Inside The Bills

Fan Friday 5-17

Time for the latest edition of your questions from AskChris@bills.nfl.net and on Twitter @ChrisBrownBills.

1 - Chris,

I don’t see how anybody can say that the Bills are good on the offensive line. The loss of Levitre left a gaping hole there. RT is a question mark, since Pears was injured all last year, and Eric Wood seems like he might be injury prone.

CB: I think your concerns about left guard are legitimate, but beyond that Buffalo has capable players for the starting roles and depth behind them. At tackle you have Cordy Glenn on the left and Chris Hairston on the right. Erik Pears is still limited, but when healthy more than capable himself on the right side.

Kraig Urbik is your right guard with Wood in the pivot. Depth-wise you have Zebrie Sanders as a tackle guard option once healthy. Beyond that it is a green group in terms of playing experience, but that’s the case for most of the league.

2 – Chris,

With the new high tempo offense, can we expect Doug Marrone to try to take a lead by choosing to receive this year?

Please say it is so,

Len in NYC

CB: I’ll have to ask him about that to be sure, but most NFL head coaches have found that the research shows if you choose to defer you typically wind up with the last possession of the first half. Obviously by deferring you also get the first possession of the second half. Those back-to-back possessions are seen as valuable in the eyes of many coaches. However, if your defense is substandard it might be wiser to choose to receive first if you win the toss. I’ll see if we can get an answer on coach Marrone’s philosophy on that.

3 – Hi Chris:
Now that the draft is over and we still need some positional fills, who do you  think the Bills will go after in FA to fill those voids (like OL, LB, CB)?

Thanks for delivering!
Mike from Orlando

CB: I think cornerback could prove to be the most pressing need. Buffalo has some interesting young talent at corner among the undrafteds, but there’s already a good deal of youth at the position. I wouldn’t be surprised if they added a veteran to that group at some point.

4 – Dear Chris,

My questions are about Brad Smith, I have heard he has looked good this spring as a WR. Is this his only role now or could he still be a wildcat/#3 game day QB? Will coach Marrone even employ the wildcat? If not could Smith be on the trade block at some point this off season?

Either way I wish him the best the coming season. He’s a real asset as a triple threat and that seems to be something this new staff seems to value.

I hope to hear from you soon on this as I’m sure I’m not the only fan to be wondering about Brads future here. As always GO BILLS!!!
Thanks,

Scott Kane,
Seneca,Pa.

CB: Yes, Brad Smith is strictly a receiver and a return man at this point. Based on coach Marrone’s comment on the Wildcat after the draft, I highly doubt we’ll see it as any respectable part of Buffalo’s offense.

Smith to his credit has performed well in OTA practices. He and T.J. Graham have probably benefited the most from the absence of Stevie Johnson on the practice field.

As for the trade block, I think we’re a bit ahead of the game at this point. There’s a lot of evaluation that needs to be done by this coaching staff.

5 – Hi Chris,

Firstly, thank you for your coverage. As a Bills fan since 1986 living on the other side of the world, I am more than appreciative of all informed coverage.

Two quick questions: have the Bills had talks with Brandon Moore. if not, why not?

Secondly, it is all but impossible to follow college football from here. However, I have watched Keith Pough’s highlights. Admittedly, highlights can be very misleading, but he looked terrific. Why was he not drafted? What chance does he have of making the team?

Thanks,
Jeff Wallace,
Sydney, Australia

CB: Thanks for the kind words. To my knowledge the Bills have not talked to Brandon Moore. Obviously, Bills head coach Doug Marrone knows him extremely well. He was the Jets assistant offensive line coach, who turned him from a defensive lineman to a very successful guard on the offensive side. So there’s a relationship there. At age 33, he’s probably not what the Bills are looking for knowing they want to build this roster from the ground up with players that will be here for the long haul.

However, if they do not like what they feel they are getting from the guard spot you can’t rule out the Bills making a phone call to the veteran.

As for Keith Pough, he’s a bit undersized and did not perform well at the Combine, especially when it came to his 40 time (4.87). He also played at a lower level of college competition at Howard. That doesn’t mean he can’t make an NFL roster, but it discourages NFL clubs from taking a chance on him with a draft choice. Signing him as an undrafted offers less risk. I do know that the Bills are high on him among their undrafted group.

Bills on the radio

The Bills are just firing up OTAs and players will be on the local airwaves to talk about it this morning.

Eric Wood will be on WGR 550 at 7:30 am this morning on the Howard Simon show.

Arthur Moats will be on WCMF 96.5 FM at 7:45.

Wood: “Bills not re-building”

It’s been 13-years since a playoff appearance, and nine years since the Bills have had a winning record.

But that doesn’t mean the 2013 Bills are in “rebuilding” mode, according to veteran Center Eric Wood.

He’s one of several veterans on hand this week for the team’s voluntary offseason conditioning program that started Tuesday.  And even with a new coaching staff in place, Wood rejects the notion that the 2013 Bills are starting from scratch.

“We have a lot of good players around here, “Wood said this week.  “None of us sitting in this building are expecting a rebuilding year.  I understand there are questions at the quarterback positions, and that’s the most important position on the field, but we have a lot of guys coming back on defense with a pretty exciting defensive coordinator coming in.  We’re going to be a little more aggressive offensively and try to use some of our youth up front, move around a little bit more, and do some exciting things.”

“From my standpoint, I don’t see why we would need to rebuild,” he continued.  “Am I going to sit here and predict how many games we are going to win?  No.  I haven’t even been on the field with these guys or seen what we’re going to run.”

Wood also rejects the idea that the Bills missed the boat by only signing two veteran free agents in the first three weeks of free agency.

“It’s easy to think that we didn’t do anything big in free agency, we didn’t sign the top guys,” he said.  “But last year,  we signed the two top pass rushers.  You don’t have the money to do that every year.”

“You kind of get lost in all the big names that are signed, you feel like you’re in a rebuilding stage from the media looking in,” he said.  “But from us, sitting in this building, there’s no way we think that.”

Fast paced offense coming for the Bills?

This week is the first week the Buffalo Bills new coaching staff has had to sit down with veteran players.  Three months after the staff was assembled, the players are finally on hand for the first week of the team’s Voluntary Offseason Conditioning program.

And it’s the first time Bills veterans have had to get a clue on what kind of offense new coordinator Nathaniel Hackett might have in mind.

Based on what they’ve seen the first few days, Bills players are bracing for a fast-paced offensive attack, with a heavy dose of no-huddle.

Center Eric Wood says he expects the tempo to be accelerated based on the type of offense Hackett ran at Syracuse University.

“Ive watched them (Syracuse) beat the dog out of Louisville, and they looked really good then,” Wood said this week.  “I saw them in the bowl game a little bit, too, and they looked good.”

“That’s kind of the way the league is going–New England runs a lot of up-tempo,  Peyton’s done it forever.  I’m sure we won’t be exclusively no huddle,  but we’re going to try to keep people on their heels.  I think that will put guys in more successful situations.”

Wood ready for Final Four trip

He’s a loyal alumnus of the University of Louisville.  And Bills Center Eric Wood has been following his team’s march to the Final Four for the last two weeks.

Wood appeared on The John Murphy Show two weeks ago as the Cardinals basketball team got ready for their first two games in the NCAA tournament.  He went to those games in Lexington, Kentucky.    Now he’s headed to Atlanta this weekend, to watch his team play Wichita State Saturday night, for the right to go to the Championship game on Monday.

If they beat Wichita State, Louisville will face either Michigan or Syracuse in the title game.  And he already knows which team he wants.

“I don’t want Syracuse for a fourth time,” he says, referring to Louisville’s previous three meetings with the Orange this year.  The Cardinals won two of the three.

“I was right behind the bench for the Syracuse game at Madison Square Garden,” Wood says, “and when you see their defense at floor level, it’s intimidating.  They got the long guards up front, it looks like there’s nowhere to throw the ball. I stand four inches taller than both our one and two guards. It’s a daunting task for those guys.”

Wood has also reached out to injured Louisville guard Kevin Ware.  He suffered a gruesome compound fracture of his leg in the regional final last Sunday, a broken leg similar to the one Wood suffered in 2009, in a game at Jacksonville.

“I shot him a text yesterday (Monday) and said,  ‘No need to text me back, I’ll call you in the next week.’   Just praying for him.   I told him, ‘I’m praying for you, I went through the same thing in ’09 and came back to start the next season.  There’s no doubt in my mind you will too.  Keep your spirits up, while it feels like it’s the end of the world, it’s not. You’ll come back from it.’”

Wood says he’s confident Kevin Ware will undergo a complete recovery.

“He’s in a lot better shape than I am.  There’s no doubt in my mind he’ll come back and start next year.  The first few months are extremely tough.  Your life is basically on hold for awhile.   He’ll show up in a few places a little embarrassed in a wheelchair.  It’s not a whole lot of fun, but you’ll come out the back end.  And once you do come back, you got a rod in your leg.  It’s not like an ACL or something, you’re not going to re-break your leg out there.  I was just trying to lift his spirits a little bit.”

Eric Wood ready to assume leadership

Bills Center Eric Wood is getting set for his fifth year as an anchor on the offensive line.  And with the departure of some veteran teammates via free agency, Wood says he’s ready to fill the leadership void.

Wood was a guest Friday night on The John Murphy Show.  He’s spent most of the week following his alma mater, the Louisville Cardinals, the top seed in the NCAA Basketball Championship.  But he did look ahead to the upcoming Bills season.  He told host John Murphy he expects the new Bills coaching staff will look to him to provide leadership in the locker room.

“Yeah, for sure,” he said.  “And I’m assuming that’s one of the roles this coaching staff will expect me to have. I look forward to that.”

Wood is entering the final year of his original rookie contract, but he says he’s not thinking about that as he approaches the upcoming offseason workouts.

“Hopefully I can have a deal done with Buffalo before too long, and seal up my future in Buffalo,” he said on the radio show.  “But at this point, I’m just looking forward to my fifth year in Buffalo, really feeling healthy this time of the year for the first time in a while,  and I’m doing OTAs for the first time in a while, and just really excited about this season’s going to bring.”

Wood plans on attending the Bills voluntary offseason conditioning program that begins Tuesday April 2nd.

The entire interview with Eric Wood is available here:

Wood predicted big things for Cardinals

Bills center Eric Wood is a rabid college basketball fan, especially when it comes to his own Louisville Cardinals. After celebrating the Cardinals’ Big East Tournament title on Sunday, Wood is planning to attend each of the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament to watch the Cardinals in person. Last fall, Wood was telling all his teammates and the athletic trainers how good Louisville was going to be, but no one would take him seriously.

“I told everyone at the beginning of the year what kind of team we were going to be just based on the guys coming in and the guys we had coming back,” Wood told Buffalobills.com. ”And I was hearing it from everybody when we were taking our lumps early in the year, so it’s nice to text them all now knowing the position we’re in now and how we finished the regular season.”

Wood recruiting Welker?

Bills center Eric Wood is offering to lead New England free agent WR Wes Welker on a tour of Buffalo and the team facilities should he choose to make a free agent visit to Orchard Park.

Wood did so on his Twitter account.

@weswelker let me know if you come on a visit to buffalo.. I’ll show you the ropes

— Eric Wood (@EWood70) March 13, 2013

It’s unclear if a slot receiver is a ‘want’ by Buffalo, knowing they’d ideally like to move Stevie Johnson inside and get a big wideout to line up outside. At the same time landing Welker would also be a huge subtraction from New England and even at age 31 he’s still an elite wideout.

Wood invited to Pro Bowl by HS teammate

Bills center Eric Wood wasn’t named to the AFC Pro Bowl roster, but was invited by a former high school teammate.

Minnesota TE Kyle Rudolph, who was named to the NFC squad as a replacement for Atlanta’s Tony Gonzalez, invited his former high school teammate to Hawaii. Unfortunately Wood was unable to go.

I was honored that @kylerudolph82 wanted to bring me to the Pro Bowl with him and pissed I can’t make it. Have a blast Rudy and ball out!

— Eric Wood (@EWood70) January 24, 2013

Wood and Rudolph both attended Elder high school in Cincinnati. Wood was a senior when Rudolph was a freshman.

Levitre doesn’t call himself elite… yet

Andy Levitre is a pretty humble player. He’s supremely confident in his abilities and believes his game is better now than it was two years ago, when it was still pretty good. But Levitre, who discussed his free agency in Bills Focus today, is far from satisfied with his personal game.

“I feel like I’ve come a long way in the last couple of years, but you never feel like you’ve… there’s always something you can work on or fine tune,” Levitre said. ”There’s always some footwork you can get better at or some technique you can do a little bit better. I think it’s just continually fine tuning those things to help make you a really good player.”

Levitre admitted that Eric Wood has already been recruiting him to re-sign with the Bills. They also share the same agent.

“He obviously expressed to me that he wants me back, but he obviously understands the business side of it,” said Levitre. ”And we’ve developed a good relationship over these last few years and we’re right next to each other on the line and we do a good job of communicating with each other and we understand each other a lot. So it makes it a lot easier going out there on Sunday and playing with a guy that you’ve been around for a long time.”

Players maintain they’re a better team

They know they don’t have the wins to prove it, but the men in Buffalo’s locker room believe they are a better club than they’ve been the past two seasons.

“It’s really hard to sit here and tell you guys that we got better, and that we need to keep the same guys because we can make a playoff push with this team,” said Eric Wood. ”It’s tough to say that from a record standpoint. If you turn on the film, we won two more games than 2010, but if you turn on the film, it should look a lot different. It’s tough to analyze from a win standpoint, because we’re out of the playoffs, and whenever you’re out of the playoffs, it doesn’t really matter what your record is. It’s a disappointing season from that standpoint.” 

“We can play well, we can put good games together,” said Kyle Williams. “We can do things on offense—we can do things on defense. It’s frustrating to look back on it and know that there were games there.  There are a lot of games that we were close in, and there were two in particular that we lost on the last play. It is frustrating. It’s a disappointment. All I know is to get as healthy and I can and prepare and look to next year, and have the best season I’ve ever had. That’s all I can prepare for.”

Wood worried what losses will bring

Bills center Eric Wood played the entire game on Sunday at Miami just two weeks removed from suffering a torn MCL. He said he came through the game okay health-wise. It’s just his pride that was hurt. With the team now making it three straight seasons with at least 10 losses Wood believes it will cost people their jobs.

“It stinks that we’re not winning, and a lot of people are going to lose their jobs because of it,” Wood said after the game. “That’s the reality of this league. When you don’t win, you’re not going to play with the same group year after year. We have a talented team. We play hard. We just don’t always play well, and that’s frustrating.

“I definitely feel like we’ve taken a step forward this year in our play. But when you lose the same number of games, then it’s tough to say that. You can turn on the film and see we’re better than last year or the year before. But when you don’t win games, you can’t justify it.

“I hate to start over, and that’s not what I want. But when you lose this many games, I understand change happens and it’s going to happen at some positions. That’s just the way the league works. I hope for zero change, I appreciate the guys that we have and I think we can win with this group. But just the reality of the league is, when you lose this many games, something obviously is going to happen.”

Wood to start

Eric Wood will get the start at center today, but a close eye should be kept on him.

Wood is just two weeks removed from a York MCL. The right kind of hit or pile up on his left leg could make life difficult for Wood to power through an finish the game.

One thing that can’t be debated is his commitment to his team and winning.

Chan encouraged about Wood playing Sunday

It’s looking more and more promising that Bills starting center Eric Wood will be able to play in Sunday’s game at Miami.

Just two weeks removed from sustaining a torn MCL against Jacksonville, Wood has made an impressive recovery. Though he is listed as questionable he practiced all week, and though his practice time was limited he did take most of the first team reps at center this week.

“Eric we’re going to list as questionable,” said head coach Chan Gailey. “He did a lot of work again today. We still need to list him there just in case there’s a flare up between now and game time, but I’m very encouraged.”

When asked if he got most of the first team snaps during the practice week, Gailey indicated that Wood did.

“He got most of it, especially the last two days,” said Gailey.

Positive signs for Chandler, Wood

Scott Chandler was back on the practice field Thursday after missing Wednesday’s practice with a foot problem. Even more encouraging Eric Wood practiced for a second straight day as he tries to return from a torn MCL. Head coach Chan Gailey was encouraged by the progress of both players.

“It was good. I wasn’t sure we were going to have him this early,” said Gailey. :It was great to have him back out there. He and Eric Wood are a big part of our offense. We need both of them so it was good to have both of them.”

Gailey confirmed that Wood did more in practice Thursday than he did on Wednesday.

“It’s looking positive at this point,” Gailey said.

Wood participating in practice

Eric Wood, just two weeks removed from a torn MCL is back on the practice field here Wednesday.

Wood is expected to be limited today, but intends to do more Thursday.

“I’m going to do some stuff today and hopefully tomorrow get a full workload,” Wood said.

We’ll have more on Wood’s likelihood of playing Sunday on the home page of Buffalobills.com later this afternoon.

Teammates congratulate Urbik

Bills teammates were taking to Twitter to congratulate guard Kraig Urbik after he re-signed with the club.

Center Eric Wood was the latest to do so.

Congrats to a great friend and a great player @kraigurbik on his contract extension. Well deserved!

— Eric Wood (@EWood70) December 18, 2012

Wood has chance to play Sunday

Center Eric Wood, who has been out the last two games with a torn MCL has a chance to return Sunday at Miami.

That according to head coach Chan Gailey.

“He has a shot,” said Gailey of Wood’s chances of playing Sunday. “He won’t practice Wednesday, but he may do some things Thursday and we’ll see from there.”

Barnett, Wood not practicing

Eric Wood had already been declared out for Sunday’s game with a torn MCL, but Nick Barnett is missing his second straight day of practice.

Barnett is dealing with a knee injury.

On the positive side Mark Anderson is practicing for a second straight day.

3 non-participants at practice

Here at Friday’s practice there are just three non-participants.

Eric Wood, Mark Anderson and LB Chris White are not participating. White has not been on the injury report all season. We’ll find out if his absence today is injury related when we talk to head coach Chan Gailey following practice.