Legendary former GM praises Bills offseason strategy: 'Keep it green and growing'

Pro Football Hall of Famer Bill Polian feels as though the Buffalo Bills made several difficult, but well-timed decisions in the 2024 offseason.

Aug 9, 2015; Canton, OH, USA; Bill Polian is introduced at the 2015 Hall of Fame game at Tom Benson / Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

Few know more about how to build a successful football team in Western New York than Bill Polian.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame-inducted executive served as the general manager of the Buffalo Bills from 1986–1992, constructing a team that would appear in four straight Super Bowls from 1990–1993. He won two NFL Executive of the Year Awards throughout his time in Buffalo, the squads he constructed being almost universally viewed as some of, if not the, best in franchise history.

Polian would be let go by the Bills after the 1992 season (before their fourth Super Bowl appearance, though the team still had his stamp on it); he would ultimately be hired to helm the expansion Carolina Panthers in 1995, leading the team to a Super Bowl appearance in its second year before leaving to become the general manager and president of the Indianapolis Colts, overseeing the team from 1998–2011 and taking them to a Super Bowl XLI victory.

The longtime NFL executive is objectively one of the strongest in its history, an architect with a decorated mantel who was just a few bounces away from going down as one of the most successful general managers in league history. He’s excelled in the post before, and thus, one should listen when he praises an incumbent NFL decision-maker.

Related: 2024 Bills 53-man roster projection: Pre-minicamp edition

That’s what makes his recent praise of current Buffalo general manager Brandon Beane—and head coach Sean McDermott—that much more meaningful. Beane oversaw significant turnover in the 2024 NFL offseason, moving on from stalwart starters like Stefon Diggs, Micah Hyde, Tre’Davious White, Jordan Poyer, Mitch Morse, and Gabriel Davis in an effort to reset his team’s on-field and financial clocks. 

It’s never easy for a team to usher out one era in favor of the next—especially not when it’s helmed by a quarterback in his prime and has won playoff games in each of the past four seasons—but according to Polian, it’s necessary. The esteemed executive feels that a franchise’s quarterback window of contention equates to roughly the lifespan of two different team cores, and it was simply time for Buffalo to transition from Josh Allen’s first supporting cast to the next.

“History tells you, in almost every professional sport, it takes you two to three years to build a program when you come in, and then you’ve got somewhere between five to seven years of lifespan for those guys that have become key contributors for you,” Polian said during a recent interview with WGRZ’s Vic Carucci. “If you’re able, in football, to have the quarterback, and hopefully he plays 10-to-12 years, you’ve really got a lifespan of two teams. The first, and then when they start to age out, somewhere between year six and eight, now you have to turn it over again. That’s where the Bills are. 

“They have some core guys who have been with them for a long time and will continue to be with them, most notably the quarterback, but now they’re adding new and improved and young, vibrant pieces to them, and if you look at the draft this year and the moves in the offseason—the trade of the receiver, etc.—and the adding people in the season, you see that they’re right on top [of it] as they always here. Brandon [Beane] and Sean [McDermott] are right on, they do it by the book, the absolute best in the league in terms of recognizing when it’s time to move on from a player and creatively replacing them. That’s the process that’s going on now. This is, as Paul Brown used to say, keep it green and growing, they’re keeping this team green and growing.”

Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the NFL, talks with former Bills GM, Bill Polian, and Bills GM, / Max Schulte/Rochester Democrat and

Many of the team’s offseason maneuvers were executed with long-term cap space in mind; the Bills moved on from Diggs, White, Poyer, and Morse to remove their contracts from the books in future years, also letting Davis walk as a free agent as a way to avoid committing long-term cash to him. Cap troubles, per Polian, were unavoidable for a team as competitive as Buffalo.

“When you win, you always get into cap issues,” Polian said. “That’s what the system is designed to do.”

That said, Buffalo has placed itself in a more advantageous financial situation moving forward; though it currently has just $2.3 million in space, per Over The Cap, it’s set to have north of $50 million in available cash by 2026 (obviously subject to change to signings, extensions, restructures, etc.). The Bills are also positioned well in the 2025 NFL Draft, currently owning eight selections (including an extra second-round pick); they’re also projected to receive two compensatory selections. Combine these factors with the fact that Allen is entering just his age-28 season, and it’s easy to see that Buffalo is in a solid position to build the second ‘core’ that Polian alluded to.