When it comes to the Buffalo Bills' pick at No. 30 in next week’s NFL Draft, everything is on the table.
“If there’s a guy on our board, hypothetically, 10 spots away, at 20, and we’re going, ‘Man, this guy really fits us. He’s everything we want. He’s going to make a big impact now and long-term,' you have to talk about it, and of course see what it costs,” general manager Brandon Beane told reporters via a Zoom conference call on Tuesday. “Then, obviously, you’d have to have a team willing to make that move with you.”
In the three drafts he’s been in charge of since being hired as general manager in 2017, Beane has moved up in the first round twice - both in 2018 when he selected quarterback Josh Allen and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds seventh and 16th overall, respectively.
He also stayed put once, selecting defensive tackle Ed Oliver ninth overall in 2019, and traded completely out of the first round last year when he dealt the No. 22 overall choice to the Minnesota Vikings for wide receiver Stefon Diggs.
Beane left the door open for all of those scenarios.
“We won’t be afraid to go up,” he reiterated. “We won’t be afraid to pick at 30. And listen, if we get at 30, and we go, ‘Man, we think we can get a similar player going back,’ and someone’s fired up for the pick, then we’d listen to that, too. So we are willing to go either way or definitely take that pick at 30.
Because Allen and Edmunds were selected in the first round in 2018, the Bills can exercise their fifth-year option for 2022 on both of them by May 3, the day after this year’s draft. Beane said they’ll wait until then to make any final and official decision, noting that the league’s and team’s salary cap situation will play a vital role.
“We’re going to wait until after the draft to figure that out,” he said. “We’ve had some discussions, but really that will be front and center as soon as the draft is done. The hard part this year is going to be, the cap has gone down. We don’t know exactly where it’s going to be next year. Probably not a huge increase.”
Because both players have made one Pro Bowl on the original ballot (Edmunds has made two, but one was as an injury replacement), their fifth-year option amounts increase. For Allen, it will cost the Bills $23.016 million. For Edmunds, it’s $12.791 million.
That money would become fully guaranteed immediately upon the Bills exercising the option. In other words, there would be no going back and changing their minds.
“You can’t really be flexible with those numbers, so we’ve got to make sure that if we pick them both up that we’re going to have close to $35 million space in next year‘s cap,” Beane said. “So it’s not an ideal scenario from that to pick them both up and not extend them. So we’ve just got to kind of figure out how we can make that work in our system, but we’ll have that answer once the draft’s over.
As far as an extension for Allen goes, Beane said he’s spoken to the quarterback and one of his representatives. Beane said Allen wants to be in Buffalo and that he’s confident it will eventually get done, but can’t guarantee it will be this offseason.
In case you missed Beane's conference call, you can listen to it in its entirety below:
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