
| Buffalo Bills’ Felton Huggins out indefinitely… | |
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – Buffalo Bills receiver Felton Huggins is out indefinitely after sustaining a concussion. Coach Chan Gailey provided the update Tuesday, a day after Huggins was hurt. His injury further depletes the Bills group of receivers for the team’s final pre-season game against the Detroit Lions on Thursday. The Bills are already down three receivers, including Roscoe Parrish (hamstring), who resumed practising this week. Quarterback/receiver Brad Smith returned to practice a day after being sidelined with a foot injury. Gailey said Smith won’t play quarterback but could get time at receiver against the Lions. Gailey said linebacker Shawne Merriman will play after missing the past two pre-season games with a groin injury. Defensive lineman Kyle Williams has been ruled out to rest for Buffalo’s regular season-opener at Kansas City on Sept. 11. Thanks for visiting my blog =). Posted in bills-news | Comments Off
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| Buffalo Bills WR Felton Huggins out indefinitely… | |
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Buffalo Bills receiver Felton Huggins is out indefinitely after sustaining a concussion. Coach Chan Gailey provided the update Tuesday, a day after Huggins was hurt. His injury further depletes the Bills group of receivers for the team’s final preseason game against the Detroit Lions on Thursday. The Bills are already down three receivers, including Roscoe Parrish (hamstring), who resumed practicing this week. Quarterback/receiver Brad Smith returned to practice a day after being sidelined with a foot injury. Gailey said Smith won’t play quarterback but could get time at receiver against the Lions. Gailey said linebacker Shawne Merriman will play after missing the past two preseason games with a groin injury. Defensive lineman Kyle Williams has been ruled out to rest for Buffalo’s regular season-opener at Kansas City on Sept. 11. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Feel free to leave your comments below. Posted in bills-news | Comments Off
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| Bills start showing signs of life | |
Two lackluster preseason showings by the Buffalo Bills’ offense were erased with a stirring first half Saturday against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The first-team offense finally showed signs of life led by quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, who tossed touchdown strikes to Marcus Easley and Stevie Johnson as the Bills starters outscored the Jags, 17-10. After the starters sat down for the evening, the game turned wild. The Bills trailed, 32-17, but rallied to tie the game at 32 and send the game into overtime after a four-yard TD pass from Tyler Thigpen to Paul Hubbard and two-point conversion from Thigpen to Hubbard. The game finally ended when Rian Lindell hit a 40-yard field goal in the extra session to make it 35-32 before 50,615. It was the Bills first preseason overtime game since 1985 when they tied Detroit, at 10-10. “We did some good things on both sides of the ball and it was good for us and we won in overtime,” Buffalo coach Chan Gailey said. “That’s good and we needed to do that.” The Bills’ starting offense, which scored just six points in pedestrian losses at Chicago and Denver, pieced together two distinctly different touchdown drives in building an early 17-0 lead. Fitzpatrick drove his team 82 yards in 11 plays, capped by an 11-yard TD strike to Easley in the back of the end zone. The second took just eight seconds when Fitzpatrick dropped a pass into the hands of a streaking Johnson for 52 yards. Buffalo outgained Jacksonville, 236-108, in the first half. The Bills gained just 90 first-half yards in last week’s game against the Broncos. “It was good,” said Bills running back Fred Jackson about the offensive’s quick start. “That was one of the things that we wanted to do, just come out and get a quick start. We felt like we could make some plays early and get some good momentum going into the second quarter.” Gailey said this week that the starters would play into the third quarter, but it was obvious he saw enough in the first half and the backups entered the game at the start of the third quarter. Fitzpatrick was impressive in completing his first 11 passes and finished 11 of 12 for 165 yards and no interceptions. Last week against Denver, he was just 6 of 16 for a paltry 44 yards. His final pass of the game was broken up by Jacksonville safety Dawan Landry. “We said all along, we wanted to carry over what we’ve been doing in practice onto the game field and I think we did a good job of that,” Fitzpatrick said. “Hopefully, we can just build on it and keep going for [the season opener] Sept. 11.” Fitzpatrick was much better than his counterpart David Garrard, who was 8 of 17 for 87 yards. Garrard and most of the Jacksonville starters played into the third quarter. Jacksonville scored its first TD on a 4-yard scramble by Garrard with 4:49 left then tacked on a 45-yard field goal by Josh Scobee just before halftime. The Bills’ defense held Jacksonville to 2 of 6 on third down and just 30 yards rushing. “I think we were able to shut down the run and then in turn we put them in passing situations and we were able to get after [Garrard] a little bit,” said defensive tackle Kyle Williams, who recorded a sack in the second quarter. “There at the end of the half, giving up 10 points the way that we did is inexcusable. Everything they got there we gave to them.” Much of last week’s news centered on who would start at running back for the Bills, and it was the veteran Jackson who opened the game. Jackson finished with nine carries for 33 yards, including a long of 13 while backup C.J. Spiller had four rushes for 21 yards and finished with 5.3 yards a carry. One of the highlights of the evening, however, was when Jackson beat ex-teammate Paul Posluszny for a 30-yard reception. “It was one-on-one with the linebacker,” Jackson said. “We feel like we can win every time. Fitzpatrick has all the confidence in the world. He saw it and I saw it and we were able to complete it.” Brad Smith also saw snaps at quarterback and wide receiver, including starting the second half in the slot. He rushed three times for 15 yards and misfired on his only pass attempt. After scoring on their first drive, a 21-yard Lindell field goal capping a 13-play drive that took 8:40, the Bills marched 82 yards to a touchdown which chewed up 5:10 on 11 plays and was capped by Easley’s 11-yard TD. Easley had 29 yards in receptions on the drive, including a 15-yarder caught near the sideline. Fitzpatrick found Johnson for a short pass on third-and-2 for six yards to extent the drive, then Jackson had two carries for a combined 10 yards to reach the Jags’ 11. Then Fitzpatrick found Easley for the TD. The third scoring drive didn’t take long at all. Johnson the beat Jacksonville corner Rashean Mathis down the right sideline and Fitzpatrick floated a pass into his arms. rmckissic@buffnews.comnull Not much else going on in the NFL world today. Posted in bills-news | Comments Off
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| Lindell seals Bills’ 35-32 OT win over Jaguars | |
David Garrard thought there was some unwritten rule in which preseason games weren’t supposed to go into overtime. The Jaguars quarterback was wrong. He stood shivering on the sideline watching the Buffalo Bills force overtime in the final minute, then cap a 35-32 win on Rian Lindell’s 40-yard field goal with 3:04 left Saturday night. “I was shaking my head because I was cold out there,” Garrard said. “I guess everybody doesn’t abide by these rules.” It was a game that was 7 minutes short of entering its fourth hour, and one only scrubs and NFL die-hards could love. Lindell’s kick came after Jacksonville’s Josh Scobee missed a 53-yard attempt. It was a back-and-forth contest in which Buffalo squandered a 17-point first-half lead and had to overcome a 15-point second-half deficit. With much of the crowd gone by halftime, Bills backup quarterback Tyler Thigpen forced overtime by hitting Paul Hubbard on a 4-yard touchdown pass with 38 seconds left, then hooking up again for a 2-point conversion. “An overtime preseason game?” said Hubbard. “For a minute, we were thinking it was kind of long and they were dragging it along. But we definitely did everything we could to come out and win it.” Both teams’ preseason records dropped to 1-2 after competing in the NFL’s first preseason overtime game since Aug. 16, 2008, when Seattle beat Chicago 29-26. That one was at least decided early, when Brandon Coutu hit a field goal 3:28 into the extra frame. This one looked like it was going to be decided early after the Bills appeared ready to blow the game open in the first half when their Ryan Fitzpatrick-led offense finally showed spark — and a quick-strike dimension — in building a 17-0 lead. In completing his first 11 attempts, Fitzpatrick threw touchdowns passes on consecutive plays — an 11-yarder to Marcus Easley and a 52-yarder to Stevie Johnson — 65 seconds apart in the second quarter. He finished going 11 of 12 for 165 yards passing in four series through the first half. That more than doubled the 88 yards Fitzpatrick had in six series through Buffalo’s first two preseason games. The two touchdowns were the first scored by the Bills’ starters this preseason, and the 17 points in the first half were four more than Buffalo managed in its first two weeks. “We’ve said all along, we wanted to carry over what we’ve been doing in practice onto the game field, and I think we did a good job of that today,” Fitzpatrick said. Garrard overcame a slow start by producing 17 points on his final three series. Playing mostly against the second-string defense, Garrard scored on a 4-yard run and then engineered a 10-play, 76-yard scoring drive capped by Brock Bolen’s 2-yard run to open the third quarter. Garrard finished 11 of 21 for 106 yards in his second start, while both touchdown drives where helped by lengthy pass-interference penalties: a 20-yarder against Drayton Florence and a 31-yarder against Reggie Corner. “You have to be able to persevere and not let a slow start be a slow finish, too,” Garrard said. “We didn’t hang our heads and mope around. We kept fighting.” The Jaguars took a 24-17 lead in the third quarter when linebacker Jacob Cutrera intercepted Thigpen’s pass and returned it 16 yards for a score. Rookie first-round pick Blaine Gabbert had an inconsistent outing for Jacksonville. He went 6 of 13 for 52 yards with an 11-yard touchdown pass to DuJuan Harris and an interception. Bills running back Fred Jackson backed up his off-the-field comments with a strong showing. He finished with 33 yards rushing and a 30-yard catch to cap a week that began with Jackson questioning whether the Bills disrespected him by starting C.J. Spiller in a 24-10 loss at Denver last weekend. Linebacker Paul Posluszny had six tackles in his first game against the Bills since signing with Jacksonville in free agency last month. Though Posluszny was beaten by Jackson on a 30-yard catch up the left sideline in the first quarter, he responded by stuffing Jackson for a 1-yard loss on third-and-goal from the 1 to force the Bills to settle for Lindell’s opening 21-yard field goal. Otherwise it was a comedy of errors. The Jaguars twice turned over the ball in their territory in the final 7 minutes. There was Gabbert’s interception, which led to Thigpen getting intercepted in the end zone. The Jaguars then gave back the ball two plays later. Da’Norris Searcy forced Harris to fumble, and it was recovered by Buffalo’s Michael Jasper at the Jacksonville 33 with 3:04 left. It took the Bills nine plays to final score, and on fourth-and-goal from the 4, no less. “It was a long second half,” Fitzpatrick said. “You don’t see too many preseason games go into overtime. But it was great for our guys to perform in that pressure situation. And obviously for Lindell to come through was great.” That’s all the news for today. Posted in bills-news | Comments Off
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| Jaguars Vs. Bills Final Score: Overtime Field Goal… | |
Read More: Rian Lindell (K – BUF), Ryan Fitzpatrick (QB – BUF), Buffalo Bills, Jacksonville Jaguars It took nearly 12 minutes of overtime, but the Buffalo Bills finally edged the Jacksonville Jaguars on Saturday night, 35-32. Rian Lindell nailed a 40-yard field goal with just over three minutes left in the extra frame after the Bills tied the score with under a minute to go in regulation with a touchdown and two-point conversion, setting up the always exciting preseason overtime. Ryan Fitzpatrick was solid for the Bills, completing 11 of 12 passes for 165 yards and two touchdowns. Tyler Thigpen wasn’t so solid, completing 12 of 28 passes for 101 yards, a touchdown and an interception, but did find Paul Hubbard in the end zone with time winding down to tie the game. Bruce Hall carried the ball seven times for 33 yards and a score. Steve Johnson led all receivers with four catches for 76 yards and a touchdown. David Garrard struggled for the Jags, completing 11 of 21 passes for 106 yards. Blaine Gabbert completed six of 13 passes for 52 yards, a touchdown and an interception in relief. Brock Bolen rushed for a touchdown and DuJuan Harris caught a touchdown in the loss. For more on the Bills head over to Buffalo Rumblings. For more on the Jaguars, check out Big Cat Country. Follow the rest of preseason week three at SB Nation NFL. That’s all for today guys, i’ll be back to blog you tomorrow. Posted in bills-news | Comments Off
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