The curious case of Keon Coleman took a turn during Wednesday’s press conference with Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula and general manager Brandon Beane.
During the course of the Bills’ postmortem presser following the Monday firing of coach Sean McDermott, Beane was asked about the perception that the roster lacked talent, particularly at receiver. Coleman, a second-round pick in 2024, who has struggled to find traction and has been benched multiple times for disciplinary and other reasons, was mentioned as an example of the lack of development at the position.
"Can I interrupt? I'll address the Keon situation,” Pegula chimed in. “The coaching staff pushed to draft Keon. I'm not saying Brandon wouldn't have drafted him, but he wasn't his next choice. That was Brandon being a team player and taking advice of his coaching staff who felt strongly about the player. He's taken, for some reason, heat over it and not saying a word about it, but I'm here to tell you the true story."
In defending his general manager, who was promoted to the role of president of football operations on Monday, Pegula created a stir.
The response begs further questions about the degree to which the front office and staff were on the same page throughout the process. It’s also awkward for Coleman, who remains on the roster and has two years remaining on his rookie contract.
Beane attempted to clean up some of the spilled milk, noting that he ultimately made the choice to draft Coleman, and still believes in the receiver’s talent.
“He was my pick. I made the pick,” Beane said. “Terry’s point was that we might have had a different order of personnel versus coaching, and I went that way. But ultimately, I’m not turning a pick for a player that I don’t think we can succeed with. So don’t misunderstand that. Keon Coleman is a young player that has been here two years, has two years left on his deal. It’s up to us to continue to work with him and develop him. His issues have not been on the field. They’ve just been maturity things that he owns. I give him credit. He owns, he doesn’t make excuses, which I appreciate. The crazy thing is at this time last year we kind of went through where he was trending up. He had the injury. We were a little disappointed at how he came back.”
Expected to take on a larger role in the offense in 2025, Coleman burst out of the gate, grabbing eight passes for 112 yards and a touchdown in the 2025 regular-season opener against the Ravens. He never came close to replicating that performance the rest of the way. In 15 games, including playoffs, the 22-year-old generated 40 catches for 450 yards and five scores. In his final 14 contests, Coleman never hit the 50-yard receiving mark or earned more than four catches in a game.
Nevertheless, Beane believes in the youngster, noting that some of the “maturity stuff” caused the receiver to lose confidence.
“You’ve got to hit the reset again and attack this offseason the way you did,” he said of what he told Coleman after the campaign. “Attack training camp the way you did, and don’t let these maturity issues get in the way of your playing time and your production on this team. And that’s where we’re at with Keon Coleman. But we still believe in Keon Coleman here, and it’s up to us to develop his talent so that he can help us win games.”
Pegula said his initial comments weren’t meant to sow doubt about the player, but rather to highlight that Beane is a collaborator who will take his entire staff’s opinion under consideration.
“Let me talk on this issue,” the owner said. “There’s not one player on our team that somebody else could have been drafted in their place because of others’ opinions. We listen to the coaches, the GM has an opinion, some of our scouts. I have an opinion. But I don’t think you can look at one player, even Josh (Allen), where somebody thought we could have drafted so-and-so here. So what I was trying to show with Keon was we collaborate. There’s different names available at every draft that we could have selected.”
With a coaching hire to come, whoever the Bills’ brass tabs to take command will undoubtedly be asked about his opinion of Coleman. That take will say a whole lot about the wideout’s future in Buffalo.