Buffalo Rumblings
The Buffalo Bills held their year-end press conference on Wednesday, and despite a lot of talk on the firing of Sean McDermott and the hiring process for the next head coach, a lot of time was spent on the wide receiver position and Keon Coleman.
Bills’ owner Terry Pegula interrupted general manager Brandon Beane to make a point about Coleman. He said Coleman was drafted because of input from the coaching staff, saying he wasn’t the top player available on Beane’s board. It’s a stunning admission in the middle of the press conference made even more surprising that Coleman has two years left on his rookie deal. Now he knows that Beane didn’t value him as highly as other players.
“The coaching staff pushed to draft Keon. I am not saying that Brandon wouldn’t have drafted him, but he was not his next choice. That was the coaching staff felling strongly about the player. He’s taken a lot of heat over it,” said Pegula, defending his general manager.
In follow ups, Beane addressed Coleman and implied it wasn’t a talent issue that is keeping the young player from performing. He obviously called out Coleman in this answer, but also by extension the coaching staff designed to motivate him.
“[Coleman’s] issues haven’t been on the field. He doesn’t make excuses which I appreciate,” said Beane. “Some of the maturity stuff got in the way and you can lose confidence in teammates and coaches.”
In the offseason, Beane defended Coleman multiple times as the team’s top wideout option and he had a really nice training camp in 2025.
“The crazy thing is this time last year we were trending up. Had a great offseason…”
Then he started the year hot with a great game against the Baltimore Ravens. They needed to come back to him at the end of the season following injuries at the WR position. Beane does hope he will have another strong offseason and head back in for 2026.
“It’s up to us. ‘Gotta hit the reset again and attack the offseason the way you did and training camp the way you did [last year]. Don’t let these maturity issues get in the way.‘ We still believe in him.”
Bills radio analyst Eric Wood chimed in on social media, saying the decision to draft Coleman wasn’t fully on McDermott and his staff.
“I think it’s fair for Terry to say that the coaches had Keon rated higher than Beane and that impacted when they drafted him and the fact that they drafted him,” said Wood.
He went on to say Coleman can still move forward with the organization despite the negativity in today’s press conference.
“He knows he’s in bad standing in the organization. He was late to meetings enough to get benched multiple times. Its HARD to be late for meetings. Low effort constantly. He brought all the criticism on himself and he’s got to own that now. Still time, we’ll see…”
Bills wide receiver room failed in...
