3. What are Buffalo’s areas of need?
Buffalo will use free agency and the NFL Draft to address needs on their roster. Beane and head coach Sean McDermott believes assessing the roster always starts up front. Buffalo’s offensive line, who allowed a league-low 14 sacks in 2024, returns all five starters in 2025. That isn’t the case for the defensive line as the Bills have several rotational players set to become free agents in March.
“Winning the line of scrimmage is critical,” McDermott shared. “I felt like we did that at some times this year, not enough. And so, that’s an area where I did see some of our players, maybe not statistically, but just overall factor-wise or performance-wise, improve up front.”
It’s not just the line of scrimmage. McDermott addressed the importance of playmakers as well.
“You need to be able to stretch the field horizontally, vertically and gain separation,” McDermott said. “So, I know, in fact, we’ll look at that like we do everything and evaluate exactly the type of player and the type of person that that would fit that.”
When asked about finding a game-wrecker on defense, Beane said those types of players aren’t easy to come by, especially when you’re consistently drafting near the bottom of the first round.
“We’re not ever picking in the top five or 10,” Beane explained. “Not to say you can never get those guys, Chris Jones actually fell to the second round. And we’ll turn over every stone we can to find them, but would I love to add one of those guys? Heck yeah, I would.
“But we have a cap. We pick where we pick. You kind of got to make the best of what you got. Again, we would love to do that if that player’s out there.”
While a game-wrecking player can be a very important addition to a team, Beane doesn’t want to lose sight of the fact that one player won’t change the entire outcome of a season.
“It’s you’re never one player away, that’s a dangerous mindset to get into,” Beane explained. “I learned that when I was a younger person in this league and you see it with teams, ‘I’m going to chase this player, I’m going to chase this position.’ But you’re never one player away. Again, this team had championship ability, I do believe that.
“Sometimes you leave the season, and you say, ‘Man I don’t know if we if we gave ourselves a chance.’ But ultimately, it’s down to a few plays.”
“In my experience, you need two or three on each side of the ball that are difference makers like that,” McDermott said. “I’m not suggesting we have them or don’t have them. I’m just saying, what gets a team to the Super Bowl, philosophically, for me, when you look at it and you study it, you’ve got about two to three on each side of the ball that are top one to three, one to five at their position.”
The Bills will spend the next couple of months evaluating their roster and who is available in free agency and the draft to figure out how they can develop or add those two to three players on both sides of the ball.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
