AFC Notes: Bills, Jets, Patriots

Bills

• Chris Mortensen reports that the Bills are not shopping DE Trent Murphy ahead of the trade deadline, despite his name coming up as a speculative trade candidate. 
• Bills activated CB Levi Wallace from injured reserve. (NFLTR)
• Bills promoted CB Dane Jackson, DT Brandin Bryant and S Josh Thomas to their active roster. 
• Bills placed CB Cam Lewis on injured reserve.
• Bills released TE Charles Jones from their practice squad.

Jets

Jets DT Quinnen Williams said he did not pay any attention to reports that he could possibly get traded and says he’s had a good conversation with GM Joe Douglas and HC Adam Gase regarding the rumors. 

“It was cool,” said Williams, via Mollie Walker of the New York Post. “I really didn’t see it in the media or look at it in the media. So when they told me, I was just like, ‘Bet.’ It didn’t really change how I felt about the team, how I felt about the organization, I just want to work hard and do what I can do on Sundays. They didn’t have to talk to me if they didn’t want to, I was going to go play hard Sunday like I always do.”

Jets DC Gregg Williams praised the defensive tackle for playing through a high-ankle sprain as a rookie last year and had progressed “every single game” this season. 

“I mentioned this to you last year, the guts that he had and the strength that he had to play last year with that really significant injury that he had,” Williams said. “And then this year, he’s grown every single game. He’s at the very top of our league for an interior guy in the run and pressures and hits and tackles for losses. He’s only going to continue to get better and I believe that. He stays healthy, he’s going to be really, really, really good and I’m glad he’s here, I really am.”

Patriots

Patriots HC Bill Belichick said on SiriusXM NFL Radio that they are playing more young players this year compared to other seasons due in part to their salary cap during the offseason. 

“We’re playing more young players than we’ve played in the past,” Belichick said, via Mike Reiss of ESPN. “A combination of reasons. We were pretty heavily invested in our team in the past few years. From a salary-cap standpoint, we didn’t have much flexibility at all. I think that was obvious on the Cam Newton contract. Then we had some opt-outs, so we lost some players there that would normally have been giving us significant amount of play time. And then like every year, a couple guys are banged up and we’ve missed some guys here and there in certain games. I think when you combine it all together, there is opportunity there, and some of that opportunity has gone to younger players. Again, because of our cap situation in this particular year, this is kind of the year that we’ve taken to, I would say, adjust our cap from the spending that we’ve had in accumulation of prior years. We just haven’t been able to have the kind of depth on our roster that we’ve had in some other years.”

As for the Patriots’ 2-4 record, Belichick added that New England has regressed after their strong start in the first three weeks of the season. 

“We had a good training camp, and we played pretty well the first three weeks of the season. And then I would say we regressed over the next two-and-a-half weeks for a combination of reasons. We’re trying to make that ground back up now, and more. We need to keep going forward, so that’s what we’re doing. We’re in that king of space; we’re getting better, but we need to get better faster and, like I said, make up for some lost ground we’ve had where we didn’t practicec and had multiple players playing different spots on the offensive line. Things like that, where even the experience we got, it was beneficial but it wasn’t as beneficial as it could have been,” said Belichick, via Reiss. 

• According to Ian Rapoport, Patriots CB Stephon Gilmore sustained a knee injury during practice late in the week and was subsequently ruled out of Week 8’s game against the Bills. 
• The Patriots also ruled out DB Kyle Dugger and OL Justin Herron.