Jordan Poyer recalled some old advice in coming to terms with the fact he was not selected to the NFL Pro Bowl this week.
“I remember my baseball coach when I was younger in high school,” Poyer said after the Bills’ practice on Wednesday. “I had a bad game and he came up to me afterward and said, ‘I want you to remember this forever. The word WIN – it’s an acronym - What’s Important Now.’
“Just basically control what you can control,” Poyer said. “You had a bad game or you didn’t reach your goal. What’s important now? And what’s important now is I’m still here. We still have a lot of football left to be played. We still have everything in front of us. That’s what’s important now. It’s not going to change who I am as a person, who I am as a player.”
There’s no doubting the importance of Poyer’s role in the Bills’ defense.
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The 29-year-old leads all NFL safeties with 113 tackles this season. His consistency has been a key to the Bills’ defensive success the past four years.
Poyer had 104 tackles last year (fourth best in the AFC), and he has 409 over the past four years. That’s the most by a Bills safety in any four-year stretch since Steve Freeman had 441 from 1983 to 1986.
"He's a Pro Bowler in our book,” said Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White. “He knows he's a Pro Bowl, All-Pro-caliber player. He don't need others' validation of what he's done to verify who he is. His play speaks for itself."
Poyer said the same.
“I’ve had some time to think about it,” he said. “Honestly, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. But at the same time, I know what I bring to this team. I know what I bring to the table.”
As his statistics in Buffalo show, tackling always has been a Poyer strength. He said it was a renewed point of emphasis this year.
“One of my goals this offseason was to be a better tackler than I have been in previous years,” he said. “It’s on my mirror and it’s No. 2: Be a better tackler.”
No. 1 on his mirror list was win the Super Bowl.
Poyer is only 191 pounds. But the Bills ask him to play near the line of scrimmage a lot, and they ask him to blitz a lot. He rushes the quarterback on average 3.7 times a game, up slightly from last year.
“A lot having to do with tackling is a mindset,” Poyer said. “I like to play fast. I try to play as physical as I can. At the end of the day, it’s a want-to, a mindset to get another human being on the ground.”
New England coach Bill Belichick threw praise at both Poyer and fellow safety Micah Hyde on a call with Buffalo media in preparation for Monday night’s game in Foxborough, Mass.
“They aren’t underrated by me,” Belichick said. “I’ve talked about them ever since they got there. I’m on the record plenty on that. They do a good job. They disguise really well, they’re smart players, they’re productive in the run game and passing game. They do a nice job of coordinating the defense. They play well together, they’ve had a lot of continuity back there. They do a great job of playing at the second level of the defense but also inserting down in the defense and blitzing and creating problems and negative plays.”
Poyer had a team-high 11 tackles in the Nov. 1 win over New England. The Patriots run the ball 52% of the time, the second highest rate in the NFL.
“It’s going to be a physical game,” Poyer said. “It’s going to be one of those cold, late December games. There’s going to be some snot bubbles coming out of the facemask type of game.”
Poyer was beaten out for the Pro Bowl by Pittsburgh’s Minkah Fitzpatrick, Kansas City’s Tyrann Mathieu and Denver’s Justin Simmons. They’re all good players. Simmons was the third pick, and he’s arguably the one Poyer deserved to beat out. Simmons has 89 tackles for a 5-9 team that has a defense ranked lower than that of the Bills.
Poyer said he appreciated the support he received after the all-star team was announced.
“It’s been nothing but love from the whole Bills Mafia and my teammates and coaches,” he said. “I don’t even know how to put it into words. Just to see coaches text me, family and friends text me. I couldn’t even open Twitter without having hundreds of mentions of people saying I should have made it.”
