Despite being told the Bills like who they have on the roster, who might Buffalo have eyes on in case of need?
Recently, we took a look at a few of the free-agent offensive players still available who the Buffalo Bills may decide to pursue prior to the regular season. While we’ve been told they’re content with the current roster, you never know when Buffalo may find reason to bring in additional talent.
I am nothing if not a completist, and I couldn’t let Bills training camp start up in a few days without closing the loop and examining the free-agent defensive players lying in wait, hoping for their contract offer to join a team for the 2024 NFL season.
I’ll say now what I said before:
I don’t believe the Buffalo Bills will sign a meaningful free agent this summer (“meaningful” in this instance defined as “player who, once acquired, immediately becomes a very high probability to make roster” — a la wide receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling post-draft this year and edge rusher Leonard Floyd in the summer of 2023).
But what if they did?
One of my favorite television programs in recent memory is “The Grinder” — a comedy starring Rob Lowe and Fred Savage. In it, Savage plays an Idaho lawyer whose life is suddenly turned upside-down by the return to town of his brother (played by Lowe), who’s trying to acclimate to non-Hollywood life after playing a lawyer on television for years. This, of course, leads to all sorts of hijinx as the fictional lawyer decides to assist his real lawyer brother with his cases. In the show, Lowe’s character Dean Sanderson is known for continually and wistfully challenging his brother’s straight-man declarations of “that’s not how this works” with a distant stare and a response that he found works frequently in his scripts:
“But what if we could?”
So even though it’s unlikely in this writer’s eyes, we’re going to take the Dean Sanderson lead and choose a few defensive free agents the Bills could sign this summer or early into the regular season, if they deemed it of value. This won’t be a comprehensive list of all available players, so be sure to point out some of your ideas in the comments (and please let me know if anyone else loves “The Grinder” because I didn’t get any responses last time to indicate there were any fans of the show, and my faith in humanity has been dampened).
Carl Lawson, EDGE
Emmanuel Ogbah recently visited with the Miami Dolphins and my assumption is the Bills’ AFC rivals will bring Ogbah back for another run with the team, after he performed admirably (5.5 sacks) in 2023. Miami just received news that Shaq Barrett, who they had signed this spring to reinforce an outside pass-rushing group that was in severe need of bodies, decided to retire from the NFL.
It’s possible Ogbah will be off the market just as you’re reading this article. If that’s the case, Carl Lawson is likely the next man up on on the list of free-agent edge rushers. A coveted free-agent acquisition in 2021, he signed a three-year, $45 million contract with the New York Jets before tearing his Achilles tendon in his left leg only months after signing and missing the entirety of the 2021 season.
He rebounded nicely in 2022, with eight sacks and 49 pressures. Back issues crept up for him at the beginning of the 2023 season, and his playing time dropped off as the Jets found success with Jermaine Johnson, Will McDonald, and Bryce Huff rushing the passer. Lawson ended up playing in only six games and recording zero sacks.
Under what circumstances could signing Lawson make sense for the Bills? The Bills have a similar situation on defense that they have on offense, but a similar situation that’s not being talked about similarly:
They’re attempting to replace high level production in the aggregate.
We talk about it with Stefon Diggs on offense, but we don’t talk about it with Leonard Floyd on defense. On offense, they’re hoping that a mid-level free-agent signing (Curtis Samuel), a low-level free-agent signing (Marques Valdes-Scantling), a rookie (Keon Coleman) and the development of younger players (Khalil Shakir, Dalton Kincaid) can help replace Diggs’ lost production.
On defense, they’re losing 45 pressures and a team-leading 12 sacks with the departure of Floyd, and they’re hoping that two low-level free-agents signing (Casey Toohill and Dawuane Smoot, one of whom may not even make the team) and a rookie (Javon Solomon, picked in the fifth round) can help cover anything that they don’t get from further developing players (Gregory Rousseau, A.J. Epenesa) and the hopeful return to relevance of an aging future Hall of Famer (Von Miller).
The difference between the offensive and defensive situations for the Bills is that Diggs’ vacated targets have to go somewhere; it’s not as if the Bills are just going to throw the ball 150-plus fewer times than they have in the last couple of years simply because their superstar wide receiver is gone. But those missing pressures and sacks courtesy of Floyd’s departure don’t actually have to go anywhere. They could just...disappear. The snaps will go somewhere, but the production doesn’t necessarily have to follow.
Due to this, the production the team gets from its edge rushers in 2024 will be, and should be, a meaningful story to keep an eye on. It’s also what provides the reasoning for a potential signing at EDGE, whether it be Lawson or some other player.
If the Bills don’t get movement from their new faces (Toohill, Smoot, Solomon), or they don’t see the next step from Rousseau and Epenesa in larger roles (and in Rousseau’s case, ostensibly healthier), or they don’t see Von Miller starting to look a little bit more like his old self, they could decide to add a body. If, heaven forbid, none of those three things happened for the Bills, we could be looking at the edge rusher market at the 2024 trade deadline and seeing if the Bills can make a maneuver.
Justin Simmons, Safety
The Bills just said goodbye to both of their 30-plus-year-old safeties, so it makes sense they wouldn’t have been rushing out to sign another player in that age range. But Simmons, a former All-Pro, still managed to relinquish a passer rating of 85.9 against his coverage in 2023 with the Denver Broncos while playing the majority of his snaps as a deep safety.
That last note is of importance, as Bills second-round pick Cole Bishop and returning safety Taylor Rapp both profile better as box players, leaving free-agent addition Mike Edwards as potentially the man to play more in the deeper part of the field in new defensive coordinator Bobby Babich’s scheme.
All that would need to happen is for the Bills to get into camp and preseason games and feel insecure with their deep coverage from the safety position for them to reach out to Simmons to gauge interest. They could call up old friend Micah Hyde, but Hyde’s recent neck injury, combined with declining play in 2023, could make them try to plug the perceived hole with a (slightly) younger and healthier player.
...and that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive and look for new episodes of “The Bruce Exclusive” every Thursday on the Rumblings Cast Network!