Yahoo Sports Bills GM Brandon Beane says failed Antonio Brown trade came down to money
It certainly worked out for Antonio Brown — he got out of Pittsburgh, he got a pay raise from Oakland, and for now, he’s saying everything’s all good with his new team.
But for a few hours earlier this month, it looked like Brown might be headed to the Buffalo Bills. At least, that’s what was reported.
The Bills’ general manager said on Monday that it wasn’t ever that close.
Buffalo’s Brandon Beane makes first comments
Buffalo GM Brandon Beane was on “PFT Live” on Monday and made his first extended comments about the potential trade for Brown and where it fell apart.
It sounds like it fell apart pretty quickly once money came up.
“We had productive talks with [Steelers’ GM] 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.
Deal fell apart even before reports it was close to happening
The Bills realized so quickly they wouldn’t get Brown, Beane said, that by the time of the NFL Network’s report that Buffalo was “closing in” on a deal for the All-Pro receiver, talks had ended.
“We just didn’t get far enough down the road. 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,” Beane said. “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.”
A couple of days later, the Raiders agreed to both a deal with the Steelers and to up Brown’s pay, and he was headed to Oakland.
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