to get a shot, and the guys hung in there and found a way to grit it out, even though not everything was pretty.”

BN: When you go back to that Miami game in Week 2, I feel like we came out of it going, 'Boy, the offense could have played a little bit better.' A few times after games – convincing, big wins – we've said that. Are expectations maybe a bit too high?

BB: "Each week is its own game. It truly is. You'd love to look long term, but these coaches are game planning specific. That goes into even how we dress our D-line. The way we built this D-line, we're not sitting guys because they're not playing well, necessarily. I'm not saying none of that has happened, but it's generally been, we can't suit up 10 or 11 guys. Somebody has to sit. Every week is a game plan. The expectations ... no one has higher expectations than the people in this building. If there's frustration out there, there's probably some here. We hold ourselves to a high standard, Brian Daboll on the offense and Leslie Frazier on the defense. I don't think any criticism out there is going to be more than what's inside here, but we do have to remember it's the NFL. There are no easy games. We see that every week. If you don't play well, you give yourself a good chance to lose.”

BN: Josh Allen's season to this point, the numbers haven't been quite as prolific as last year. He got the contract extension out of the way in training camp. How have you seen him respond to that, and where do you think his season is at right now?

BB: “I think he's doing a really good job. Again, last year was last year. This is a different year. We've got some different people. Him and Emmanuel had to get on the same page. They've had some big moments. We're back playing in crowds, so he's having to use silent counts that we didn't have to do a year ago. You know, in preseason, here's the one thing now, the first couple games now is almost like preseason used to be. Even though we played them a little bit, everyone plays very vanilla. There's not a lot of exotic blitzes, and who knows who's on the other sideline and who knows who Josh has at his disposal in the one game that he played against Green Bay. You want to get prepared, but, really, you don't start knowing teams until probably a month in. Definitely, it takes a couple games to start getting your rhythm. So that's what I thought of our offense. You said earlier, we won 35-0, but maybe we left some points out there. We probably did, but that's to be expected. You don't just get to pick up where you left off with 501 points and say it's going to gel right away. This is a new season, it's a new team, and other teams have studied what we've done. I'm sure they've looked at some of the games maybe Josh or our offense didn't play as well. Well, what did they do to slow him down? You've always got to be ready to counter whatever the defense is trying to do to you, and I think Josh has done a good job of that. This week, Miami, they've been strictly playing us a lot of press-man, get in your face. They came out in the first half and played a lot of zone, and then flipped straight from zone to 'zero' blitz. You don't know that. So I thought, even though we were slow out of the gates, we couldn't get a rhythm, I thought we made some really good adjustments at halftime and the second half, we looked more like the Bills' offense that we've known the last year and a half.”

BN: You had successfully avoided anybody going on the Covid-19 list up until this week with Jake Fromm and Tanner Gentry. You said in an interview before the season you go to bed and wake up worrying about Covid-19 and injuries. Are you still going to bed and waking up doing that?

BB: “Yeah. You see it, whether it's in our building or another team, people are on the Covid list, almost every day, whether they're a close contact or they're getting it. We're definitely trying to warn our guys, now that the weather is changing, we're more indoors. It's been proven that it's safer outside. We'd love to be outside more, but that's not always possible. We're trying to educate – that's all you can do – and be smart the best we can. Listen, if we think something's going on, we've got a plan in place to go virtual and send people home if need be. We're ready for it. It's hard, because I'm a fixer by nature, and I don't get to control this. Until we've played the last game, I'll sweat it out.”

BN: Based on your understanding of the current situation with Fromm and Gentry, do you have any idea as to whether those are isolated incidents? Are there follow-up tests being done?

BB: “We're definitely doing some close contact stuff. If you are vaccinated and you're deemed a close contact, 'X' number of minutes within 6 feet, then we send you out to test. If you're clear and you have no symptoms, we can bring you back in, but instead of testing once a week, we're going to test you for five straight days. That's part of the protocol. ... Fortunately, there were no unvaccinated people in this case that were deemed close contacts by the league, so we didn't have to send anyone else home. But we do have some people – players and staff – who are being monitored for the next four or five days to make sure they're good. The emphasis on them – it's on everyone – if you have any symptoms, a headache, sniffles, whatever – to let (head athletic trainer) Nate Breske know and let us test you. That's the best way we've tried to educate our building, even if you think it's nothing, just go out there and test. We'd rather you do that then just go take two Tylenol and hope it goes away.”

BN: What is the current vaccination rate amongs players?

BB: “We're between five and 10 (unvaccinated players).

BN: Is that active roster and practice squad?

BB: “Yeah, it's single digit. I don't know that we'll move the needle, so to speak, anymore, but maybe some of the guys, as we approach the end of the season, if it looks like we have a chance at the postseason, maybe some of the guys at that point will consider it. They've been educated. It's their decision at this point.”

BN: What led you to signing Taron Johnson to a contract extension during the season?

BB: "Taron was a guy we wanted to extend, but I had a priority on Josh. The sole focus was understanding the parameters with his deal and how much financial obligations we were going to have. So I needed to get through all that before I got going on Taron. I don't generally negotiate in season, and we had put a deadline on Josh, as we have done other people, that we're not going to do it in season, but this was our fault, because of that. I had kind of put it off. So I told his agent that at some point after Josh's deal, we'll take a look and if it carries into the season, it does. Let's just make sure it's not a distraction, and I thought he and Taron did a great job. We were glad to keep him. He's done a great job."

BN: That kind of answers the next question. Are you in negotiations with any of your other impending free agents, or will all of that wait until after the year?

BB: "Yeah, that was a special circumstance. That's the only one I've really done in season. Never say never, but that was our fault why that happened, so I don't have anything planned."

BN: You mentioned the defensive line earlier. Boogie Basham has not played a lot, while Greg Rousseau has been in the starting lineup. What are your thoughts on their development thus far?

BB: "I think those guys have both done a good job in their own right. I thought Greg had a really strong camp. Eric Washington told these guys, 'Listen, I'm not putting anybody in spots. You guys will earn it, whether you're running with team one, team two,' you know how much we rotate these guys anyway. Other than being called out by the announcer as starting, they play pretty similar. We've got some young guys and we've got some vets. While Boogie might not have been where Greg was in camp, I think he's done a great job, and when he's had his opportunities, I think he's done well. We like where he's at. Not everything has been perfect with either one. They are both learning and growing. They've got some vets in Mario Addison and Jerry Hughes, which is nice. I like having that combination. Mario and Jerry have done a great job of teaching these guys – A.J. Epenesa, too. A.J's only in year two. A lot of times with young players, you can do one of two things. You can just throw them out there and let them learn and make a bunch of mistakes, but where our team is, we want them to learn, and not cost us games. That's not just D-line. That's all young guys, where our roster's at. If this was three years ago, these guys would all be playing. But they've got to learn and they've got to grow. Boogie will be back out there."

BN: What has impressed you most to this point, and what's maybe your biggest concern?

BB: "I thought the guys have handled themselves well. That loss in Tennessee, it's been talked about, but you hate to go into a bye like that. The quarterback sneak was the right call by Sean to go for that. Those are tough moments. Those are tough pills to swallow. That's a really good team that you had a chance on the road to get it done, and we didn't get it done. There were a lot of plays before that, that if they go in our favor, it doesn't come down to that, but I've been impressed for two years in a row how our guys have handled that. There is no finger pointing. It's 'what can I do to not put us in that situation where it comes down to fourth and a half a yard to get it.' The biggest concern I have is what I can control, making sure I've got depth everywhere and making sure I keep this team as safe as possible with the Covid world we're in."