The Buffalo Bills are starting organized team activities (OTAs). They’ll get onto the field in shorts and helmets with very little contact, and they’ll begin running drills and installing plays. There will be camp observations from numerous first-hand sources, which will be the most viewed pieces of content of the spring.
And a lot of it will be in service of the following question: who will make the Buffalo Bills 2026 53-man roster?
Naturally, we as fans will all be thinking that too. Every time Jackson
Acker makes a play out of the backfield in the passing game, we’ll wonder what it means for his camp battle with Ben VanSumeran. Every time Mecole Hardman and Trent Sherfield return a punt or beat a gunner, it’ll add to a running tally in our heads about which one of those players (if either) should be the last Bills receiver on their 53.
Preseason games will provide a taste of “real” football, but they can frequently distract from the most important factors that go into actually identifying who’s going to make an NFL roster and who’s not. The emotional pinnacle of the Hall of Fame game kickoff may quickly dissipate into a “who is this guy” remark during the fourth quarter of that same game, but preseason games also inject variance into our own thought processes because they introduce the idea that HOW a player plays in these exhibitions is somehow the most predictive part of final roster analysis.
The truth is, WHEN and WITH WHOM a player plays is far more predictive of their roster positions than HOW a player plays.
We see it every year: some backup player lights up a team in the 4th quarter of the final preseason game, and there will be murmurs that maybe this player should make the 53-man roster. I mean, it is based on merit, right? Players who play better should make it over players that play worse. It’s a fair and true statement, but the fact that this final preseason darling (let’s call him Bob) performs excellently in the final preseason game means that the decision had already been almost (or entirely made) on their roster position. They’re playing alongside a bunch of other people not likely the make the roster, and against a bunch of players not likely to make their roster. Mismatched groupings for extended sample sizes are uncommon in the spring and even more uncommon the closer the calendar gets to cutdown day. If the backup offensive line is playing and Bob is consistently playing with that group, the most probable takeaway is that Bob is considered in the “backup offensive line” group. If that group includes players likely to make a roster, and they all sit together at the end of the first quarter of the final preseason game, Bob is probably a good bet to make the roster as a backup offensive lineman. Whether Bob gets beaten for a terrible sack during that game (“HOW he plays”) is not as predictive of his roster status as the fact that he was put out there alongside a handful of other players who are likely to make the team (“WITH WHOM he plays”) and the fact that those players weren’t in the game in the second half of the final preseason game (“WHEN he plays”).
In 2024, Zach Davidson got some run as a potential TE3 for the Buffalo Bills (including an article written by yours truly). Quinton Morris was the incumbent, but Davidson had made some noise at camp with impressive receiving plays smattered throughout camp observations. Even before training camp opened, I noted the following in the above-linked article:
Preseason special teams will be a key factor in determining whether or not Davidson can usurp Morris from the TE3 spot, but the juice Davidson brings cannot be understated, especially to a team with a recent changing of the guard at key leadership positions who may be searching for a different vibe in the locker room in 2024. When preseason kicks off, when Davidson is playing and with what group will be more predictive of the coaching staff’s opinion of him than how he’s actually performing, but it will be the first widely available stake in the ground on whether or not Davidson has more than a puncher’s chance of pulling off the TE3 upset. If all things are equal, maybe they roll with the high-energy athletic monster who can also double as an emergency punter in a pinch.
We all know how it ended: Davidson didn’t make the final 53-man roster, and it was fairly obvious he wouldn’t shortly into the preseason. When Dawson Knox and/or Dalton Kincaid were not on the field, it was Morris as the first man up in all circumstances. Only after Morris had left the game and would not return was Zach Davidson seeing any run. The team wasn’t going to keep four tight ends, so the TE3 “battle” was decided early enough in the summer that I didn’t even bother to put Davidson on my “arrow up/arrow down” list right before cutdown day. He was no longer a “roster bubble”/“will he or won’t he” player; he was going to be cut and a different conversation could be had about adding him to the practice squad. And none of it had anything to do with how he performed on the field; it was simply a matter of WHEN and WITH WHOM.
And so it will be once again this offseason. Highlights will go viral and observations will be read and all of that is amazing and fun and entertaining and lovely. But when it comes to actually predicting who will and who won’t make the final 53-man roster, the far more boring factors will once again carry the most weight.
…and that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive and look for new episodes of “The Bruce Exclusive” every Thursday on the Rumblings Cast Network — see more in my LinkTree!
