The Buffalo Bills’ Super Bowl hopes were dealt a tough blow on Wednesday afternoon when it was revealed that Von Miller tore his ACL and will now miss the remainder of the NFL season.
During his press conference on Wednesday, Bills’ head coach Sean McDermott announced that Miller underwent exploratory surgery on Wednesday, and during the procedure, the doctors discovered that Miller had, in fact, torn his ACL.
Buffalo had been preparing to be without Miller for the next three games, but they will now have to transition to replacing him for the long term. That means more snaps for Greg Rousseau and Shaq Lawson, who led the defensive ends last week, as well as A.J. Espensa and Boogie Basham.
Miller posted a video on his Instagram account, telling Bills fans that he was good and, mentally, “couldn’t be in a better spot.” He urged people not to feel sorry for him and explained that he was “excited for the opportunity to show my teammates how tough I am, how hard I work, and how important this [is] to me.”
Despite Miller’s optimistic outlook, it’s a brutal blow for a Buffalo team that has dealt with injuries on the defensive side of the ball all season long. In fact, they have used 11 different defensive starting lineups, all due to injury. Only five teams in the NFL have used more different combinations.
The Bills are the only one of those teams that are above .500, so they’ve weathered the storm up until now, but the question is just how much longer they will be able to.
We covered a couple of weeks back how it will be hard for the team to truly replace Miller, but the Bills have invested major assets in this defensive end group over the years. Epenesa was a second-round pick in the 2020 draft, Rousseau was a first-round pick in 2021, and Basham was a second-round pick in 2021, so the team has taken the time to spend to build up at the position.
Now, as Sean McDermott said in his press conference, “it’s time for guys to step up.”
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