The Buffalo Bills are back among the best in the AFC and they are making sure the architect of the current AFC East frontrunners will be around for the foreseeable future.
The Bills announced they have signed general manager Brandon Beane to a multi-year extension on Thursday. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reports Beane's new deal will keep him in Buffalo through 2025.
As the Bills have been resurrected from a club long absent from the playoffs to a division favorite and one of the AFC's top squads, Beane and coach Sean McDermott have led the way. Thus, Beane's extension is through the same year as McDermott's, which the coach signed in August.
"Brandon is an outstanding leader, and he has brought a great level of stability throughout our organization. One of the things we appreciate and respect about Brandon is that he is very thorough in his decision-making process. No decision he makes comes without a great deal of study and research," Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula said in a statement. "We appreciate his strong communication skills, and he works extremely well with us, with Sean and with all levels of the organization. We are happy to extend his contract and to have Brandon and Sean leading our football team for many years to come."
Though Beane replaced former GM Doug Whaley after the 2017 NFL Draft and McDermott's signing, Beane and McDermott have gone hand-in-hand, season-by-season in the Bills' turnaround. Their first season (2017) in Buffalo saw the Bills return to the playoffs for the first time since 1999, ending the league's longest playoff drought at the time.
Heading into Sunday's matchup against the Steelers, the Bills can clinch another postseason berth, which would be the third in the last four seasons, also known as the Beane-McDermott era.
Beane, who came to the Bills after a tenure with the Panthers just like McDermott, looks to have hit big in his first draft, selecting quarterback Josh Allen and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds with a pair of 2018 first-round draft picks.
While the defense's rise, led by the likes of cornerback Tre'Davious White and linebacker Matt Milano, was the focal point for the Bills' past three seasons of success, the maturation of Allen and building around him has been the key this year and possibly for the future.
Beane orchestrated a trade for receiver Stefon Diggs in the 2020 offseason and has signed receivers Cole Beasley and John Brown, whose production has risen since joining the Bills.
A franchise that famously went to four Super Bowls in the 1990s, the Bills fell upon more than a decade of arduous times before McDermott and then Beane's arrival. A new era is most assuredly underway in upstate New York and the Bills have made certain to extend it.
