Ryan Bates has eye on starting role [paywall]

[Don Otreply]

15 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Actually I think the decision to pull Bates after 1 drive at C and move Feliciano over, then keep him there for the next several games, had more to do with Jon's injury status recovering from the torn pec than with Bates vs Mongo at center.   McDermott said after the game that they'd planned to have Feliciano on a snap count, not playing the whole game.  Feliciano said it was easier for him to play center because he had help on both sides and admitted that his pec was not 100%. 

 

I think the sequence went something like this:

    Morse injured -> Bates in while concussion evaluation -> yep, concussion, Morse out for the game ->OhShit! ->can we get a whole game out of Jon? -> Bates out, Feliciano to center, Boettger in at LG

 

Note that in this hypothetical decision sequence, the Bills pretty clearly think Boettger > Bates at LG and Winters > Bates at RG

They may or may not think Feliciano > Bates at C but they clearly think OL with recovering-from-injured Feliciano somewhere > OL with uninjured Bates

 

The general fan opinion seemed to be that Winters kind of sucked at RG but PFF (for what it's worth) actually had him graded higher than Feliciano IIRC (Erik Turner had a turn-up with some folks on Twitter where he brought up a bunch of PFF line evaluation stats) 🤷‍♂️  That's clearly not how the Bills coaches saw it

 

 

I do recall that sequence, but in the end they chose a recently back from injury JF over Bates for the task, It appears SM/BD thought having a known entity and a starting O line player with center skills was the preferred choice over Bates, even though Bates could have taken snaps at center, It May as well have had a bit to do with the comfort and confidence of that selection for our QB, as he and JF seem to have established a very good chemistry early on...,