Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane met reporters on Tuesday night, a few hours after the trade deadline, and explained the deal that brought safety Amani Hooker from the Tennessee Titans. Buffalo sent a 2027 second-round pick to Tennessee for Hooker and a 2027 fifth-round pick. Beane said that at noon on deadline day he did not expect to get anything done. “You asked me at 12:00 noon, I didn’t feel great that we were going to be able to do anything. I really didn’t,” he said. “This one picked up sometime after 1:00 and got it to the finish line.”
“You’re going to think I’m describing Micah Hyde”
Beane said Buffalo liked Hooker when he came out of Iowa in 2019 but had no need at safety then, with Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer in the lineup. He compared Hooker to Hyde, who also went to Iowa. “He’s a player that, you know, instincts, ball skills. You’re going to think I’m describing Micah Hyde,” he said. Hooker has five interceptions this season, three of them in his last game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Beane joked that the game “might have hurt our opportunities” and said “it was going to take something significant like this to get Tennessee to move off of” him.
He called Hooker “a true difference maker for our team” and said the Bills were willing to pay for one. “We were trying to find a difference maker, not just add to,” Beane said. “We would be willing to give up significant compensation, which we did. You know, a second-round pick.” He pointed to second-round picks the Bills have hit on, including James Cook and Cole Bishop, and said, “You don’t take that lightly.” The contract mattered too. Hooker is signed through 2028. “Amani has two additional years on his contract,” Beane said, so he is not just a rental who will leave in free agency.
A Dion Dawkins restructure and a call from Tennessee
To fit Hooker’s salary, the Bills restructured left tackle Dion Dawkins’ contract on Tuesday. “We had to restructure Dion today to make that happen,” Beane said. “So appreciate Dion. He was out at a community event” when the team reached him. Beane said talks with Tennessee started the previous week, but the Titans “weren’t ready to do anything” after their Jeffery Simmons trade. He ran into Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi at the Notre Dame–Miami game on Saturday, the two texted on Monday, and a call with Dave Ziegler on Tuesday morning restarted the talks. Beane talked it over with owner Terry Pegula, Borgonzi talked to his owner, “and we got it done.”
Beane said the Monday night game in Minnesota made the deadline different because he worked the phones from a hotel instead of his office. It would only have been a problem, he said, if a team had asked for a player who was about to play in that game. He said the Bills had other talks on Tuesday in a similar price range but nothing close after the Hooker deal, and nothing bigger, “like throwing a one,” for a first-round pick.
Where Hooker fits next to Cole Bishop
Beane said defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard has used Cole Bishop closer to the line of scrimmage, so Hooker’s range makes them “a great marriage.” “Amani can play the deep post and track that ball,” he said. “Instincts, ball skills, intelligence, all those things. So I think it’s a very good pairing.” He did warn that an in-season trade takes time: “If you play a video game, they just drop right in and they’re just the same player. But in real life, they’re not.” He called Hooker “very smart, football smart” but said “he’s going to have a lot of catching up to do,” and that head coach Joe Brady will decide whether he plays this week.
“Leaning aggressive more than conservative”
Asked about the line between aggressive and reckless, Beane said, “I want to be aggressive, but I also don’t want to look back and be reckless.” He added, “I’m going to say I’m probably leaning aggressive more than conservative,” and said he would hate to waste a year of quarterback Josh Allen’s career. He said Jacksonville’s moves earlier in the week did not push him into a deal. “No pressure. Not from them. I put pressure on myself at all times. How can I help Joe Brady, Josh Allen, the rest of our team be the best they can be?”
The Bills are 7-1 after Monday’s 23-6 win at Minnesota, covered in our Joe Brady and Josh Allen story, but Beane said the record did not drive the decision. “If we were four and three, I would still make this move today,” he said. “You want to be playing your best football when you get to January. And that’s really the key.” The full list of deadline deals is in our trade deadline roundup.
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