Just days after Brandon Beane’s NSFW rant, the Buffalo Bills have landed a new wide receiver.
The Bills struck a one-year, $5 million deal with wide receiver Elijah Moore on Wednesday, according to the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.
Moore spent the last two seasons in the league with the Cleveland Browns. He had 538 yards and one touchdown last season, which trailed only Jerry Jeudy in yards while the team went just 3-14. Moore, who was first selected by the New York Jets with the No. 34 overall pick in 2021 out of Ole Miss, became a free agent this offseason.
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Though he’s averaged just more than 540 receiving yards a season throughout his career, Moore should be a great addition for Josh Allen and the Bills this fall. If nothing else, it should help get fans off Beane’s back.
The Bills general manager made an appearance on a local radio show earlier this week, and he responded to criticism that the team didn’t take a wide receiver early in the NFL Draft. The Bills didn’t have a true No. 1 receiver last season, but they still finished second in points scored in the regular season, and Allen won his first career MVP award while getting the franchise to the AFC championship game for the first time since 2020.
Beane also said that the team wasn’t avoiding wide receivers in the NFL Draft, but that they simply didn’t like anybody that was available when they were up. Instead, the team opted to spend their first five picks on defensive players, starting with cornerback Maxwell Hairston in the first round.
“Well, you guys were b****ing in 2018 about Josh Allen, you guys wanted Josh Rosen, and now you guys are b****ing that we don’t have a receiver,” Beane said. “… We just scored 30 points in a row for eight straight games. A year ago, I get you guys asking why we didn’t have receivers, but I don’t understand it now. You just saw us lead the league in points, when you add all the postseason, no one scored more points than the Buffalo Bills, including the Super Bowl champions. So, you just saw us do it without Stefon Diggs, same group. How is this group not better than last year’s group? Our job is to score points and win games. Where do we need to get better? Defense. We did that. So, I get it, you got to have a show, and you got to have something to b**** about, but b***ing about wide receiver is one of the dumbest arguments I’ve heard.”
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Moore will now join Khalil Shakir — who signed a four-year extension with the team this offseason — Keon Coleman and Curtis Samuel, among others, in the Bills’ wide receivers room. The team signed Joshua Palmer to a three-year deal, too, so Moore isn’t the only addition.
Still, that group is without a true top wide receiver. Clearly, Beane is good with that strategy considering how far it took the team last season. Whether the criticism got to him and pushed the latest addition, though, isn’t clear.
But until Beane leads the team to a Super Bowl appearance at a bare minimum — something they’ve fallen painfully short of in the Allen era — he’s almost certainly going to be criticized for something.
