William Joseph Peter Francis Devaney (born March 7, 1955) is a professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

analyst on ESPN. Prior to that Devaney was a football executive. He was the

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

for the

St. Louis Rams The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994. The arr ...

of the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

from 2008 to

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

. He used to be an assistant to the general manager with the

Atlanta Falcons The Atlanta Falcons are a professional American football team based in Atlanta. The Falcons compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The Falcons joined th ...

. He replaced the longtime Rams president of football operations, Jay Zygmunt, at the end of the 2008 season. Devaney began his career serving as the director of pro personnel under

Bobby Beathard Robert King Beathard Jr. ( ; born January 24, 1937) is an American former football executive who was a general manager in the National Football League (NFL). Over the course of his 38 years in the NFL, his teams competed in seven Super Bowls ( ...

during his time with the

San Diego Chargers The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...

from 1990 to 2000. He also worked a brief stint with the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

for three seasons. Devaney then worked with the CBS pregame show for two years. In 2006 Devaney began working as an assistant to

Rich McKay Richard James McKay (born March 16, 1959) is an American football executive who is the president and CEO of the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League (NFL). Prior to joining the Falcons, he was the general manager of the Tampa Bay Buc ...

, president and former general manager of the

from 2006 to early 2008. In February 2008 the St. Louis Rams hired him as vice president of pro personnel to help conduct their 2008 draft. He was promoted to general manager of the Rams on December 24, 2008. He made his first major hire as the Rams' general manager on January 17, 2009, when the Rams announced that

Steve Spagnuolo Stephen Christopher Spagnuolo (; born December 21, 1959) is an American football coach who is the defensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League (NFL). He rejoined Andy Reid after being a defensive assistant wit ...

would be its new head coach. Since the hiring he had revamped the entire front office of the

Rams In engineering, RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety)Leonardo Leonardo is a masculine given name, the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese equivalent of the English, German, and Dutch name, Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate ...

section of

Middletown Township, New Jersey Middletown Township is a township in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the township had a total population of 67,106, making it the most-populous municipality in the county and the state's 16th ...

, and attended Mater Dei High School. He went on to attend

Elon University Elon University is a private university in Elon, North Carolina. Founded in 1889 as Elon College, Elon is organized into six schools, most of which offer bachelor's degrees and several of which offer master's degrees or professional doctora ...

. On February 24, 2016, Devaney was hired by the University of Nebraska as executive director of player personnel and special assistant to the head coach for the football team. Proceeding the firing of Mike Riley, Devaney was fired on December 15, 2017. In 2018, the

Alliance of American Football The Alliance of American Football (AAF) was a professional American football minor league. The AAF consisted of eight centrally owned and operated teams in the southern and western United States, seven of which were located in metropolitan are ...

named him the general manager of the Atlanta Legends.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Devaney, Billy 1955 births Living people Atlanta Falcons executives St. Louis Rams executives National Football League general managers Elon University alumni Mater Dei High School (New Jersey) alumni People from Middletown Township, New Jersey People from Red Bank, New Jersey