This offseason, the Buffalo Bills made the questionable decision to promote their General Manager, Brandon Beane, while firing their Head Coach, Sean McDermott. They basically laid all the blame on McDermott and told the fanbase they fully believe in the guy who hasn’t had a good draft since 2017. As you can imagine, that rubbed fans the wrong way, and in an interview with Go Long, when asked about the outside noise over the decision to replace McDermott with Joe Brady, Beane said, “F*** the outside.”

“F— the outside,” Beane told Go Long. “It’s about the right selection for this team. And if we win, they’ll love it.”

During an interview with Peter Schrager, Beane explained what he meant by his expletive comments.

“After Joe [Brady] was hired, it was basically, what do you say to the critics who say you shouldn’t hire from within?” Beane explained. “The point is, when you sign up for these jobs, you don’t do it to please people. You do it to do the best job. It’s really a mindset, it’s not really F any person or media or fan or anything.”

Beane further explained that they had a whole panel of people within the building who talked extensively about the group of nine candidates they brought in for interviews. At the end of the conversation, they decided that Brady was the best man for the job. When you’re in a position like he’s in as a GM of an NFL team, you can’t afford to listen to people on the outside who don’t have the same insight and intel.

“In this case, we had a panel of people, we talked about each candidate, we went through all of them,” Beane continued. “If you’re not in the know of that, you wouldn’t really be able to give a fair assessment of which of the nine people deserved the job. Ultimately, we decided that Joe Brady was the right fit…If you start listening and taking opinions from people who don’t have the intel or the insight to make the decision, I think you’re not doing your job.”

Beane went on to explain that if he listened to the outside noise, he probably wouldn’t have his job anymore.

Beane would’ve passed on Josh Allen if he listened to the noise

Brandon Beane has made a lot of questionable decisions in the draft. Only three of the 56 players Beane has drafted since 2018 – Josh Allen, James Cook, and Dawson Knox – have made the Pro Bowl. They’ve also swung and missed on multiple early-round picks, such as Keon Coleman and Kaiir Elam. But you have to give him credit. He absolutely nailed the quarterback.

Josh Allen has developed into one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, and Beane said if he listened to even a third of the people who tried to give him advice on Allen, he would be out of a job for passing him up.

“I can say this: if I listened to even a third of the people on Josh Allen, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here,” Beane explained. “I probably would’ve been fired for taking someone else or passing on Josh Allen.”

There’s an argument to be made that if he listened to the outside noise, maybe Josh Allen would have some weapons at receiver and a capable run defense, and the Bills would be in the Super Bowl this year. But I digress.

Every GM has their own way of doing things, and Beane obviously likes to keep most of the power to himself. That’s fine, but he has to be willing to accept responsibility for his mistakes. You can’t keep blaming things like Keon Coleman on the coaching staff, because ultimately, you have the final say.

I will say this: I believe Joe Brady was one of, if not the best, options for the job. I think he made the right hire, so blocking out the outside noise was the right move there, but we’ll see if those comments come back to bite him if the outside keeps pushing for him to give Allen some weapons, and he fails to deliver for the third year running.