Archives for May 2013

‘”Both those guys, I just think they’re a little overwhelmed right now with the scheme,” the Buffalo Bills’ defensive coordinator said recently after a spring practice. “We had a very simple camp for them, the rookie camp, then came in the very next day and threw a whole bunch at them. So I think both those guys are going through that rookie learning curve.”‘

‘Barber and Kaiser have been ordered to appear at 10 a.m. Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder in Buffalo to answer charges of intentionally intercepting a wire communication and making a telephone call without disclosing their identity with the intent to annoy or harass the person at the called number.’

‘”As long as you’re coming out here taking snaps every day, the snaps should be second-nature,” Chibane said after a two-hour practice and light workout that lasted almost another hour. “Then after that, it’s playing guard with a guy a little bit closer to you.”‘

‘It seemed as if the same program Marrone ran in Syracuse simply picked up and moved west.’

‘Coach Doug Marrone said Smith was hurt in the weight room, but did not reveal the nature of the injury or how it occurred. Marrone expects Smith to be ready for training camp in July.’

‘Prosecutors say Wednesday that Joshua Barber and Nicholas Kaiser, both of Plymouth, have been charged with arranging the March 8 call between Buddy Nix, then GM of the Buffalo Bills, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers GM Mark Dominik that ended up being posted on the website Deadspin.com.’

‘”What cross-training does is it just gives you the ability to play the best players that are available. Then when you have injuries obviously you can plug people in rather than plug in the backup and the backup might not be better than the backup at another position and move people around. I’ve always been a big believer in cross-training.”‘

‘”I really do not know the whole situation from last year,” Marrone said. “I see that we have two backs that can produce results. … I think when we get into it we will be able to spell the guys when we need it. My philosophy has always been that if someone starts off and they are running well, just keep feeding them the ball.”‘

‘Assuming that Smith does not take part in the on-the-field portion of the mandatory minicamp in June, the tight end will have around two months to get ready for the start of training camp at St. John Fisher College in July.’

‘Keep in mind, this is only one day of a voluntary off-season workout, so all the observations should not be treated as overwhelming opinions on individual players and how they performed on one given day. There also were no pads and no contact, so that must also be acknowledged.’

‘”We’re putting a lot in schematically,” said Marrone. “We have a lot in now, a large percentage of it, close to the end and you can see that sometimes we’ve become saturated with that and we’ve made some mistakes out there. But the players are working to get better. By the end of this week we’ll be done installation-wise.”‘

‘”The left one was worse,” Williams said of the 2011 injury. “It actually damaged my Achilles. They went in and fixed it and it felt great. This one had no Achilles damage. But we were at a point where maybe in a year it might have. We needed to get it taken care of. Now it’s out of the way and free and clear. I’m excited moving forward.”‘

”’As far as the structure standpoint, it’s healed,” Williams said after the Bills opened their final week of voluntary minicamp practices. ”It’s all about getting the strength and the power back in it, and getting ready to go. And that’s where we are right now.”’

‘”I was very pleased with the way we got off to a start as far as the OTAs and practicing, the first three practices,” Marrone said of last week. “A lot of that was we as coaches are excited, the players are excited and everything has a newness to it, which creates some excitement. I think this is very critical for us as far as OTAs. Obviously the installation is heavier now than it was in the beginning.’

‘”It’s similar. It wasn’t as extensive as the last one, but similar,” he said. “There’s a bone spur that has been there and it was getting to a point that it needed to be taken care of and we took care of it.”‘