The Bills will have backup quarterback Mitchell Trubisky available if they need him on Sunday.
Trubisky’s knee injury kept him off the field for a while in August, but he practiced every day this week and moved up to full participation the last two days. Trubisky did not receive an injury designation on Friday’s injury report, which puts him on track to be in the lineup against Arizona.
Wide receiver Curtis Samuel (toe) is also off the report and on track to play.
Defensive ends Javon Solomon (oblique) and Dawuane Smoot (toe) did not practice on Friday. Solomon has been ruled out and Smoot is listed as questionable.
The Bills have locked up one of their key offensive players.
Buffalo announced on Friday that the team has signed right tackle Spencer Brown to a four-year extension, putting him under contract through 2028.
Brown, 26, was a third-round pick in 2021 out of Northern Iowa and was previously heading into the final year of his rookie contract.
“Buffalo is the city for me,” Brown said, via Katherine Fitzgerald of the Buffalo News. “It’s a city that goes well [with] my morals, my style of living, and that’s why I didn’t want to leave at all.”
He has appeared in 44 games with 41 starts. He did not miss a snap in 2023, starting all 17 games.
The outlook for Bills backup quarterback Mitchell Trubisky being available for Sunday’s game against the Cardinals is looking better.
Trubisky missed the last stretch of summer work with a knee injury that cast doubt on his status for the season opener. Trubisky was able to practice on a limited basis on Wednesday, however, and he moved up to full practice on Thursday.
Former Dolphins and Jets quarterback Mike White is on the practice squad and would be called up if Trubisky can’t play.
Defensive end Javon Solomon (oblique) remained the only player out of practice for Buffalo. Safety Cole Bishop (shoulder), tight end Quintin Morris (shoulder), and wide receiver Curtis Samuel (toe) were full participants.
Marvin Harrison Jr. not only has comparisons to his father, Hall of Fame receiver Marvin Harrison, but also to Cardinals great Larry Fitzgerald.
Harrison Jr. knows the expectations are great. He was the fourth overall pick and considered a blue-chip, can’t-miss talent.
Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon told Harrison Jr. to “be you” when he first arrived, and Harrison Jr. is following that advice.
“There will never be another Larry,” Harrison Jr. said, via Darren Urban of the team website. “If I could have half the career Larry had that would be great. I try and take it one day at a time and be the best version of myself I can be.”
Fitzgerald, the third overall pick in 2004, made 58 receptions for 780 yards and eight touchdowns in his rookie season on his way to 17,492 receiving yards and 121 receiving touchdowns.
Harrison Jr. played only three preseason snaps and had no targets in the preseason, so Cardinals fans did not even get a preview of what he can do.
The Cardinals have seen it in practice, though.
“I know fans are excited, but at the end of the day, I have to go out and do what [offensive coordinator] Drew [Petzing] calls,” quarterback Kyler Murray said. “I know what type of talent [Harrison Jr.] is and I know what he’s capable of, but we have to go out there and do it.”
No one has bigger expectations for Harrison Jr. than Harrison Jr.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” Harrison said, “to live out a dream.”
Kyler Murray returned from tearing his ACL late in 2022 to play eight games for the Cardinals last year.
He completed 66 percent of his passes for 1,799 yards with 10 touchdowns and five interceptions in those contests, while also rushing for 244 yards with three TDs.
But now that he’s further down the line in his recovery from the knee surgery, Murray is feeling more like himself.
“Going into year two now off of it, it feels like it never really happened,” Murray said in his Wednesday press conference. “Kudos to everyone that had a part in my rehab, but I don’t even think about it.”
Though it’s the first game of the year, Murray isn’t necessarily thinking of Week 1 as a fresh start. He noted he’s had it on his mind “for a long time.” Plus, he’s at a point where, despite having received his second contract, he’d like to solidify his status among the league’s franchise quarterbacks.
“That’s the goal,” Murray said when asked about being the face of the Cardinals franchise for years to come. “I would love to end my career here with multiple Super Bowls, MVPs, and all the accolades. And I’ve never questioned my ability. Obviously, you never know when this game will be taken away from you or anything like that, but I’m just grateful and taking it one day at a time. I’m focused on this week, and we had a good day today.”
That being said, he’s not entering Year 6 with the mentality that it’s some sort of pivotal season.
“I don’t really like when people say shit like that because — excuse my language — it doesn’t make sense,” Murray said. “As athletes, every season’s pivotal. Every season we go out there and have to try to prove ourselves right. It’s not, ‘Oh, we’re going to take this season off.’ Nah, I don’t look at it that way.”
Murray does, however, admit to Arizona having a proverbial chip on its collective shoulder given the perception of the Cardinals around the league.
“It’s hard not to hear what’s said,” Murray said. “It’s hard not to see what’s said. Everybody’s got their projections for every team going into the season, but none of that really matters.”
Rookie wide receiver Keon Coleman is currently listed as a second-stringer on the Bills’ depth chart, but the second-round pick is expected to have a significant role in the team’s offense this season.
The departures of Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis have opened the door for others to build a connection with quarterback Josh Allen and Allen told Adam Schein of Mad Dog Sports Radio that Coleman’s bid to do that is centered on a different set of skills than the Bills have employed in recent seasons.
“He’s going to be an exciting player for us,” Allen said. “He’s got a different skill set than maybe what I’m used to. I don’t know if I’ve had the type of skill set that he brings to the table as an option before. His ability to go jump and catch back shoulder balls, be strong at the point of the catch. He takes blocking in the run game with a lot of pride.”
Allen acknowledged that “it’s not gonna be perfect right away” because the rookie will have to adjust to life at the professional level, but he and the Bills will roll the dice on the upside they believe Coleman brings to their offense.
As the Bills begin their practice week for the season opener against the Cardinals, their backup quarterback is still dealing with an injury.
Buffalo listed Mitchell Trubisky as limited for Wednesday’s practice with a knee issue.
If Trubisky isn’t available, the Bills have former Dolphins backup Mike White on their practice squad to serve as the backup behind Josh Allen.
Defensive end Javon Solomon (oblique) was the only player who did not participate on Wednesday.
Receiver Curtis Samuel (toe), safety Cole Bishop (shoulder), and tight end Quintin Morris (shoulder) were all full participants in the day’s session and appear on track to play this weekend.
The Bills will only have two captains this season, quarterback Josh Allen and middle linebacker Terrel Bernard.
“Our captains this year helping lead our football team will be Josh Allen and Terrel Bernard, and around them will also be a leadership group or council of 10 other players who will help lead our football team,” head coach Sean McDermott announced today.
Last year the Bills had eight captains, but this year McDermott said the team decided it would be better off having fewer captains and more members of the players’ leadership council.
“The leadership structure is going to be different every year based on one team over another, and every team is different, so we felt strongly that the leadership structure we put into place this year is what this team calls for and what it needs,” McDermott said.
Allen has been a captain for six straight years, while Bernard is a captain for the first time.
Bills safety Damar Hamlin has earned a starting job in Buffalo’s secondary.
Hamlin is listed as one of the two starting safeties on the Bills’ official depth chart, and when reporters asked head coach Sean McDermott about Hamlin’s status, he praised what Hamlin has done in the year and a half since he went into cardiac arrest on the field in a game in Cincinnati.
“Damar Hamlin will start,” McDermott said. “What else can’t this young man do? He went through what he went through on the field, you guys have written about that over and over, and to come back from that — it’s one thing to come back from an ACL or a broken bone. It’s another thing to come back off what he came back off. Let alone to decide to play football, and contact football, in full pads at the NFL level — I don’t think I need to say anything more. It’s incredible.”
Hamlin was widely praised last season for being able to return to the field at all, but last year he only played in five games, mostly on special teams, and was never in the starting lineup. This offseason Hamlin has drawn praise for his continued hard work, and now he is a starter.
The situation between the Bills and receiver Stefon Diggs seemingly reached critical mass during the 2023 mandatory minicamp, when the Bills acted as if Digg stormed out before admitting that they’d asked him to leave. In lieu of trading him then and there, the two sides tried to stay together for another season.
In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have.
“Last year, I was in the worst mental space I’ve been in since I’ve been in the league,” Diggs told Clay Skipper of GQ. “If I’m not in a good space, obviously that’s not the best for me. So that’s when things had to start shaking out.”
It didn’t seem that it was going badly, at first. Through six games last year, Diggs had 620 receiving yards with five 100-yard performances. He didn’t have more than 87 yards in any game after that. While the shift in offensive coordinator from Ken Dorsey to Joe Brady can easily be blamed for the decline, Diggs started to dip in the four games before Dorsey was fired.
“You can’t roll out of bed and get 800 yards in the first eight games,” Diggs said of his early-season performance. “Your best receiver’s doing that. You tell me about the last 10. What changed? Were there changes going on? I just pay attention to what really happened and not what people try to act like happened. Like, for the last 10 games, I forgot how to fucking play football?”
Something happened. And if Diggs was, as he says, in the “worst mental space” of his NFL career, it’s possible something happened behind the scenes that became the straw that, for him, broke the camel’s back and, for them, resulted in a de-emphasis of Diggs in the passing game.
Regardless, he has now been traded again, for the season time in his career.
“None of those teams wanted to get rid of me,” Diggs told Skipper. “Things had to shake because I kind of wanted them to shake.”
In Minnesota, a tweet posted on the same day Kirk Cousins received an extension resulted in Diggs’s first trade. In Buffalo, he knew it was coming.
“We had some talks with Buffalo,” Diggs said. “We knew where things were going — I did, at least. The outside world had so much speculation. I knew, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year to the offseason, exactly what was going on. Not too much confusion on my end.”
To his credit, Diggs won’t talk about specific problems at this past stops.
“I’m a professional,” Diggs told Skipper. “I believe in professionalism. You don’t gotta talk bad about your ex-girlfriend to your new girlfriend.”
The real question for Diggs is whether his latest new girlfriend will have that title for more than a year. The Texans wisely re-did his deal to make it a contract year. He’ll be a free agent in March. That gives him every reason to have a big year before either re-signing with the Texans or going wherever he wants to go next.
Which probably won’t be back to Buffalo.