Buffalo Rumblings
Terrel Bernard, DeWayne Carter, and Curtis Samuel will all be in street clothes on Sunday.
The Buffalo Bills ruled out three players ahead of their Week 8 matchup with the Seattle Seahawks. Linebacker Terrel Bernard and wide receiver Curtis Samuel are two starters who won’t be in uniform on Sunday and, while rookie defensive tackle DeWayne Carter is a rotational piece of the defense, his presence will be missed as well.
For Bernard, it’s his second stint on the inactive list. While it was a pectoral strain that saw him miss two weeks of play in September, it’s an ankle injury now. Earlier in the week head coach Sean McDermott said that he would consider the Bills’ defensive captain a day-to-day decision. However, Bernard missed a couple of days of practice early in the week due to what McDermott said was a “personal matter” and then he was on the DNP again on Friday.
It’s most likely that linebacker Baylon Spector will replace Bernard, and that rookie linbacker Joe Andreessen will be active on game day — at least that’s how the Bills played it during Bernard’s absence in September.
Wide receiver Curtis Samuel won’t play on Sunday. He most likely won’t play next week either. Samuel left the field in the first quarter of last Sunday’s game with a shoulder injury and hasn’t been able to work through it yet.
On Friday morning, McDermott said that he expects the injury to keep the veteran receiver, who is in his first year with the Bills, to be out “more than one week” but that he doesn’t anticipate a stay on the Injured Reserve (IR) list.
The question lies in who will be Buffalo’s fifth receiver on Sunday. The Bills have three wide receivers on the practice squad: Tyrell Shavers (who was elevated in Week 5 when Khalil Shakir was inactive with an ankle injury), K.J. Hamler, and Jalen Virgil.
As for DeWayne Carter, he’s gong to miss more than Sunday’s game in Seattle. Before practice, McDermott said that the rookie defensive tackle would need surgery on his wrist and that he would miss a few weeks as he recovers. As for whether or not the rookie will end up on IR or not, McDermott said that decision hasn’t been made but that it’s a possibility.
The only other Bills player entering the week with a designation is running back Darrynton Evans, who’s officially listed as “doubtful.” As Buffalo has not activated him from IR yet (they have until Tuesday morning to do so), he won’t play. Evans was eligible to return both of the last two weeks and in Week 6 McDermott chose to elevate Frank Gore Jr. from the practice squad instead.
Last week, all of the Bills’ rostered running backs were healthy and each contributed significantly in the 34-10 win over the Tennessee Titans. It looks as though McDermott, along with general manager Brandon Beane, are going to have some decisions to make concerning the future of Evans...
