I personally have some faith that the Bills will take the situation up with the league and point out “hey, our guy was trying to defuse the situation and take his buddy away, he had no reason to believe the guy shoving him was a ref, he had no intention to throw an elbow at a ref” with pics.
Hopefully they have some cred, and Epenesa will make some amends somehow and not make a habit of this.
I share your concern but I think Hughes had a years-long pattern with multiple refs that earned him ref purgatory, not just that one B word-out moment.
Jerry had a pattern to transition into a scary guy Kyle Williams called “Gary” when his fuse got lit