Life in 2026 has everyone asking this question at various points throughout the week, if not the day.
“What the hell did I just watch?”
Whether it is the latest streaming sensation, an off-the-rails speech from a political leader, the newest viral trend, or a celebrity story that has us feeling like the main character in the infamous “curtains for Zoosha” tweet, life is strange these days.
That brings us to what we saw from the Buffalo Bills on Wednesday.
With their season over, and having fired head coach Sean McDermott, owner Terry Pagula and general manager Brandon Beane met the media to put a bow on the season, address McDermott’s dismissal, and discuss Beane’s new role within the organization. And from the moment the press conference began, things started to veer in a wild direction.
Ok, sure. Basing the decision to fire McDermott on a road playoff game against the Denver Broncos, where your team forced overtime in the closing seconds and might have been robbed of a chance to win the game in overtime due to a controversial interception ruling, is certainly a decision. But do continue …
The owner then shifted into a fascinating defense of Beane and his roster-construction decisions over the past few years.
At the outset, defending your general manager by first pointing to the other people brought into the front office is a curious choice. But we can also talk about the roster that Beane has built during his tenure in Buffalo. Yes, his first major move as general manager was the decision to trade in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft to select Josh Allen.
That alone could, for some, be enough to save Beane’s job for the distant future.
But beyond the Allen pick, here are Beane’s other first-round selections:
- 2018: Tremaine Edmunds, LB, Pick 16
- 2019: Ed Oliver, DT, Pick 9
- 2020: No pick — traded to Minnesota
- 2021: Greg Rousseau, ED, Pick 30
- 2022: Kaiir Elam, CB, Pick 23
- 2023: Dalton Kincaid, TE, Pick 25
- 2024: No pick — traded to Kansas City and Carolina
- 2025: Maxwell Hairston, CB, Pick 30
Three of those selections — Edmunds, Elam, and Kincaid — involved Beane trading up in the first round to select those players. Edmunds signed with the Chicago Bears as a free agent ahead of the 2023 season and Elam was traded to the Dallas Cowboys last offseason, in a deal involving late-round picks.
And yes, there is more to building a roster than the first-round picks, but that is a starting point for this analysis. We have much more to cover.
“Can I interrupt? I’ll address the Keon situation,” Pegula said. “The coaching staff pushed to draft Keon. I’m not saying Brandon wouldn’t have drafted him, but he wasn’t his next choice. That was Brandon being a team player and taking advice of this coaching staff who felt strongly about the player. He’s taken, for some reason, heat over it and not saying a word about it, but I’m here to tell you the true story.”
Keon Coleman has become a flashpoint for discussion in Buffalo since he was picked at the top of the second round of the 2024 NFL Draft. Coleman has never grown into the outside threat the Bills hoped they were adding for Allen, and was been benched at times for off-field issues.
One of the biggest criticisms of Beane — and the prompt for this discussion via a question from a reporter — has been the inability to fully develop the wide receiver room around Allen. Bills fans hoped that Coleman would be an answer, but that never materialized.
But in the moments after Pegula’s defense of Beane and the Coleman pick, those with long memories flashed back to the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine, and this moment.
There is Beane, after Coleman ran a slower 40-yard dash than expected, noting that it will “help” Buffalo draft him.
Oh wait, there is more!
Now to be completely fair, these are just two moments in time. The coaching staff might have already sold Beane on Coleman — although remember the Scouting Combine is months ahead of the NFL Draft — and a snapshot in Indianapolis can change over the weeks into the draft itself. But to many, these moments undercut the argument Pegula was trying to make.
Then came this moment:
If you were among those who believed there was tension between McDermott and Beane, well, here you go.
By then, it was getting harder and harder to separate fact from fiction. Having stepped away from the press conference for a moment, I came back to see this on my social media timeline:
For a moment, a fleeting moment, I thought it was true.
Now look. Firing McDermott is certainly an understandable move. As Pegula noted there might be something to the idea that the Bills had hit a playoff plateau under his coaching, and with the defending league MVP at quarterback, bigger things should be possible.
But Beane is not without blame here. He built the roster around Allen, and having walked through his first-round picks you can also look at how the team has managed the rest of their draft classes, free agency, and more. Heading into the 2026 NFL season, the Bills are $17 million over the cap (when it comes to effective cap space), the wide receiver room remains a question mark, and they still need help on the defensive side of the football, where some stop-gap moves made by Beane did not pan out.
Regarding the financials, while there is a well-reasoned defense for what Beane has done regarding the cap, it might still leave the Bills in “cap hell” heading into next season, and beyond.
Not only did Beane keep his job, he secured a promotion, as Pegula named him the team’s President of Football Operations.
“What the hell did I just watch?”
