After getting Bills fans all excited by telling them he intends to draft a franchise quarterback, Bills general manager Buddy Nix is now taking great pains to tell them it might not happen.
During his weekly radio show on WGR (which he apparently didn’t threaten to hang up on this week), Nix stepped back from his earlier comments.
“I know we’ve discussed the quarterback position many times, and on this show a few weeks ago I was asked about drafting a quarterback, and I said the same thing I’ve been saying,” Nix said, via Tim Graham of the Buffalo News. “But the fans are so eager for us to make something happen — and they aren’t any more eager than I am. I mean, we all are. So they got the idea, I think, that we were automatically going to draft a quarterback in the first round.
“That’s not necessarily true. I mean, we’re going to always stay with the integrity of the [draft] board. But we’re going to try to find a quarterback. If one’s there, and he’s rated at the right spot, we’re going to take him whenever that is.
“I just don’t want to get people expecting that no matter who’s there in the first round we’re going to take a quarterback because that’s no true. We’ll still take the best player.”
What Nix is doing is trying to manage expectations, in case they don’t fall to a spot where one is available, or whether next year’s class of quarterbacks isn’t deemed franchise-label worthy.
It’s an obvious need for a team that has some nice parts, but vastly overpaid Ryan Fitzpatrick. Maybe Nix is thinking he can go find a free agent this offseason who will be better than anyone he could draft.
But at the end of the day, if he’s frustrated with the continued talking about the topic, he should be reminded that he has only himself to blame.