Buffalo Bills General Manager Brandon Beane joined team owner and president Kim Pegula and multimedia journalist Maddy Glab on the latest episode of 'Bills Pod Squad','presented by New York Lottery.
The episode is available now on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. You can also watch the episode below, on the Bills' YouTube channel, or on the Bills Mobile app, presented by M&T Bank.
Here are three takeaways from their conversation.
1. What a 17th game means from a general manager's perspective
Fresh off of the annual NFL league meeting, Maddy, Kim and Brandon started off the conversation by talking about the new schedule format with the addition of the 17th game.
Beane is excited to see some familiar faces when Ron Rivera, Marty Hurney and the Washington Football Team come to Buffalo at some point during the 2021 season. He also likes the idea of playing three preseason games instead of four and the flexibility it gives the players and his staff before the regular season starts.
"Three is a great number because that fourth preseason game has been tough." He said. "You're trying to get your roster set and you're playing it up against week one and you're worried about injuries. You don't have enough guys just to play your backups so the way it's set up now we're going to have two weeks from the third preseason game. We can get any guys healed up from injuries, get our roster set, and build our practice squad. It's a lot of shuffling the way it was in the past, so I'm excited about the new format."
2. What Beane misses most about the NFL Scouting Combine
With there being less than one month until the NFL Draft, Beane and his staff are working around the clock to be prepared as they can be on draft night.
At the 13:25 mark, Beane talked about how important the Combine is to him and his staff and how they have to make up for the absence of it at the player's Pro Days.
"[At the combine] We get to meet with these guys for a good 20 minutes and you can get a good feel for him," Beane told Maddy and Kim. "Sometimes it says, 'hey, I want to know more' and sometimes it says, 'I've had enough, that answered what I needed, he's not for us.' And sometimes elimination is as important as adding a guy to your list. So, we really missed that."
3. Prepping for all training camp scenarios
The pandemic forced the Bills to not have their training camp at St. John Fischer College for the first time since 1999. After successfully hosting it at One Bills Drive in 2020, it gives both Kim Pegula and Brandon Beane confidence that they can have it at either location once they get further instruction from the league.
At the 37:00-minute mark, Beane explained how the two locations offer different experiences for the team's training camp experience.
"We got great facilities here," he said. "So, there's things that we gained here that you can't do there. But there's things that you can gain there, like that that bond that you can build. Going back in the dorms, and people aren't forced to go home. So, it wasn't all bad that we were here I mean, we spent $18 million of their money a couple years ago to build this [practice facility], that you can't replicate anywhere we could go, and we got a lot of good use out of it."
