“Keep it green and growing”

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

The Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee served as general manager of the Buffalo Bills from 1986 to 1992, building a team that would appear in four consecutive Super Bowls from 1990 to 1993. He won two NFL Executive of the Year awards throughout his time in Buffalo, the teams he built being almost universally considered part of, if not THEthe best in franchise history.

Polian would be released by the Bills after the 1992 season (before their fourth Super Bowl appearance, although the team still had his imprint); he would eventually be hired to lead the expansion Carolina Panthers in 1995, leading the team to a Super Bowl appearance in his second year before leaving to become general manager and president of the Indianapolis Colts, overseeing the team from 1998 to 2011 and taking them. to a victory in Super Bowl XLI.

The longtime NFL executive is objectively one of the strongest in its history, an architect with a decorated mantelpiece who was just steps away from becoming one of the most successful general managers in league history. He’s already excelled at the position, so you have to listen to him when he praises a departing NFL decision-maker.

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

It’s never easy for a team to usher in one era in favor of the next, especially not when they’re led by a quarterback in their prime and have won playoff games over the course of their career. from each of the last four seasons, but according to Polian, it’s necessary. The esteemed executive estimates that a franchise’s window of quarterback contention is roughly equivalent to the lifespan of two different team cores, and it was simply time for Buffalo to move on from the premier supporting cast of Josh Allen next.

“History tells you that in almost all professional sports, it takes you two to three years to build a program when you come in, and then you have between five and seven years of life expectancy for guys who have become key contributors for you,” Polian said in a recent interview with WGRZ’s Vic Carucci “If you’re able in football to have a quarterback and hopefully he plays for. 10 to 12 years, you really have a lifespan of two teams The first one, then when they start to get older, between the sixth and eighth year, now you have to turn them over. That’s where the projects are. law.

“They have a few core guys that have been with them for a long time and will continue to be with them, especially the quarterback, but now they’re adding new, improved, young, dynamic pieces to them, and if you look at this year’s draft and the moves in the offseason – the receiver trade, etc. – and the additions of people during the season, you see they’re right on top (of that) like they’re still there. (McDermott) are right, they’re doing it by the rules, the absolute best in the league in terms of recognizing when it’s time to move on from a player and replacing him creatively. That’s the process going on right now. It’s, as Paul Brown said, that it has to stay green and grow, that they keep this team green and grow.

Many of the team’s offseason moves were executed with long-term cap space in mind; the Bills moved on from Diggs, White, Poyer and Morse to take their contracts off the books in the coming years, also letting Davis walk as a free agent in order to avoid committing money to him long-term. Cap issues, according to Polian, were inevitable for a team as competitive as Buffalo.

“When you win, you always run into cap issues,” Polian said. “This is what the system is designed to do.”

That said, Buffalo has put itself in a more advantageous financial position going forward; Although it currently only has $2.3 million in space, according to Over The Cap, it is expected to have over $50 million in available cash by 2026 (obviously subject to changes in signatures, extensions, restructurings, etc.). The Bills are also well-positioned in the 2025 NFL Draft, currently owning eight selections (including an additional second-round pick); they are also expected to receive two compensatory picks. Combine those factors with the fact that Allen is only entering his age-28 season, and it’s easy to see that Buffalo is in a solid position to build the second “core” Polian alluded to.