Cole Beasley didn’t mince his words when asked about his health during the end of the Bills‘ 2020 season. Starting in Week 17, Beasley was included on the team’s weekly injury report with a knee injury. Despite the injury issues, Beasley played a key role in the Bills advancing to their first AFC title game since 1993. Buffalo’s bid to reach its first Super Bowl in 27 years fell just short, however, as the Bills fell to the defending champion Chiefs in Sunday’s AFC Championship Game.
When asked about how his health will impact his offseason plans, Beasley opened up about the severity of his late-season injury.
“I broke my fibula,” said Beasley, who added that it will not require offseason surgery. “It’s not a full break. It was bad the first game I played, but after that, you take a few meds and suck it up.”
While he did not detail when he suffered the injury, it appears that Beasley may have sustained it during Buffalo’s Week 16 win over New England. After not appearing on the injury report prior to that game, Beasley did not play in Buffalo’s regular season-finale after missing that week’s practices. He returned for Buffalo’s wild-card game against the Colts, catching all seven of his targets for 57 yards in the Bills’ 27-24 victory. After not making a catch in Buffalo’s divisional round win over Baltimore, Beasley caught seven of nine targets for 88 yards in Sunday’s loss to Kansas City.
“It wasn’t enough to really affect me like that,” Beasley said of the injury. Not at this point. Only that first game and the Ravens a little bit. But this game, I felt pretty good. So, there’s no excuse for anything.”
Despite the late-season injury, Beasley put together the best statistical season of his career. In his ninth season, the 31-year-old receiver set career highs with 82 receptions for 967 yards. He also caught four touchdowns while helping the Bills win their first division title since 1995.
“I’ve never had a season where I’ve had that much of a load,” Beasley said. “So just knowing that I can handle that, it teaches me about myself [and] the things that maybe I need to do to be able to maybe handle that maybe a little better.”
While his and his teammates fell one game short of reaching the Super Bowl, Beasley is encouraged with the future may have in store for the Bills. Buffalo, after not making the playoffs from 1999-16, have made the playoffs in three out of the past four years.
“We’ve got a lot of the right guys in the locker room to do what we need to do,” Beasley said. “We came up short, but other than myself for the most part, it’s a very young group. We’re building and we’re learning with each other. We took a step last season, then we took another step this year. So, there’s only one more place to go, so that’s the goal.”
Beasley also lauded the performance of quarterback Josh Allen, who was considerably hard on himself during Sunday’s postgame press conference. In his third season in Buffalo, Allen earned Pro Bowl honors after scoring 45 total touchdowns during the regular season.
“I can say that he’s being too hard on himself, but he’s going to do that regardless of what I say because that’s the type of guy that he is, and that’s why we love him so much,” Beasley said. “We’ve all got to be better … . He shouldn’t have to be Superman every game for us to win, and he did a lot this year. We wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for him. Dude had a hell of a year.”
