Brandon Beane: Bills were never even close to a deal with Antonio Brown

[Billy Buffalo]

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Bills General Manager Brandon Beane says his team was never near a deal to bring in Antonio Brown, despite reports to the contrary.

Beane said on PFT Live that although he did talk to the Steelers about what kind of compensation they would want in a trade, the Bills and Brown’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, never came close to any kind of agreement about a contract for Brown. The Steelers eventually traded Brown to the Raiders, who were willing to meet his contract demands.

“We had productive talks with Kevin Colbert, with Pittsburgh, but one of the things I made clear with Kevin early on is we would have to be comfortable with where the compensation is going to have to be with AB’s representatives, and that was never something that we were even close on,” Beane said.

Beane said that by the time reports emerged that a deal could be close, he already knew it wasn’t going to happen.

“We just didn’t get far enough down the road,” Beane said. “There’s compensation with the Steelers and then there’s compensation with the player. We were just never able to work out all sides to make that happen. It had totally died down before that tweet came out that was erroneous. It wasn’t like it was heating up at that point. Talks had stalled well before.”

Brown and Rosenhaus made it clear that a team trading for Brown had better be willing to pay him what he thinks he’s worth. The Raiders and Brown could come to an agreement, the Bills and Brown couldn’t, and that’s why Brown is a Raider.