The Buffalo Bills now have more clarity on what their defensive line will look like come the season opener against the New York Jets.
They will be without Von Miller, and they will move forward without Boogie Basham.
On Tuesday, the league’s cut-down play, the Bills placed Miller on the reserve/physically unable to perform list. They also traded Basham and a 2025 seventh-round pick to the New York Giants for a 2025 sixth-round pick.
Miller, who tore his ACL last November, will be ineligible for the first four games: at the Jets, versus the Las Vegas Raiders, at the Washington Commanders and versus the Miami Dolphins. He will be eligible to return off the physically unable to perform list when the Bills play the Jacksonville Jaguars in London Week 5.
Basham, 25, was a second-round pick in 2021. In two seasons with Buffalo, he played 23 games, compiling just 4.5 sacks, eight quarterback hits, 37 tackles, one interception and one fumble recovery.
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The pass rushers’ room had grown crowded for the Bills. They drafted Basham the same year they selected Greg Rousseau in the first round, and both arrived a year after drafting A.J. Epenesa in the second round.
Bills pass rusher A.J. Epenesa had 6.5 sacks last season.
After Basham’s rookie year, the Bills brought in Miller. This offseason, they added veteran Leonard Floyd. Veteran Shaq Lawson and Kingsley Jonathan round out the edge rushers.
Basham will find some familiar faces with the Giants. General Manager Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll were with Buffalo for Basham’s rookie season.
“He’s a young player that has good size,” Daboll told Giants reporters Tuesday. “He’ll be in the outside linebacker room, and we’ll get him here and start working with him and put him in our system. Our system is a little bit different than Buffalo’s system, so we’ll get him out here in the field, and (outside linebackers coach) Drew (Wilkins) will start working with him and try to get him up to speed.”
While Daboll saw Basham in practice in the year they overlapped, he pushed back on the idea that it will be an instantaneous acclimation. He used former-Bills wide receiver Isaiah Hodgins as a contrast to Basham.
“I’d say it’s a new system for (Basham),” Daboll said. “Let’s just go back and talk about Hodgins for a minute, right? He was really in our system, understood our terminology, kind of pretty seamless transition.
“This is just acquiring another player from a different roster with a different – we know the player a little bit, the person and stuff like that but, again, he’s got to learn a whole new defensive scheme, so it’s probably a little bit different situation than, like say, Isaiah.”
Last year, the Bills also traded away a former second-round pick in offensive lineman Cody Ford. Ford’s trade netted a 2023 fifth-round pick.
With Miller on PUP, the Basham trade signals confidence in Epenesa, who is entering a contract year. Epenesa had 6.5 sacks last year, third most on the Bills, along with 10 quarterback hits, seven tackles for loss, five passes defensed and two forced fumbles.
The Bills had 40 total sacks last season, with eight from Miller and two from Basham. Rousseau had eight to tie Miller for the team’s lead, and he did so in 13 games.
In May, Miller said he did not have an ideal time in mind to return to practice. Instead, being available for late in the season was more important.
“No, I don’t. I did in 2013, when I tore my ACL, I wanted to be here,” Miller said. “I wanted to get back as fast as possible and play and show guys you don’t need to take nine months to recover from ACL. But goals are different now.
“I want to be here for my team when they need me the most. And I felt like late in the season when (expletive) really got tough, I wasn’t able to be there because I was injured. So the most important thing for me is just to be available when my team really needs me.”
Prior to his injury, Miller had eight sacks, 12 quarterback hits and 21 tackles in 11 games. The future Hall of Famer has 123.5 regular-season sacks in his career, and another 10.5 in 11 playoff games.
General Manager Brandon Beane has echoed Miller’s mindset that the long term is the priority for the 34-year-old linebacker.
“We want to make sure he’s ready for the long haul,” Beane said on the first day of training camp. “We don’t want to rush him too much. He’s in a great headspace, he’s torn an ACL before, he’s a genetic freak to be honest with you. He really is. I can’t give you a day or anything like that. ... But he’s doing great, he’s hitting all his markers. To this point, there’s been no setbacks.”
