The Buffalo Bills face a crucial game against an AFC East opponent on Sunday, and while the 6-2 Bills go into Miami as heavy favorites against the struggling, 2-7 Dolphins, the Bills cannot afford a letdown with first place in the division on the line.
Thursday brought some news about one of their most important players, one who has been suffering from an ankle injury, and whether he will be able to play against Miami.
The New England Patriots, on the strength of a six-game winning streak that includes a Week 5 victory over the Bills, currently hold the top spot in the division. But the Patriots face one of their toughest tests of the season when they play on the other coast of Florida against the 6-2, NFC South-leading Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Bills Passing Attack Has Been Mediocre
If Buffalo can hold on against Miami, and New England fails to pull off the upset in Tampa Bay, the Bills would emerge from the weekend back on top of their division and back on course in their “Super Bowl or Bust” season.
The problem for the Bills is the same one they have struggled with all season. Despite having the reigning NFL MVP in Josh Allen at quarterback, they continue to falter in the passing game. With 1,792 yards in the air, the Bills rank 16th in the 32-team league â the very definition of mediocre.
They haven’t been much better when it comes to aerial touchdowns â in fact, they’ve been worse, ranking 20th with just 13 in eight games.
League Leading Rusher Injured
So how have the Bills been getting it done? With the running game.
Buffalo leads the NFL with 1,292 rushing yards. Allen himself is responsible for 280 of those yards on the ground. But that puts him a distant second on the team behind fourth-year running back James Cook, who leads the NFL with 108.4 yards per game, and 5.7 yards per rushing attempt.
Cook alone has rushed for 867 yards, or two of every three yards gained on the ground for the Bill this year, and good enough for a close second in the league behind the Indianapolis Colts’ Jonathan Taylor (895).
But alarms went off for the Bills Sunday when Cook suffered an ankle injury in the second quarter of Buffalo’s victory of the arch-rival Kansas City Chiefs.
Cook Returns, Predicted to Play Sunday
The concern for Cook only grew worse when the 2022 second-round draft pick out of Georgia sat out of Wednesday’s practice due to the injury.
But the Bills got some encouraging news when Cook returned to practice Thursday, though his participation was listed as “limited” on the team’s daily injury report.
A leading sports injury expert, Florida physician and regenerative medicine specialist Dr. Jesse Morse, stated bluntly that Cook should be fully ready to play on Sunday
“Weâre going to chalk up yesterday to a vet rest day,” Morse wrote Thursday on his social media account. “Despite a DNP yesterday with an ankle, it appears that Cook got lucky and didnât suffer the high-ankle or medial ankle sprain that some were concerned about. Iâm expecting him to play in Week 10 with no limitations.”
Morse, of course, was not in attendance at Bills practice Thursday, but someone who was â WGRZ-TV sports director Jon Scott â reported that Cook “seemed to move better as things went along.”
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