AFC Notes: Bills, Dolphins, Patriots

Bills

• Bills HC Sean McDermott announced that S Micah Hyde (neck), CB Dane Jackson (neck), and DT Jordan Phillips (hamstring) have been ruled out from Week 3. (Sal Capaccio)
• McDermott said he’s still confident in his defensive secondary despite their injury issues: “I’m very confident in our football team. I know we have a number of injuries, but I’m very confident in our team and our back end in particular.” (Chris Brown)

Dolphins

• Dolphins HC Mike McDaniel said OT Terron Armstead‘s (toe) is “up in the air” for Week 3 but doesn’t require practice in order to play. (Marcel Louis-Jacques)
• Regarding the possibility of WR Cedrick Wilson (ribs) playing through his injury, McDaniel said it is difficult to perform with his issue: “Ribs are tricky because it’s hard to play football and keep them out of the equation — or breathe.” (David Furones)
• McDaniel added that Wilson will be a game-time decision for Week 3 but the receiver is eager to play: “Ced wants to play. We want him to play. We will take that up until game time.” (Barry Jackson)

• Dolphins DC Josh Boyer said that LB Andrew Van Ginkel‘s snaps have been limited given he’s recovering from an appendix removal and is in the process of regaining weight. (Barry Jackson)
• Dolphins WRs coach Wes Welker said they don’t plan on playing fourth-round WR Erik Ezukanma until they feel comfortable with how he understands the system: “We’re not going to do it [play him] until we’re comfortable with him being able to execute the way [it’s needed]… It’s not same plays every week like Texas Tech. It’s not hand signals on the sidelines.” (Barry Jackson)

Patriots

Patriots QB Mac Jones said that he pushed to add more run-pass options to their system given other teams around the league have been successful with it. 

“Other teams were doing them too around the league and having good production,” Jones said, via Zack Cox of NESN. “I think every offense has their core plays, and you don’t necessarily want your RPOs to be your core plays, which they’re not, but it’s always good to have that extra flavor you can have in there. It’s a run, it’s a pass — what is it?”

Jones added that they must continue learning how to successfully run RPOs with consistency.  

“So I think they’re always good, and we’ve just got to keep growing from them, learning how to do them and continue to figure it out early on. That’s kind of what early on in the season’s for, is figuring out what we want to do, and once we find out what really fits, then we’ll use that throughout the year.”

Jones thinks that RPOs puts stress on defenses given it forced them to focus on both the run and pass. 

“I think it puts stress on the defense,” Jones said. “I definitely learned (that) in college just watching Coach (Nick) Saban sometimes explode in practice. Just knowing he’s trying to tell somebody to do something, but his guy is running a route, but then it’s also a run. Is it a pass? There’s a lot of cool gray area there from an offensive perspective. … You can’t really ever tell if it’s an RPO or play-action sometimes, so it’s kind of an interesting play.”