SB Nation    •   8 min read

What’s the Buffalo Bills’ plan for LB Shaq Thompson?

WHAT'S THE STORY?

Carolina Panthers v Las Vegas Raiders
Photo by Ian Maule/Getty Images

The Buffalo Bills and general manager Brandon Beane have done well to add defensive depth this offseason. While most of the headlines have gone to their additions in the secondary and along the defensive line, the Bills haven’t neglected the linebacker position over the last few years.

Buffalo has done well to maintain a stable of young, athletic players at the defense’s middle level. This summer, they also added a veteran presence who is quite familiar with the system that head coach Sean McDermott

AD

wants to run.

In today’s installment of our “90 players in 90 days” series, we discuss a veteran linebacker looking to show that he’s healthy enough to continue his excellent career.


Name: Shaq Thompson
Number: 45
Position: LB
Height/Weight: 6’, 230 pounds
Age: 31 (32 on 4/21/2026)
Experience/Draft: 11; selected by the Carolina Panthers in the first round (No. 25 overall) of the 2015 NFL Draft
College: Washington
Acquired: Signed with Bills on 6/10/2025

Financial situation (per Spotrac): Thompson signed a one-year contract worth $1.255 million overall. There’s no guaranteed money on the deal, so if the Bills release him prior to Week 1, they won’t incur a dead-cap charge. If Thompson is on the Week 1 roster, his whole base salary — the total value of the contract — becomes fully guaranteed since he’s a vested veteran. Thompson’s cap hit if he makes the 53-man roster is $1.03 million.

2024 Recap: Thompson spent another injury-plagued season with the Panthers, dealing with an Achilles tendon tear at the end of September. That ended his season after just four games, as the Panthers placed him on Injured Reserve. He totaled 35 tackles in the four games he played. Thompson has appeared in just six games over the last two seasons, as his 2023 season ended prematurely thanks to a broken fibula.

Positional outlook: Thompson is one of a handful of linebackers on Buffalo’s roster at the moment. Matt Milano, Terrel Bernard, Dorian Williams, Baylon Spector, Edefuan Ulofoshio, Keonta Jenkins, and Joe Andreessen are the others.

2025 Offseason: Thompson is healthy and he has participated in training camp so far. Chris Brown tweeted that Thompson had “multiple pass breakups” during the second day of training camp practices.

2025 Season outlook: The Bills are going to keep either five or six players here, and while it might be more comfortable to have six on the roster, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they keep five while carrying two linebackers on the practice squad in case of injury. Milano, Bernard, Williams, and Andreessen feel like locks, meaning that the other four players are battling for either one or two spots on the final roster.

When healthy, Thompson is the best of the lot, but that caveat — when healthy — is a tough one to overlook given the injuries that he’s endured over the past two years. In Thompson’s last healthy season, he led the Panthers in tackles with 135. That total was good for 16th in the whole league. However, to break a leg at age 30 and then tear an Achilles at 31 absolutely takes a toll on a person’s athleticism, so that guy who had 135 tackles in his age-29 season likely isn’t the guy Buffalo has in camp right now.

Can Thompson show enough to unseat someone like Spector or Ulofoshio? I think he can slot in ahead of Spector, another player who has trouble staying healthy, but I don’t believe he’s going to usurp Ulofoshio’s spot.

Unless he experiences a serious return to form, Thompson is likely to be LB6 once the summer draws to a close. Will that be enough to keep him on the final roster? That might be out of his hands if the team feels it can’t sneak other players through waivers and onto the practice squad. Thompson is squarely on the roster bubble this summer.

More from buffalorumblings.com:

AD
More Stories You Might Enjoy