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Bills notebook | Updates on LB Terrel Bernard & CB Taron Johnson; inside Buffalo's defensive game plan at Miami

Sep 13, 2024 at 04:33 PM

Alec White

Content Coordinator

A day after taking down the Dolphins on Thursday Night Football, Bills head coach Sean McDermott and the team's coordinators met with the media to discuss additional topics surrounding Buffalo's 31-10 win.

Here's what we learned from Friday's press conferences.

Injury updates on CB Taron Johnson & LB Terrel Bernard

As it stands, the Bills appear to have avoided a worst case scenario with LB Terrel Bernard. Buffalo's defensive captain left early in Thursday's game with a pectoral injury and did not return after heading back to the locker room.

While Bernard will be out "multiple weeks", according to McDermott, he managed to avoid a long term injury. Last season, DT DaQuan Jones missed 10 games with a more severe pectoral injury. Still, the team is still considering whether to put their starting linebacker on IR, but haven't reached a decision yet.

"We've still got some internal conversations that we have to have yet to determine if it's going to end up on IR or not," McDermott said.

Prior to Thursday's game, the Bills opted to not put nickel corner Taron Johnson on IR; a player who is put on the injured reserve must miss at least four games. McDermott explained that the team believes he has a chance to return sooner than that.

"We're hoping it's a good thing that we deemed it not necessary to put him on IR. It is important that we continue to take one day and one week at a time just because the injury is still new. But our hope is, it actually will be prior to that four weeks that would normally garner the IR designation," McDermott said.

So, for at least the next few weeks, the Bills will be without Johnson, Bernard and LB Matt Milano. Buffalo hosts Jacksonville on MNF in Week 3, then visits Baltimore, Houston and the Jets in consecutive weeks.

DBs Ja'Marcus Ingram and Cam Lewis are expected to continue splitting duties filling in for Johson, while McDermott said he "anticipates" third-year LB Baylon Spector starting in place of Bernard. Second-year

"I thought they played really physical," McDermott said of Spector and Williams. "I thought our whole defense played really physical as well, and again, important for us as we develop our brand of football early in the year here defensively."

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How the defense put "a roof" over the Dolphins

Even on a short week, Bills defensive coordinator Bobby Babich went into Thursday night's game feeling confident in his unit's preparation and game plan.

"I had a pretty good feel going into it, spent a lot of time trying to find some things that would stick out to us as a defense and trying to put our guys in position," he said. "We played them plenty of times. We know the lifeblood of that offensive program is explosive plays."

For the Bills, their best way of limiting those explosive plays against Miami specifically is to play with two-high safeties that work to take away downfield routes, then everyone else rallies to the football underneath.

In other words, "Making sure we were keeping a roof over everything," Babich said.

Thursday, the Bills deployed a two-high safety look with Taylor Rapp and Damar Hamlin on 31 of Miami's 43 dropbacks (72%), their 4th-highest mark in a game since 2018, according to Next Gen Stats. As a result, Miami's longest pass play was 21 yards.

It's not a new concept — the Bills have done so several times against the Dolphins in recent meetings — but they executed that approach without having to send extra rushers. Buffalo had just a 4.7% blitz rate, their 5th-lowest mark in a game since 2018, per NGS.

"Keeping the ball in front of us was one of our big things, and they did a great job of that, and tackled," Babich said.