Cole Beasley elevated for Bills-Dolphins Week 15 battle

The Buffalo Bills officially eleveated wide receier Cole Beasley from the practice squad to the active roster just four hours ahead of their Week 15 Saturday night game with the Miami Dolphins.

Beasley rejoined the Bills on Monday after he spent the offseason shopping for a new team. While Beasley ultimately landed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he admitted that it wasn’t quite the right fit, which resulted in his decision to retire.

However, with Buffalo experiencing a slew of ankle injuries among their reciving corps that has left them with just four recievers on their 53-man roster, Beasley reached out to the Bills’ front office saying he was interested in returning to the game if they were interested in having him back.

In a Brett Favre-like move, Beasley unretired on Monday and was added to the Bills’ practice squad — and it was all smiles when he hit the practice field.

Now, with just three days of practice in the past two months, Beasley has been called up to the Bills’ game day roster.

A team is allowed to call a practice-squad player up to their game day roster three times over the course of a regular season. Although Beasley was on the Bucs’ practice squad, those evlevations won’t count towards the three elevations that Buffalo is allowed.

With today’s game, the Bills have four games remaining in the regular season, so they will either have to play one game without their newest slot-receiver or will have to add him to the 53-man roster at some point. However, once the postseason begins, the counter resets to zero and there is no limit on the number of times a player can be elevated over the course of the playoffs.

This could mean that Buffalo may choose to have Beasley sit out one (or more) game over the next four weeks rather than try to conduct any roster gymnastics to keep the slot receiver with the team, knowing that they wll have unlimited chances to put him in uniform once the playoffs start.

It’s important to note that wide receiver John Brown, the other former Bill who was reunited with the team via a practice-squad assignment just a few weeks ago, was not elevated for today’s game. Brown has already been elevated twice, leaving the team with just one more chance to call up the veteran receiver before either having to put him on the 53-man roster or wait for mid-January to call on his services again.