Joe Brady: Combine Important for Player Interviews, Interactions With Prospects

New Bills head coach Joe Brady spoke at the NFL Scouting Combine on Tuesday afternoon in Indianapolis. Here are some highlights:

On hiring a new staff:

I think the biggest thing was, I was looking for a lot of people that weren’t necessarily exactly like me, right, in terms of background, both offensively, defensively, you know, being special teams. You know, I think you want to build an offensive staff of … you need some guys that are very black and white and you know, they do things one way and they can’t think outside the box and maybe, someone else in that room that is an out of the box thinker. So just a bunch of different personalities. Look, there’s been a foundation that’s been set here, and it might be a little different in the sense of, we understand with expectations and everything that comes with you.

On preaching how to move forward after 2025:

It’s important that everybody in the organization knows it, because if we continue to speak about how things used to be, that we’ll never continue to go forward. And so I have so much respect for the past, but it’s your organization right now.. We can only, every off season, we get less and less time with our players.

On the importance of the Combine:

I think understanding their type of skill sets and seeing those kind of looking at specific drills, right? There’s some guys that are naturally quicker. Well, I hope to see that quickness in some of the drills. Some guys are straight-line speed that they might struggle in you know, on a shuttle drill or whatnot, but to me, I like the Combine to really understand the personality, what makes them tick. They just want football players that love them, right? I’m trying to get an opportunity to just kind of connect with them. You can test really well, and I hope those guys do that, but you know, you are what you put on tape as well, and I’m going to take that way more into consideration.

On the importance of Combine interviews:

Look, anytime that you can have contact with a player and get to know them, see them in settings, uncomfortable settings, see them talking football, see them around. I watch how guys walk with their groups at the Combine, right? Like, who’s the guy that’s on his phone, just sitting in the back? Who’s the guy that’s kind of, you know, hyping his boys while they’re running the 40. Like, all those things are important, right? And when you’re bringing in people into our locker room, you can’t just overlook all those things. And so I think any time that we can have an interaction, be able to talk with them and see them and just in these settings, I don’t know why you wouldn’t take advantage of that.