Matt Parrino | Buffalo Bills Insider

We are pleased to welcome Bill's insider Matt Perino of Syracuse.com and the Shout Podcast. Matt, this is obviously a situation that no team relishes and it's uncomfortable no matter how long you've been a coach or a general manager or even someone who, like us, covers football.

So going back to Thursday, what have these few days been like emotionally? They're being around the team or just as someone who covers the team. The real first glimpse that we got at it was in Carolina on Friday and I was there and in the press conference room when Sean McDermott made his walk from the locker room after the game to the room and it just felt a little bit different, like you could just feel the stress that I think that he was going through. Brandon Bean mentioned it yesterday when they announced the release that he didn't really even know how Sean McDermott coached the game and I think they knew the severity of the situation. But the problem with that is, too, at the same time, you appreciate the fact that they were doing their due diligence, trying to make sure that they heard every side, but they had known about this since the end of July when Jane Doe's attorney approached the team, talked to their assistant general counsel, and gave them what Brandon Bean called the boulders of the story.

The only way to take that is they knew enough that there should have been some real concern. And then over the course of the next few weeks during training camp and into the preseason, Matt Ariza remained on the team, he played, he was in a competition at punter with veteran Matt Hawk. Sean McDermott went on part of my take after the first preseason game when Matt Ariza had that big punt and he was joking about him and saying how great of a kid he was and how Bill Sands were just big fans and it's like, you sit there on the outside and you wonder how do you say these things knowing what you're learning from him. Now, Matt Ariza gave them his side of the story and Brandon Bean and Sean McDermott said that that didn't change throughout the entire process and so they were trying to gather as many facts as they could.

What Brandon Bean said that yesterday was, we're not detectives, we're a GM and a head football coach and we just couldn't get enough answers to make a decision, but they thought it was best to move forward and have Ariza go away from football, figure this whole situation out. They kind of wished him the best and made a decision and released him. You mentioned the attorney for Jane Doe calling lead counsel for the team and them having boulders. All right, so at that point it hadn't become public.

Nobody had heard about it really outside of the few people who were involved with the lawsuit and then the couple people in the front office, but they release him after it blows up. What do they have to say about the timing? Yeah, and there's definitely some questions about the timing. Brandon Bean couldn't say if they learned about this first, he couldn't remember the timing of it, whether it was from Ariza or if it was from that call to the counsel from Jane Doe's attorney. So the timeline of it is it's still a little bit hazy and it felt like that the fact that he came to the stadium on Friday night and they still hadn't wanted to make a definitive decision on that even as they were kind of learning some of the more graphic details.

And Sean McDermott said he learned more things about this case after they saw the 11-page court civil suit document. So I can understand that to a degree, but it does feel like they weren't really willing to move on until everybody really knew the scope of it. And that's the part that I think doesn't sit well with people because whether it's just the graphic details of what was in that civil suit doc, and of course that's one side of the story, but I'm not going to sit here and assume innocence for Matt Ariza.

I think everybody knows somebody in their life that's been affected by this kind of behavior, this kind of incident, and it turns your stomach and it's sickening, and any type of involvement in it, and you see the direct quotes of Ariza in the filing. And with all that being the case, maybe just even having him be away from the team would have probably been a better approach. But at the end of the day, with all that said, and the fact that this could have been done better, no doubt about it, on the bill's end, I think at the very least they made the right decision in the end, which was moving on from him. Just to clarify, Matt, there's no indication that the team knew anything about this when they drafted him in April? They did not know. Brandon Bean said if they had known, it would have taken Matt Ariza off their board, the draft board. Since they got the court document on Thursday, he's reached out to over 10 other NFL teams, other executives that he knows, to ask if they knew. He said all of the teams he talked to said they didn't know either, and the NFL didn't know when the draft was happening. So then it brings up the question, if you're the Bills, do you feel lied to by Matt Ariza? He's claiming that he didn't, apparently, or his attorneys are claiming that he didn't learn about the fact that he was going to face charges in the civil suit until July-ish, or maybe June. That date is missing that right now.

But that's the part of this that also doesn't sit well, is that timeline and understanding. Matt Ariza came out during the game when the Bills wouldn't allow him to go on the field. He put out a statement through his agent and said, I'm looking forward to clearing this up. The picture that's been painted is false. He basically said that he was innocent.

It's like, all right, prove it. There hasn't been anything since. Just an awful situation all around. You get to this part of the season and NFL fans are gearing up for the regular season for something like this to happen, especially for a Bills fan base that's been waiting for this season for 25 to 30 years, since the Super Bowl era, to have a team that was the favorite to win it.

This kind of puts a damper on all of that. They've moved on from him and are hoping to kind of put it behind them. Matt Perino is with us after hours on CBS Sports Radio covers the Bills for Syracuse.com. This happened Thursday when the lawsuit put more of this information out there and the public got a hold of it. He obviously wasn't with the team. Have players answered any questions about Matt or have you had access to players and asked them about this? Well, it's interesting. Tomorrow is actually going to be the first time that we'll have open locker room after a practice since before the COVID pandemic.

We've had three games now of open locker room, but this will be the first practice environment where you can really spend 20-ish minutes moving around. We talked to Kase Keenum and Matt Barkley after the game on Friday. They were both very short with their answers. Kase Keenum said he didn't really know a lot about it.

Neither of them had talked to Ariza. Micah High was asked in the locker room about this whole situation and how he felt about it. He said, listen, he's been here since 2017. He was one of the first free agents that Sean McDermott signed to come here and Brandon Bean to set this culture. He said when you build a culture like this that's been so successful, you rely on the guys that built it.

He basically said he was putting his trust in Bean and McDermott to do the right thing, which I think in the end, like I said, I think that they did despite the fact that they probably could have been a little bit better. To their credit, they have come out and said, are we perfect? No. Could this have been better?

Probably. They wanted to err on the side of letting everybody get due process. Whether that was right or wrong or not, they said that they're going to try to go back and learn from this situation. I think this will also be a relief for players. I don't want to talk for any of them, but to go into this week and not have that be something that they have to continue to answer for with him still on the roster, I think will be kind of like a relief. Considering that the Bills General Counsel or Assistant General Counsel did have some indication that this was swirling around Matt, have we heard anything from the Pegula family who owns the team? No, and I'm not surprised about that. I don't think we've heard from Terry Pegula on the Bills side of things since I think the 2019 owners meetings. They don't do a lot of media. Kim usually did a lot of that and she's been kind of out of the picture since going through some health issues here earlier this year. The status of all that outside of a few statements from the Bills is pretty unclear actually.

She wasn't consulted in this. Terry was, Brandon Bean said, but we haven't heard from them. When you think about everything that happened with Deshaun Watson, and I know these are completely different allegations, but everything that happened with Deshaun Watson in a civil lawsuit or a group of civil lawsuits wasn't criminal charges and yet it blew up first for the Texans and then obviously for the Cleveland Browns. I know that they didn't move maybe the way they should have in July, but knowing what you know of this general manager and head coach, it seems like they want to do the right thing. Do you think the fan base will support them in that as opposed to what it's been like with the Brown situation?

Oh yeah. I think today you've seen a lot of members of the media locally have been rightfully hard on how the Bills have handled this. I wrote a story last night just pointing out all of the things that we know about the timeline and it just does not look pretty, but I think that the majority of the fan base, they were hoping for the bottom line decision from the team.

Once that happened, it felt like in their own minds, a lot of them were able to move on. I think the majority has been positive today from the fan base, so much so that some of the columns that came out of yesterday, it's been very testy on Twitter. People are defending Brandon Bean and Sean McDermott.

I think I've covered this team now. This is my fifth year on the beat throughout almost the entirety of this regime. I think generally speaking, Brandon Bean specifically is a pretty genuine guy. I've had really good interactions with him. The piece that really stands out in all of this is that podcast hit with Sean McDermott. Again, he didn't want to go into how much he really knew about this, but to call him a great kid, just knowing the boulders, which you'd think that the head coach would know, that's the part of it that doesn't sit super well.

I'm wondering at some point, maybe this week, if maybe he'll, with Ariza now off the roster, if he'll maybe go into that a little bit, I'm sure he'll be asked. I think from the fan base, just the decision juxtaposed to what's happening in Cleveland with Sean Watson and the steadfast nature of that regime to stick with what's been an absolute PR nightmare. I think Bill's fans are like, phew, this guy's out of here.

We wanted him out of here. They did it. Even if it took this long, they did it. It was interesting to hear Brandon Bean say something along the lines of, I can lay my head down at night believing that we've tried to do the right thing here. I thought, hey, this is not easy, but we have arrived at the right conclusion. Did that strike you in any way?

Yeah. It's a funny thing too, because there's so many little nuance elements of this, like the way that these guys really dive into the lives of their players. I think Sean McDermott, his players love him.

People that have left the team that were part of this early on. Lorenzo Alexander is a perfect example of him. I have a good relationship with Lorenzo. When I talk to him about Sean, it's nothing but great things.

Luke Geekley, who played for him in Carolina, comes back every training camp, it seems, or sometime in the year to come back and just work with the linebackers. Their players love them. I think that there's a part of that, that when you have that culture and that atmosphere, that you try to maybe give the benefit of the doubt. I'm trying to just think of why maybe this transpired the way that it did. Matariza was telling them a version of this story that didn't match up with the version they saw in the civil documents that they examined for 48 hours. From their perspective, it seems they had to make a hard decision with a player that has been in their building for two and a half, three months.

That could be tough, I get it. There's a very family-oriented approach in the locker room, but they did make the decision and I think it was the right one. Matt Perino is with us from Syracuse.com covering what was a tumultuous weekend for the Buffalo Bills, their front office.

As Matt arrives, his career abruptly comes to an end, at least in western New York. It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio. I know these last couple of days have taken a different turn, but how would you describe the atmosphere around the team as we get close to the season kicking off? Oh man, before this and what I'm sure will return by the time the Bills take off for LA here in a little over a week, it is just an unmatched buzz. I mean, this team, it is Bills season every day of the year. They're as hyped about the Bills in May when many camps are about to kick off as they are in the playoffs.

It's the identity of the community, and more so than any other city in the NFL. Now with these expectations, and even aside from the expectations, knowing that you have your franchise quarterback in place for the next maybe 10 years, who I think, you know, the NFL just put out their top 100, voted by the players. He ended up being 13. I'd probably argue that he's higher than that. But he's one of the best players in the league.

And this is a guy that came in with a lot of questions, a lot of experts saying that it was not going to work. And so now you have that guy, he's coming off of eight quarters in the playoffs, where he just went absolutely scorched earth. And I think he finished with 14, or what was it, eight touchdowns in two games. And the NFL record is, or no, he had nine passing touchdowns, and the NFL record is 13 in a playoff run. So he was four away from tying the NFL record in a playoff run by a quarterback. And so I think that just gets them jacked up and just knowing that they're going to be in it, as long as he's healthy. And Von Miller has been an absolutely exciting addition. That's been one of the bugaboos for the Bills the last few years, is rushing the passer. And now they have one of the best to ever do it. Can't believe it's almost here. We're talking about not even two weeks now, essentially a week and a half until the season kicks off.

And kind of cool that they get to be part of the first game too. You can find Matt on Twitter at Matt Perino, P-A-R-R-I-N-O, covers the Bills for Syracuse.com, and also has the Shout podcast devoted to, I would call them crazy, but in a good way, Crazy Bills fan, Crazy Bills nation. I remember them well from my time in Syracuse and Rochester. Matt, it's good to catch up with you. I appreciate your thoughtfulness on the subject matter, and we hope to catch up with you again soon. Sounds good. Thanks so much for having me. Have a great week.