The Buffalo Bills did something not many teams would do.
This week, two NFL executives have told on themselves as being bad leaders and bad negotiators. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Bills have signed multiple players to extensions this offseason and navigated a sticky contract situation with grace. In short, owner Terry Pegula and general manager Brandon Beane deserve a ton of credit for how they’ve handled themselves as leaders of men, especially in light of other recent NFL gaffes.
Bad NFL leadership was on display at the owners’ meetings
Let’s start with bad leadership and look no further than Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, whose team has the longest championship game drought in the NFC at 30 years.
It makes total business sense for Jones to not make Micah Parsons the highest-paid non-QB in NFL history. Parsons is playing 2025 on the fifth-year option and Dallas can easily place consecutive franchise tags on him and keep him in Dallas through the 2027 season without paying him a huge contract. The business decision isn’t a problem, but Jones and his public comments are.
While discussing the Parsons deal, Jones insisted he prefers to negotiate with the player directly instead of using an intermediary. (That does violate the NFL’s CBA, by the way, as Parsons has asked him to use the agent.)
“The agent is not a factor here or something to worry about,” Jones said. “And I don’t know his name. My point is, I’m not trying to demean him, but this isn’t about an agent. … I’m not demeaning the agent. I’m just saying everybody can do this, and that’s talk directly to a player.”
Despite Jones’ assertion that he wasn’t demeaning David Mulugheta, Parsons’ agent, that’s exactly what he was doing. Mulugheta is one of the NFL’s most successful agents, negotiating more than a billion dollars worth of contracts last year. The comments instantly put Parsons on the defensive, and he released a statement in support of Mulugheta on social media.
Also at the league’s owners meetings this week, the Cincinnati Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn was asked about the stalemate with pass rusher Trey Hendrickson, and her response was unnecessarily derogatory.
“He should be happy at certain rates that maybe he doesn’t think he’d be happy at. I think some of it is on him to be happy at some point, and if he’s not, that’s what holds it up sometimes…”
I’d imagine that’s not going to make Hendrickson feel warm and fuzzy when he reads it. It’s tone deaf and unnecessary.
How the Bills have handled the James Cook negotiation in public is a master class
In March, Bills running back James Cook began publicly asking for a new deal. He feels he’s worth $15 million per season, which at the time was second in the NFL behind only Christian McCaffrey but has since been passed by the Eagles and Saquon Barkley.
On a podcast in March, Beane was asked about the public comments and gracefully sidestepped any negativity.
“We’ve definitely had dialogue with those guys. That’s probably as far as I would take it,” said Beane, who went on to discuss how rewarding it is when you draft, develop, and re-sign players.
He didn’t take shots at Cook or denigrate him publicly.
“I love James. James speaks from the heart, he means well. I want James here, hopefully, like a lot of guys,” said Beane at February’s Combine. “The business is the business. Would I prefer we don’t take the business outside? Yes, I think that’s always the best way to handle it. But James is a grown man, and he’ll handle it the way he does. It doesn’t change my view of him. And just because we’re not on the same page today doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be tomorrow, two weeks, two months, two years.”
At the owners meetings, Beane could have easily stepped into the same trap as Jones (who is also the Cowboys general manager) and Blackburn. He didn’t. He simply said they had moved onto draft prep and not to expect a deal with Cook anytime soon, but there was still time after that to strike a deal.
The Josh Allen extension shows the Bills get it
The marquee signing of the year for the Bills was a complete reworking of Josh Allen’s contract. They made Allen the highest-paid player in the NFL and according to Beane, would have done it with or without the MVP award. That makes sense. Deals like this don’t come together in a month, so they were working on it before.
But Allen had four years left on his contract. Buffalo could have pulled the Jerry Jones and just said he’s under contract, deal with it. Allen was set to make just $14.5 million in 2026, a number that could have really helped Buffalo be competitive at multiple other positions.
Instead, Terry Pegula rewarded his biggest star and is paying him more than $50 million in 2025 when they didn’t have to.
Remember the Jason Peters trade from the Bills?
It reminds me of a recently retired former Bills player; Jason Peters. After developing Peters into the best left tackle in the NFL, the Bills refused to pay him as such.
In 2006, they signed him to a five-year, $15 million deal after his first season as the starting right tackle for the team. They were proactive and paid him well for his experience level. They moved him to left tackle during the 2006 season.
In 2007, Buffalo signed Langston Walker to play right tackle and gave him a five-year, $25 million contract with a $10 million signing bonus, dwarfing Peters’ number. All Peters did was play his first full season at left tackle and make his first Pro Bowl in 2007, picking up a second-team All-Pro nod in the process. He was the third-highest-paid lineman on his own team, but the second-best left tackle in the NFL.
Peters held out of camp in 2008 while asking for a new deal with three years left on his contract, rightfully saying he had exceeded the compensation. He went on to earn Pro Bowl and AP2 honors again in 2008 and asked Buffalo rework his contract again.
The Bills saw he had two years left on his contract and traded him instead. He signed a four-year, $51.4 million deal when he got to Philadelphia. Buffalo would have paid him $3.85 million that year and instead the Eagles gave him $21.5 million. I’d be pissed too!
That was a different regime under owner Ralph Wilson, and at his age and financial position, it’s hard to blame him for being disconnected. But it should also really put into focus the leadership under Pegula and by extension Beane.
At least publicly, the Bills’ leadership has shown to be exceptional in navigating a sometimes harsh industry.