Aaron Schobel shed his walking boot for the first time in two weeks Wednesday as he tested his ailing left foot with trainers on the sidelines at practice.
"It's better, I just don't know how much better or how much longer it's going to take," said Schobel. "Like I told you all a couple of weeks ago I'm no doctor. Hopefully it will be better by this week, but we'll see."
Schobel has a strained ligament in the foot and has been unable to play the past two weeks. Buffalo's pass rush has struggled with just three sacks in its past three games after tallying 10 sacks in their first four outings.
Buffalo's top pass rusher hadn't missed a game in his eight-year career until this injury and has been miserable watching his teammates play without him.
"It's annoying," he said. "You all know I haven't missed until this point. I haven't missed since high school, freshman year. It's hard to deal with stuff like this, but it's part of this game."
Joining Schobel on the non-practice list were right guard Brad Butler and receiver Josh Reed.
"Those will all be guys that we look at as we move down the road here and move closer to game time," said head coach Dick Jauron.
Reed suffered a strained Achilles and sprained ankle in the second quarter of last week's game at Miami and did not return. On Wednesday he watched practice in a walking boot.
"We'll just have to wait and see how he is," said Jauron of Reed. "That group of guys with Josh and Brad and Aaron as we move through the week hopefully they can go. Obviously if they say they can't then they're not going to go in practice. But they are getting better and we'll just see what happens there."
McGee ready
On the plus side Terrence McGee feels he'll be closer to 100 percent than he was last week when he was the main target of Miami's passing game.
"It's better," said McGee of his left knee. "I still have to wrap it up for practice, but it's feeling pretty good."
McGee is not on the team's injury report for the first time in a month since spraining his MCL in Week 4 at St. Louis.
After being unable to play any press coverage last week with his knee still not back to normal, McGee believes he will be able to press this Sunday and mix up his approach with Laveranues Coles, who is not 100 percent healthy either with a thigh injury.
"I'm going to (press)," said McGee. "Just watching film they throw a lot of quick passes so you don't want them, at least for the whole game, bleeding you to death like that."
Also able to practice fully Wednesday was Jason Whittle, who had to exit last week's game with a quad strain. That eases the mind of the members of the offensive staff as Buffalo's interior line depth was being stretched thin.
Ashton Youboty was also full go in practice, but is probably still not 100 percent recovered from a lingering foot injury.
Marshawn Lynch was excused from practice Wednesday for personal reasons, but is expected to be back at practice Thursday.
