Brandon Beane, general manager of then Buffalo Bills, heads off the field at the end of practice at the Buffalo Bills training camp at St. John Fisher University in Pittsford on July 24, 2025. Tina MacIntyre-Yee/Democrat and Chronicle / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Bills' James Cook another example of Brandon Beane's mantra

Originally posted on Buffalo Bills on SI
By Ronnie Eastham | Last updated Aug 15, 2025 4:01 PM ET

Do a quick Google search for, "draft. develop. re-sign", and you'll likely see Buffalo Bills' general manager Brandon Beane's name in the results.

Beane's been preaching that mantra since his first day on the job. Keep searching and you'll find this mantra is in the forefront of everything GM does. In 2020, he talked about the philosophy.

Go back further to 2017, just a few months after joining the Bills, Beane was quoted along the same lines.

"I'm going to build through the draft, first and foremost," Beane said. "You have to draft well and sign those guys. If you draft well, you sign them. You're not going to see big splashes of free agency. Free agency sets you up for your draft."

This idea, aling with the culture that Beane and head coach Sean McDermott have built, has led to players signing extensions for lesser money to stay in Buffalo in some cases, and it's led to many free agents wanting to be in Buffalo. Recalling the playoff drought years, signing free agents and keeping their own, was almost non-existent, and that was a huge reason for the Bills struggles to build a playoff team during those years.

This year alone, Beane and the Bills signed five of "their own", in Christian Benford, Greg Rousseau, Khalil Shakir, Terrel Bernard, and most recently James Cook.

We're all aware of the drama that took place over the summer with Cook, but at the end of the day, Beane got a deal done, and one that is fair to the Bills and pays Cook at the higher end of his market value. It was a win-win deal, and now the Bills can focus on getting to Super Bowl LX.