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Even as the Buffalo Bills move away from a traditional 4-3 defense in favor of a multiple-front look under new defensive coordinator Mike Pettine, the team is looking to retain one if its key pass rushers. Per Tim Graham of The Buffalo News, who cites a source, the Bills want to re-sign defensive end Kyle Moore this off-season.
Moore, 26, emerged as a quality rotational pass rusher in 2012 after spending the latter part of the 2011 season on the team's practice squad. Inactive for the first four regular season games last season, the former 2009 fourth-round draft pick out of USC became a nice complement to Mario Williams as a pass rusher, where his three sacks don't quite tell the whole story of just how pleasant a surprise he was.
Where Moore struggled, however, was in defending the run; he made some improvements in that regard in the middle portions of the season, but when teams started gashing Buffalo with the read-option, Moore was benched briefly in favor of Shawne Merriman thanks to his poor run game performance. The 6'6", 272-pound Moore has upside in this area, but he's clearly a one-dimensional player at this point in his career.
Still, that dimension - the ability to rush the passer - ranks among the most coveted commodities in the league today. Knowing that he'd be returning to Buffalo as a situational player behind Williams and probably Mark Anderson, the real question is whether Moore will get a look as a potential starter if he hits the open market when free agency begins in March. If it gets to that point, the Bills may have a hard time retaining Moore's services.
It's also worth pointing out, as Graham does in his report, that Moore recently had arthroscopic knee surgery. That's considered a minor procedure, and it's only expected to lay him up in any way for a few weeks, but it's still something to keep in mind.