Buffalo Rumblings
Regarding the Buffalo Bills this season, training camp opens with the illusion of certainty. The depth chart seems decided, most of the starters are certain, and the narrative is already written before a single padded practice happens.
But rosters aren’t finalized in the offseason. They’re built in July and August, when the film stops being theoretical, and the competition gets real.
In what here is the first installment of a series meant to break down every meaningful position battle on Buffalo’s 2026 roster we’ll start with the offensive backfield and the offensive line: the engine room of head coach Joe Brady and offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael’s system, and the foundation everything else runs through.
Below we’ll dive into who’s locked in, who’s fighting for their roster life, and where a surprise performance could actually change something. Some of these battles have obvious outcomes. Others are genuinely open. I’ll tell you which is which from my vantage point.
Backup: Kyle Allen
3rd String: Shane Buechele
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Josh Allen isn’t competing for his job. He never has been. He never will be. That conversation ends before it starts.
Everything after him, though, is worth paying attention to — if only because the NFL has a way of making backup quarterbacks relevant when you least expect it.
Kyle Allen enters camp as the presumptive QB2. The Bills signed him in March to a two-year, $4.1 million deal — a modest contract that tells you exactly what this is. He’s a journeyman with 19 career starts, a 62.7% completion rate, and a 2025 season in Detroit where he logged 16 offensive snaps in the entire regular season. Jared Goff never got hurt, Allen barely played, and the Lions moved on. His last meaningful football was in Houston in 2022.
He’s a known quantity: experienced enough to manage a system, steady enough not to be a liability if Josh Allen goes down for a couple of series. That’s the job description if you consider the investment made by the Bills here, and he fits it on paper.
Shane Buechele is the long shot — and I mean that with respect. He’s been in the Bills’ orbit since 2023, survived a neck injury that wiped out his entire 2024 season, came back in 2025, was claimed off Buffalo’s practice squad by the Kansas City Chiefs in December to cover for Patrick Mahomes and Gardner Minshew, then returned to Orchard Park, NY on a future contract.
That resumé doesn’t impress, but he’s shown enough to always be there competing. If Buechele outperforms Allen across three preseason games while Josh Allen sits, does he win the backup job? It’s a long shot. But there is a chance.
The Bills should also bring in at least one camp arm. That player will try to impress the team enough to fight Buechele for...
