AP

The Bills still aren’t overloaded with talent at wide receiver.

But even after giving up a pick and guaranteeing him money (which added to their gigantic pile of dead money), they couldn’t justify keeping Corey Coleman.

Bills General Manager Brandon Beane told Tim Graham of The Athletic that Coleman might not have had enough time to make a good impression, but clearly never made a good impression.

“Yeah, you know, Corey, he tried hard. He really did,” Beane said. “Where he came in to learn a new offense, he just didn’t jell. It’s one of those things you ask yourself, ‘Have we given this enough time?’ The talent’s there. Anybody that’s been around the practice field, you see he has a skill set. But we just never were able to make it mesh on the field with him, and it’s a production business.

“People think, ‘Oh, G.M.s love to protect their draft picks.’ Well, if I’m protecting my draft picks, I gave a seventh-round pick for this guy and guaranteed some cash [$3.55 million for the 2018 season]. You don’t want to see that. But you’ve got to be true to who earned the spot, and we just felt in the limited time that we were still unsure it was going to work, and to kick someone else out that we knew would work or felt better about, we just didn’t feel that was right.

“We talk about earning your spot. We just didn’t feel he’d done enough to earn it, and in fairness to Corey, it is hard to get here in August and learn an offense when you’re fighting for reps and haven’t practiced with any of these quarterbacks. That’s where I left myself late Friday night as I was debating this: ‘Am I being fair to Corey, and am I being fair to the team?’ At the end of the day, I have to be fair to the team.”

That certainly doesn’t paint the kindest of portraits of Coleman, a former first-rounder who failed to live up to expectations in Cleveland, which led to them giving him away for a seventh-rounder after he lost his job to a rookie.