AFC Notes: Sauce Gardner, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Bills, Jets, Patriots

Bills

Bills HC Sean McDermott said the team’s rookies will have to step up this year and play significant roles.

“The interesting thing is we’re going to have to depend on some of these young guys in this draft class to help us and play this year,” McDermott said, via Bills Wire. “Getting them acclimated to the life in the NFL and getting them adjusted to the NFL schemes is going to take some time.”

Bills WR Keon Coleman and S Cole Bishop both figure to line up as Week 1 starters.

“You talk about personalities – both Keon and Cole have them, but they’re different,” McDermott mused. “I’m really looking forward to getting around them and getting to know them and see what they bring onto the football field.”

Jets

Jets HC Robert Saleh may ask CB Sauce Gardner to track the opposing team’s top wide receiver this season, even if it may not be his only assignment and could be done on a game-to-game basis. 

“I’m always looking forward to the challenge,” Gardner said, via Antwan Staley of the New York Daily News. “I would like to call myself one of the best in the game, if not the best. I’m always ready to compete and challenge myself, challenge other people. I just want to do whatever it takes to help the team win. That’s what it is all about.”

“He’s a weapon we can use from the defensive standpoint, but to say it’ll be exclusive, I’m not going to say that,” Saleh said about Gardner. “But he did last year, to say he might do a little bit more that’s a possibility, but I think it’s going to be more game to game.”

Patriots

Patriots WR JuJu Smith-Schuster is fully healthy heading into his second season in New England, he says.

“It’s a big difference,” Smith-Schuster said Monday, via PFT. “It’s not easy coming off a knee injury and having a long season and coming back really short. . . . I feel great, honestly. I feel great. I’ve never felt better. I’m just excited to finally be out here around this time and participating.”

Smith-Schuster said he never got his body back to 100 percent again and said that it took a toll on his production last year.

“I’ve always wanted to just push through and play,” Smith-Schuster said. “I had some injuries that I was dealing with, and I just kept pushing through it and playing. That’s just the competitiveness in me. I don’t mind that. So this year it’s a lot different than how it was.”