According to Bills’ General Manager Brandon Beane, Antonio Brown was never close to being traded to Buffalo, despite reports to the contrary.

“We had productive talks with Kevin Colbert, with Pittsburgh, but one of the things I made clear with Kevin early on is we would have to be comfortable with where the compensation is going to have to be with AB’s representatives, and that was never something that we were even close on,” Beane told PFT Live over the weekend.”

“We just didn’t get far enough down the road,” Beane continued. “There’s compensation with the Steelers and then there’s compensation with the player. We were just never able to work out all sides to make that happen. It had totally died down before that tweet came out that was erroneous. It wasn’t like it was heating up at that point. Talks had stalled well before.”

Looking back, there’s no question that the Brown-Buffalo report came from the Steelers building. Pittsburgh had been floating fake news all week about Brown’s robust trade market and the Buffalo “trade” was just one last failed attempt by Pittsburgh to get the Raiders to bump their offer to a second-round pick.

The Raiders, of course, didn’t budge and it’s fair to wonder why they never spiced up their offer. One theory is that Mike Mayock, who has strong links to about every personnel department in the league, may have had a good understanding of what most teams were willing to give up for Brown.

For all the criticism the Raiders have taken for hiring Mayock, it’s worth noting that very few NFL personalities have built stronger relationships among the various personnel departments around the league than Mayock. It isn’t a stretch to think one or two of those relationships in other buildings helped give the Raiders the confidence they needed to hold firm on their offer for Brown.

As for the Steelers… there is no question they have been the epicenter of fake news around Brown (at least in terms of his trade market) for the last month.

And doesn’t it make you wonder what else about Brown they’ve been lying about?

twitter: @raidersbeat