2024 Buffalo Bills rookie report: Promising play, and a wild card emerges (2024)

The Buffalo Bills are two-thirds of the way through their preseason journey, with cutdown time fast approaching. The team finished up a few days of joint-practice work with the Pittsburgh Steelers before joining up to play their game this past Saturday.

The defense truly stood out with a much better showing in last weekend’s contest as compared to their effort versus the Chicago Bears. The Steelers played their starting unit for a good portion of the first half, and Buffalo still managed to allow only 219 total yards on the evening.

On the more critical side, the Bills have not managed to score a single touchdown this preseason. Additionally, injuries continue to mount in regards to key pieces of Buffalo’s projected roster.

Several rookies played a factor in last Saturday’s 9-3 win for the Bills, including a local talent turning heads in shocking fashion. Let’s take one more look at the play of the rookie draft picks against the Steelers, with a bonus for Joe Andreessen who deserves his own blurb for his play this past weekend.

WR Keon Coleman

Coleman has gotten plenty of reps to start the preseason, but it hasn’t necessarily netted the results he been looking for just yet. On Saturday, Coleman started the game as the outside receiver with wide receiver Mack Hollins on the other side in traditional sets. Coleman had one catch on the evening, which was a hitch route that Trubisky hit him on time for the completion.

There were encouraging signs of perimeter blocking in this game as well, which improves his value down-to-down. Coleman did have a drop at the goal line later in the first half as he had to stretch outside his frame on a quick slant with a safety crashing down.

It’s clear Coleman was prepared to take a hard hit from the safety and appeared to pull his hands back too early on a play that would have likely resulted in a touchdown if he survived the hit. The throw could have been better by Trubisky, but you want Coleman to grab those when they start counting.

Coleman did play into the first drive of the second half, while Hollins and Shakir wore baseball caps on the sideline. It could be a sign that he may be fourth in the pecking order at this time, but the team had to play Coleman a bit longer than intended due to injuries to Curtis Samuel and Marquez Valdes-Scantling.

Now Samuel, a likely high-volume player, has a turf toe injury and is week-to-week according to the team. This puts his status for Week 1 in some doubt. If Samuel can’t go against the Arizona Cardinals, Coleman is going to continue garnering a ton of snaps with the offense.

S Cole Bishop

Bishop didn’t play due to an ongoing shoulder injury. The good news is that Bishop has begun participating in limited fashion this week. While he likely won’t be playing in the final preseason game, it’s very positive to see him working back towards a potential return to start the season.

DT DeWayne Carter

Carter came into the game once Ed Oliver and DaQuan Jones left the field for the night. Carter remains someone you want to see more from. To this point, he just hasn’t made a massive impact early in reps to show he’s ready for a heavy workload out of the gates.

He continued playing into the second half, and appeared to flash a bit more as his playing time increased. Carter had a nice secondary move late in a rep where he threw a blocker off of him for a sack chance. He did, however, miss the sack. Carter can’t be knocked for his effort. His motor runs hot.

RB Ray Davis

James Cook took all of the primary reps with the first-team offense on Saturday. Davis rotated in once Cook’s day was over and mixed some reps with Ty Johnson.

Davis didn’t get too much of an opportunity, but he showed he’s capable of dominating preseason competition by breaking off arm tackles, showing solid vision, and wiggling past depth safeties for multiple chunk gains. Davis looks comfortable in the offense at the right time. Time will tell how offensive coordinator Joe Brady breaks up the running back reps, but it would be surprising if Davis isn’t the RB2 to begin the 2024 regular season.

IOL Sedrick Van Pran-Granger

Van Pran-Granger continues running with the third-team offensive line at the center position. There were some positive moments in the run game and snapping the ball was clean for the multi-year SEC starter at the position.

It’s been hammered in preseason and post-draft that Van Pran-Granger would need to learn the ropes at the guard spots in addition to his comfort zone at center. We have yet to see that in preseason. There were limited pass protection reps with newly signed quarterback Ben DiNucci playing the entire second half.

LB Edefuan Ulofoshio

Ulofoshio was the last of the healthy linebackers to play on Saturday night. He wasn’t inserted into the defensive lineup until the fourth quarter. He’s just recently coming off of injury so Ulofoshio should be given some more time to get his legs under him while gaining comfort with the defense this coming week. The final preseason game will be big for him. There’s a feeling that the Washington product has the potential to be cut from the roster.

EDGE Javon Solomon

Solomon had a really nice day overall. He started his performance with a special teams tackle playing punt coverage on the opening punt of the game. Solomon was active in the starting special teams units, which is another feather in his cap as he works to make this team.

Solomon has major juice off the edge and doesn’t look out of place because of his ridiculous arm length. It was nice to see him have a couple of nice reps against tight ends where he was able to jolt his matchup backwards and be effective versus the run. He has primarily been viewed as a pass rush specialist, but there were moments to show maybe there’s something more there.

On a snap-to-snap basis, you really felt his presence as he worked a ton with the second-team defensive line. Solomon affected the quarterback with extra effort and utilizing his length to his advantage. He never disappeared.

You’d like to see him finish off a couple of the plays in the backfield whether it be a tackle for loss bursting unblocked behind the line or getting the quarterback on the ground. But, the groundwork is there for Solomon to easily make this team and perhaps make an impact on Sundays this year. Solomon left the game with a calf injury but he appears fine as he’s already back practicing.

OT Tylan Grable

Grable came in as the second-team left tackle when the starters were pulled and he got a lot of work on the night playing from the second quarter and on.

You can see the raw aspects to Grable’s game at this time. His feet aren’t consistent and his base needs to be cleaned up to prevent inevitable losses that will occur if it’s not course corrected.

Grable looked comfortable at left tackle in his pass sets and did a very nice job of keeping both quarterbacks he blocked for clean. I was impressed with his patience and movement. Additionally, there were some positive steps as a run blocker with a couple of dominant reps to generate significant movement on his assignment.

Later in the game, Grable flipped to right tackle and finished the game at that spot. It’s encouraging to see the comfort the team has in a project like Grable to play both tackle spots. He’s also played some guard in preseason practice.

CB/Returner Daequan Hardy

Hardy got the nod as the starting punt returner on the evening and handled all of the opportunities over K.J. Hamler (perceived competition for the spot) — and he looked straight-line explosive. There were multiple chances of huge punts where Hardy had some room to run. He’s committal as a returner, which is a positive.

There was one return Hardy had that was inching close to a safety as he retreated on a punt that was caught at the team’s two yard-line. It seems that the Bills are asking him to field all punts and return them at the moment. If that’s not the case, Hardy will need to be smarter about his choices to field.

Hardy followed that with an athletic-looking 30-yard return later on. Hardy has the juice and he seems to see things well. Fielding was also clean on the night.

Hardy also found run at corner where he played entirely as an outside corner, which was interesting. The team opted to slide veteran cornerback Ja’Marcus Ingram into the slot instead of Hardy. Not a perfect night for him, but he did make life difficult for wide receiver George Pickens on a rep where he had to contort and wasn’t able to get his feet down.

Hardy made a few impressive plays on the ball and nearly had an interception in the fourth quarter as well with great timing and spacing to pass off another receiver working vertical and breaking out of a half turn to make a legitimate play on the ball. He clearly fooled quarterback Justin Fields into making the throw. I’m curious on the experiment as an outside corner despite the size limitations. Hardy feels like a roster lock, and he’s heavily trending to be the starting punt returner.

OL Travis Clayton

Clayton has missed nearly the entirety of training camp and appears to be on track to miss all of the preseason as well. He didn’t play on Saturday and also isn’t practicing days ahead of the team’s final preseason game.

BONUS LB Joe Andreessen

Undrafted free-agent linebacker Joe Andreessen out of the University at Buffalo started the game for the Bills at MIKE and was given the green dot to make calls on the defense. It was an out-of-nowhere option to an extent with little buzz to speak of before he burst onto the scene against the Steelers.

Andreessen played his high school football at Lancaster High School and began his career at Bryant before working his way back to UB. He had to tryout in the spring to make the Bills and was given a contract to compete on the 90-man roster after that successful tryout.

The original thought was that Andreessen played to fend off any additional linebacker injuries to a team that has suffered plenty since the start of 2023. That hasn’t changed, but Andreessen was much more than just a body to take on contact.

There were moments of brilliance from Andreessen, striking Pittsburgh starting guard James Daniels on the second play from scrimmage and bringing down the Steelers back for minimum gain. Additionally, he hawked down athletic quarterback Justin Fields on multiple snaps. There was a brilliant moment to blow up a screen, in which he once again beat Daniels and got to the spot. He looked instinctual and belonging athletically, which is way more than one may have thought when he lined up at middle linebacker against a starting NFL offense.

Is Joe Andreessen a real threat to make the initial 53-man roster? That seems potentially unlikely due to assets utilized on others. But I do know he will find himself, at minimum, on an NFL practice squad in 2024. Perhaps it’s more than that, but you’d have to imagine the Bills are intrigued on keeping Andreessen around. He’ll have one more opportunity to showcase his talent in a game setting for preseason Week 3.