On a blustery day at Orchard Park, the Buffalo Bills starters delivered a comprehensive and impressive performance against the team’s substitutes in their scrum on Thursday. Josh Allen completed 70% of his passes and threw for 300 yards. He threw two touchdown passes and ran in another score (he also had an interception, deflected from the hands of his receiver). Meanwhile, the safeguard offense was constantly under duress by the starting defense. Aside from a 25 yard carry by TJ Yeldon, they hardly succeeded in each drive.
Despite Stefon Diggs sitting in training with lower back pain, the Bills’ offense didn’t skip a beat. They scored touchdowns on each of their first three discs. John Brown continued to set an impressive standard, but rookie Gabriel Davis also caught six passes for 60 yards. However, he played the ball badly during a catch attempt, leading to Allen’s interception.
Defensively, Quinton Jefferson had a sack and tackle for the loss for starting defense, and Tre ‘White had a few pass breakouts. But probably the most impressive performance was Mike Love. The third-year defensive end had two sacks against the starting offense. Love may have fallen into an afterthought, between newcomers like AJ Epenesa and Mario Addison, but it was very close to a roster in the last preseason and could make a late push for stay in 2020.
Two-way kicking battle
Because this scrum involved real game situations, it did not offer the same type of balanced kicking situation as a typical practice. Both players saw opportunities and both had hits and misses.
Rookie Tyler Bass probably came back with a slight lead. He converted two extra point attempts, scored a 41-yard field goal and missed a 55-yard attempt. After training he also scored one at 43 meters.
Stephen Hauschka has not received any basket attempts. He tried two more points, but missed one.
Injury notes
As mentioned above Stefon Diggs sat with lower back pain. We will see how well this persists in the next week of practice.
Robert Foster participated fully in the practice and seems to have (roughly) cleared the concussion protocol.
The rest of the players missing the practice have remained consistent. This includes Patrick DiMarco (neck), Jon Feliciano (pectoral), Josh Norman (hamstrings), Tommy Sweeney (foot), Corey Thompson (sore knee), Christian Wade (quad) and Taiwan Jones (knee).
