BuffaLowDown
Fansided

Buffalo Bills Training Camp: July 31st Thoughts

By Cam Boon

facebooktwitterreddit

Buffalo Bills Training Camp: July 31st Thoughts

The 2015 edition of Buffalo Bills Training Camp kicked off on July 31st with a 10 am session at St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, NY. Here are three things to take away from the first session:

1) Running backs impressed as expected

More from Buffalo Bills News

LeSean McCoy made his way to Buffalo in the offseason with a goal to take the Bills to the playoffs. He impressed in his first day of Camp, with his highlight not coming from rushing but a catch. He leaped up to make a spectacular grab with one hand, much to the pleasure of the Bills faithful who were in line as early as 8:30 to get into their seats.

Fred Jackson also impressed on the day, making a couple nice plays out of the backfield and showing that same vision that he’s known to have on screen passes. His highlight came in the play after McCoys catch, in which he completely juked Manny Lawson out of his shoes, as Jackson faked a cut and left the defensive lineman frozen.

2) EJ takes early lead over Cassel, other

As expected, the main focus was on the quarterbacks and there was plenty of drills to showcase their talents (or misthrows) in front of the crowd. Throughout it all, EJ Manuel showed he has matured heading into 2015, taking a narrow lead in my mind over the other three competitors. Manuel had a few beautiful throws to Robert Woods, Sammy Watkins and a Percy Harvin ball that should have been caught but was dropped (not the only for Harvin on the day.)

Matt Cassel hit more players, but numerous receivers had to slow down to catch his throws, something that is less than impressive for a player who learned from the likes of Tom Brady for a while. Tyrod Taylor was missing pretty much every target he threw to, whether it was underthrowing Marquise Goodwin to the point where the receiver tried catching it behind his back, or overthrowing him to the point where even he could not catch up with it.

3) Rookies thrown to the wolves, and impressing

John Miller, a guard out of Louisville, and Ronald Darby, a corner out of Flordia State, were both practicing with their respective first units on Friday and both performed well.

Miller was matched up against two of the best tackles in the league in Marcell Dareus and Kyle Williams, and did a fine job opening holes for McCoy, while also running well in the flat when blocking for screens.

Darby did well on Woods and Harvin, with two impressive plays. The former Seminole went up for a jump ball and impressively came down with the ball in bounds.

Darby also covered Harvin on a slant route and swarmed to the ball, almost striping it free from the veteran speedster.

Other notes from Twitter:

Next: Buffalo Bills circling the wagons: EJ Manuel & Matt Cassel

More from BuffaLowDown

Home/Buffalo Bills News