Archives for March 1, 2018

‘”Tyrod’s on our roster right now, that’s the plan,” Beane said. “We’re just taking it day by day.”‘

‘“Salary aside, I don’t look at that,” McDermott said. “Right now I look at production. He has not slowed down. He played all 16 games plus a playoff game for us and really gritted it out through that playoff game. The toughness element was there and the leadership. It’s been fun to be around LeSean, having been around him early in his career, early in my career, now once again for both of us in Buffalo. He’s a big part of the culture that we’ve begun to build in Buffalo.”’

‘The issue boils down to what it always does – money. Wood is scheduled to count $8.625 million against the team’s salary cap in 2018. If he is placed on the reserve/retired list before June 1, that figure would jump to $10.39 million, accounting for $2.166 million in signing bonus money already paid out and scheduled to count against the Bills’ 2019 salary cap.’

‘”We’re still open to bringing E.J. back, for sure,” Beane said. “E.J. did a lot of good things for us. Signing Vontae does not mean it’s the end of the road for E.J. here in Buffalo. But it takes two, like with any of these guys. We’ve got a lot of free agents and what the value is, what somebody else is willing to pay and what we can pay will all come into that decision.”‘

‘”Hopefully, in a perfect world, we have it done before then,” Beane said. “Again, it takes two. There would be a point where, you know, hey, we had to allocate those resources elsewhere, and we’ll let him know at the right time. It could end up being March 14, but right now I’m not sure.’

‘”So you have to feel good about what you’re doing. You can’t just go up there, ‘Hey, we need a quarterback, we’re going to mortgage everything to go up there.’ We’ve got to know that we feel this guy is the guy and is worth the ransom or whatever you want to call it that it would take to move wherever you have to move to get a guy you think fits your long term plan.”‘

‘”To be honest with you, we didn’t know about his shoulder,” Bills General Manager Brandon Beane said. “He played through that. I’m sure that limited him … but he did a great job. Zay is a pro’s pro for a rookie. I was really impressed with how serious he takes the game. It’s easy to talk it, he walked it. … He did everything he could. He worked after practice. I’m really impressed with Zay and he has a bright future in this league.”‘

‘“Brian did a lot of stuff this fall. So we still have his grades, all his reports. He sent those in. I mess with him. I’m going to be calling him in the third round and saying, ‘Hey, you had this guy here, you still think he belongs in the third round?’ ”’

‘”Marv Levy, of course, had a huge impact on me,” Reich said. “A team’s morale is directly proportional to the degree that they’re prepared. So if we want to bring the juice into our stadium and we want to bring juice to this city and we want high morale, we want to be excited about going out there, it’s really going to be all about our preparation. That preparation involves every level, not just the practice. It involves meetings, walk-through, weight-room. It all matters.”‘

‘I think the biggest thing, and I don’t know if I learned it, but it probably was reaffirmed, but this is so much about people. I was fortunate in my first season to be around some great people in our building in our community. Our fans, what more can you say? I know I’m biased but I think we’ve got the best fans in the NFL. My process will continue to unfold. I’ll continue to learn and grow. I think we have to embrace that growth mindset as a building, as a team, and as an organization. I’m confident we’ll do that.’

‘Today is Day One. We just got out of height-weight, watching these guys get measured. We had some interviews last night. It’s really important the medical, which is what this started as. This is the first time our doctors and trainers can get their hands on these guys, which is a big part of the process. Now we can talk to some more guys. We met some of the players at the Senior Bowl, East-West and the NFLPA Game. But the juniors obviously we couldn’t do that. So now we can talk to some of those guys.’