Pegulas keep their fingers on the Buffalo Bills’ pulse
Every roster move the Buffalo Bills make must first be run past owners Terry and Kim Pegula. Every. Single. One. “Their role is, they’re the final say,” GM Doug Whaley said Wednesday at the team’s pre-draft news conference. “We have to run everything by those guys.”
This isn’t unique in NFL circles and really isn’t a surprise. Whaley, head coach Rex Ryan and president Russ Brandon haven’t exactly hid the fact they consult the husbandand-wife owners all the time on a wide range of matters.
But no one had put a point on it quite as Whaley did Wednesday.
What if, say, principal owner Terry Pegula ever wants Whaley to draft a particular player?
“(It’s) his team. He can do whatever he wants, absolutely,” Whaley said. “He’ll interject (at times). Let’s put it this way, when they come in a meeting and we have a game plan together, saying this is how we’re going to attack this draft, that’s when he’ll say, ‘Hey, have you thought about this?’
“And we like it, because they haven’t been around football long enough to be tunnel-visioned like we are and they bring an outside perspective. There’s been a couple times he’s mentioned stuff that we never talked about and we went ‘That’s great.’ ”
Asked to provide an example, Whaley declined. “I’ve got to keep that in-house.” Well then, have the Pegulas, in a year and a half of owning the Bills, ever vetoed any player move — a draft selection, a trade or a freeagent acquisition?
“Not at all,” Whaley said. “So far, they’ve had implicit trust in us, but we’ve got to still keep producing.” PURPLE REIGNS: Modern music icon Prince, who died Thursday at age 57, grew up in the Twin Cities a fan of the hometown Minnesota Vikings. A ridiculously talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and showman, Prince blew a new generation of minds with his dazzling performance — unfazed during a driving rainstorm in Miami — at halftime of Super Bowl XLI in 2007. HOYER VISITS BRONCOS: Denver GM John Elway told reporters Thursday that free-agent quarterback Brian Hoyer “had a good visit” with the Broncos, but has another visit lined up after previously meeting with the New York Jets right after the Houston Texans released him at week’s beginning.
“He’s a good football player,” said Elway, whose team still has only Mark Sanchez and Trevor Siemian at quarterback. “We wanted to have him in to get a chance to meet him and get to know him a little bit. Nothing to report there.”
Elway also described trade discussions with San Francisco for quarterback Colin Kaepernick as “dormant.”