Entering the offseason, Bills General Manager Brandon Beane named cornerback as an area of need. That raised some eyebrows as the Bills drafted cornerback Maxwell Hairston in the first round in 2025.
Still, the Bills drafted two cornerbacks this offseason, using a second-rounder on Davison Igbinosun and a seventh-rounder on Toriano Pride Jr.
Hairston plans to play better than he did last season when he played 11 games, starting three. He played 56 percent of the defensive snaps in the games he played.
“I’ve got a lot to prove to myself,” Hairston said, via Jay Skurski of The Buffalo News. “My goal is to be a full-season starter. Honestly, my goal is to do whatever I can to help us win a Super Bowl. Day in, day out, come in and take care of my body and just keep going.”
Hairston does not have a chip on his shoulder despite the Bills’ offseason moves to address the position.
“We’re getting young in the secondary,” Hairston said. "[Igbinosun] came in here and made plays. He’s fitting in well. We draft who we draft. I love all the rookies we bring in, but for me, I’m worried about what I’ve got to do this year to be out there. If it is competition, I love it. I’m somebody [who likes] to work. Him coming in kind of just let us know that we’re going young.”
Bills new defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard expressed confidence in Hairston, stressing the team made the offseason moves it made at corner for depth purposes.
Bills Clips
Bills wide receiver Keon Coleman is well aware that he’s been the subject of much criticism from fans and the media. Coleman was even the subject of some offseason debate about whether ex-coach Sean McDermott deserved blame for wanting to draft him.
But Coleman says the criticism doesn’t matter to him, because it doesn’t come from anyone who’s on the field with him.
“None of them going to come lace them up and try to stand in front of me,” Coleman said, via ESPN. “People are going to say what they want to say. At the end of the day, my job is to come out here, put my cleats on, strap them up and prove my worth here.”
Through two seasons, Coleman’s production -- 67 catches for 960 yards and eight touchdowns -- hasn’t been what the Bills were hoping for when they selected him with the 33rd overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft. Coleman sees that changing this year.
“It’s time to put it all together,” Coleman said. "[Outside comments] I don’t really care to hear them. It’s time for me to just put it out there on the field.”
The Bills have made a pair of roster moves on Tuesday.
Per the league’s daily transaction wire, Buffalo has claimed receiver Quentin Skinner off of waivers from the Jets, who let him go off of injured reserve on Monday.
As a corresponding move, the club has released receiver Deven Thompkins.
Skinner entered the league as an undrafted free agent out of Kansas last year, appearing in one regular-season game for the Jets. He caught one pass for 10 yards.
Thompkins had joined the Bills in June. He appeared in seven games for the Falcons last season, catching three passes for 27 yards.
Joe Brady has been in the Bills’ building since 2022, working his way up from quarterbacks coach, to offensive coordinator, and now to head coach in 2026.
Running back James Cook has been around for all of Brady’s rise over the past four seasons, with Brady calling the plays that helped Cook become the league’s rushing champion in 2025.
So what was the offseason program like with Brady as head coach?
“I mean, it’s just a new energy in the building,” Cook said in an interview with NFL Network’s Good Morning Football on Tuesday. “It’s going to always be like that, I feel like, when you have a new head coach coming in — a young one, too, at that. I mean, Joe’s a young head coach coming in, his first year being a head coach. I mean, he’s got a new energy. That’s what I feel like.”
But just because there’s an energy shift doesn’t mean Brady is acting inauthentically.
“I mean, to me, nothing has changed,” Cook said. “Joe’s going to be Joe. And, you know, he’s going to be himself. He just wants you to play football and have fun.”
Bills rookies are set to report to training camp on July 21, with Cook and the veterans set to report on July 28.
It was inevitable.
Some NFL team was bound to pounce on the viral moment of a bison tossing a 65-year-old man into the air at Yellowstone National Park. And while it made the most sense for the Bills to incorporate the video into Mr. Brightside, the Bucs were the first NFL team to appropriate Mr. Upside-Down.
The Buccaneers posted on Monday the key portion of the clip, over banjo music, with a cut to receiver Tez Johnson in midair doing a flip after scoring a touchdown.
“Flipping out because it’s almost football season,” the caption declares.
Many were surprised by the aggressive decision to lean into the example of the exploits of an aggressive wild animal. The man, after all, was seriously injured. He reportedly has undergone surgery and is expected to recover.
That doesn’t stop the Bills from fully embracing the video, especially if they’re inclined to bring the man to Buffalo (along with his Dolphins jersey-wearing grandson) to the new stadium for the Week 11 game against Miami.
Eight years into his NFL career, Bills quarterback Josh Allen remains in his prime. But the years tend to roll by quickly. For Allen, who turned 30 in May, 40 will be here in the blink of an eye. And at some point his playing career will end.
When it does, would Allen become a broadcaster?
“I do think it would be cool if you can keep it from a strictly broadcasting angle,” Allen recently told Alex Sherman of CNBC. “When players go from players to journalists and say certain things that they hated people saying about them, I think that’s where it gets a little murky for me.
“But I do think that it would be something I would entertain. I can’t say for sure, ‘yes’ or for sure ‘no’ right now, because I do go back and forth on it. But yeah, I’d have to put some more thought into it.”
First of all, NFL broadcasters aren’t really journalists. (Then again, plenty of NFL journalists aren’t really “journalists.”) His job as a game analyst wouldn’t be to find out things “they” don’t want us to know or to ask hard questions, but to help explain what’s happening on the field.
Second, it’s possible to be critical without being unfair. Allen’s experience and knowledge will equip him to explain what’s happening during the game, and to walk the line between analysis and criticism.
The key is to criticize the play without criticizing the player. There’s a skill to it. Say what needs to be said, without saying too much. The audience can complete the thought, if the thought is one that points to a player making a mistake or not giving enough effort or otherwise doing something less than ideal that deserves to be mentioned.
Third, it pays really well — if you can snatch one of the prime spots. There aren’t many of them. If that kind of opportunity knocks for Allen, it would be hard to say no, especially since it’s the best way to remain close to the game he loves.
Former NFL linebacker Darron Lee, a first-round pick in the 2016 draft, has hired a lawyer to represent Lee on first-degree murder charges in Hamilton County, Tennessee.
Via WDEF, former Hamilton County District Attorney Neil Pinkston will be handling the case. He has entered no plea on Lee’s behalf, which is the same as entering a plea of not guilty.
Lee is accused of killing his girlfriend, Gabriella Perpetuo, in February 2026. The details of Perpetuo’s injuries are extensive and graphic.
The case against Lee includes evidence that he used ChatGPT for advice on how to deal with an unresponsive person.
Lee could face the death penalty. The prosecution has not yet announced whether it will be seeking it.
Lee was drafted by the Jets ten years ago. He also played for the Chiefs and Bills.
Free agent wide receiver Brandin Cooks doesn’t plan to be a free agent much longer.
Cooks told Tim Graham of TheAthletic.com that he’s looking forward to being in some team’s training camp in a few weeks, and he hopes to return to Buffalo, where he finished last season.
“Obviously, Buffalo is the place I’d love to be,” Cooks said. “I want to prove that to them and have a full offseason with them. Both sides are figuring things out. We’ll see, but hopefully something transpires because I love going to training camp. That’s where you build that callus.”
Cooks said he has been staying in shape this offseason and wants to play with a contender. Cooks thinks the Bills are contenders as long as they have Josh Allen at quarterback.
“I chose Buffalo because of the belief in Josh Allen,” Cooks said. “From afar, you heard the things going on inside the receiver room. In my mind, ‘OK, this was an opportunity where you got guys that can play, but also there’s a niche in there where, if I can come in and do what I have to do, I’m contributing.’ It was the totality of things, but who wouldn’t want to play with Josh Allen?”
Cooks has played for the Saints, Patriots, Rams, Texans, Cowboys and Bills, and he is closing in on 10,000 career receiving yards. He’s accomplished a lot in his NFL career, but he doesn’t have a Super Bowl ring. That’s his chief priority this year.
In overtime of the divisional playoff game in Denver, Bills wide receiver Brandin Cooks had a catch in his hands at the Broncos’ 20-yard line that would have put Buffalo in range for the game-winning field goal and sent the Bills to the AFC Championship Game. But Denver’s Ja’Quan McMillian ripped the ball out of Cooks’ arms for an interception, and the Broncos kicked a game-winning field goal of their own on the next possession.
Cooks still can’t believe it.
“For a week straight, I was watching it over and over,” Cooks told Tim Graham of TheAthletic.com. “But I knew, as a father, that I had to put it away. If I’d have kept watching, it would have put me in some type of mood that my wife and my kids didn’t deserve.”
The NFL has confirmed that the official’s call of an interception was correct, but Cooks thinks he had possession and was down before McMillian got the ball from him.
“I will continue to process it until I get back on the field,” Cooks said, “but I think the biggest thing I can say is that I still feel like it was a catch. After it happened, seeing some of the so-called controversial calls that were called a catch, I just had to turn the playoffs off because I’m like, ‘Yo, what is going on?’ For me, the way that my mind operates is, ‘OK, what can I do about it?’ And what I can do about it is get back on the field, continue to work on being the best that I can be and making sure next time it’s a catch-and-run for a touchdown and leave it in no one else’s hands.”
If Cooks had completed the catch, the Bills would have spent the next week preparing to face the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, not firing head coach Sean McDermott. The Bills might have gone to the Super Bowl, and Josh Allen certainly would have given the Patriots’ defense a tougher test than Broncos backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham gave New England in the AFC Championship. And Broncos quarterback Bo Nix would have gone into the offseason healthy rather than spending the offseason rehabbing the broken ankle that he suffered just before the Broncos’ game-winning field goal.
These are thoughts Cooks has often.
“It doesn’t keep me up or give me unhealthy flashbacks,” Cooks said. “But from a competitive nature, I still think about not winning the Super Bowl as if it happened yesterday.”
Marcellus Wiley, as they say, is having a moment. And not the good kind.
The former NFL defensive end and ESPN/Fox personality was arrested over the weekend for domestic battery. On Monday, his wife made very strong allegations against him in divorce paperwork and in a request for a restraining order.
Wiley has posted on social media clear, loud denials as to the alleged battery, and as to the claims made by his wife in court filings.
Wiley has yet to deny this one: TMZ reported on Wednesday that Preferred Bank sued Wiley in December 2025 for failing to satisfy a $500,000 loan.
Per TMZ, Wiley and his company, Dat Dude Entertainment, borrowed the money in May 2023, promising to pay it back after one year. The bank, per TMZ, claims it didn’t receive the money or the associated interest. Wiley allegedly received multiple extensions until December 2025, when the bank then filed suit.
As of this posting, Wiley has not addressed the TMZ report.
Wiley spent 10 years in the NFL, playing for the Chargers, Bills, Cowboys, and Jaguars.
