The first time Brandon Beane met Dan Morgan in 2001, Beane had worked his way up from intern to the guy in charge of buying plane tickets for the first-round picks.
So when Morgan was willing to be the guy picking players up at the airport when he began his career as a scouting intern in Seattle, that convinced Beane that his former Panthers co-worker had what it takes to make it in his second career in football.
The Buffalo Bills general manager hired Morgan as his director of player personnel in 2018 after Morgan moved up the ladder in Seattle. But the fact that Morgan knew he had to begin at the ground floor impressed him.
“When he first started there, he was willing to go pick a guy up at the airport,” Beane said, shortly after Morgan was promoted to President of Football Operations/General Manager for the Panthers last week.
“Like he wasn’t a first-round pick,” the Bills GM continued with a laugh. “Very few guys have had his status, won the college awards, went to the Pro Bowl, obviously all the tackles he had in the Super Bowl, and can humble themselves to go at the airport. And Dan was willing to truly start from the bottom, at a place where people didn’t really know him. So I just thought for a guy that would do that, that tells you he’s all in if he’s willing to humble himself.
“And then I would see him at Senior Bowl over the years, at the combine, or talk to him here and there, and you could just tell how much he was enjoying it. He was like a kid in a candy store early on, just soaking it all in.”