Head coach Sean McDermott discussed the health of the wide receiver group on Thursday, the last day of OTAs for the Buffalo Bills this week. McDermott revealed that Zay Jones underwent surgery on his knee sometime “late last week.”
There is no firm timetable set but the injury is expected to sideline Jones throughout “the rest of the spring.” It is unclear if McDermott was referring to the spring OTAs or the entire offseason, which will come to a close on June 20th. When asked if the anticipation would be for a longer recovery time, McDermott indicated he has no concern with Jones missing the entire season “at this point.” No information about the specific injury was offered. With an estimated return time leaning toward a few weeks, Bills fans have some reason for cautious optimism.
The Bills’ current number one receiver Kelvin Benjamin was also mentioned in health news. McDermott reported that Benjamin is “practicing fully” with a “clean bill of health.” Benjamin was characterized as “off to a good start.”
This Jones news would naturally lead some to think about free agent wide receivers. Perhaps it has changed, but general manager Brandon Beane didn’t seemed thrilled by the available pool at the end of April but most of these names are still available.
“Dez [Bryant] is a very good player,” said Beane when asked about Bryant. “Is he the same player he was five years ago? Probably not, but he can still play in this league and still help a team. I’ve never personally met Dez, so we would have to bring him in and visit with him and see if he was a fit. We were generally focused on what we were going to get in the draft before looking at that. So it’s something we’ll talk about, but that’s probably as far as I could say right now.”
”And I do think there could still be guys out there. You know, I mentioned a couple times (Jeremy) Maclin and (Eric) Decker last year came out there. What happens is, teams look at what they drafted and they say, ‘yeah, you know what, I don’t want to pay this guy $5 million or $6 million, I just drafted a guy that I want to get on the field anyhow.’ “