Buffalo Bills: Predicting the snap counts on the revamped defensive line

Defensive End (Backups)

This is where the rotation should get interesting, there are four quality players on the edge for the Buffalo Bills, meaning that there will be two backups who will have a significant impact.

Trent Murphy who was a starter last season will still command a good amount of snaps off the left side, while recent second round selection A.J. Epenesa should see his snaps increase as the year goes on, when he starts to gain McDermott’s trust.

Buffalo carried two backups last season in Shaq Lawson and Darryl Johnson, which isn’t greatly dissimilar to this season’s rotation.

The one main difference is Epenesa is far superior as a player than Darryl Johnson in many aspects of the game. Epenesa can be relied on heavily in the run game, while Johnson was a sieve in defending it and teams would actually audible to his side whenever he was on the field.

With Buffalo most likely going with four defensive ends this season, Darryl Johnson will most likely be the odd man out if Murphy is not cut.

Trent Murphy

The leader in snaps last season along the defensive line (65.06% of snaps), will in all likeliness see a significant drop in snaps for 2020.

With Murphy not expected to start in 2020, he will start the season as the primary backup on the left side and will be slated ahead of Epenesa to start the year.

I could see Murphy getting somewhere similar to the snaps Shaq Lawsons accumulated last season, somewhere in the mid 40 percent range should be expected.

A.J. Epenesa

McDermott has had rookies at defensive end with past teams and has handled them similarly. Kony Ealy was a second round pick in 2014 by the Carolina Panthers and should have a comparable role to Epenesa.

Ealy played in 35.12% of the defensive snaps and was consistent all year in his usage. He was the fourth defensive end as well, which will be similar to Epenesa.

Darryl Johnson as the fourth defensive end last season, played a solid role in his first seven games where he took 29.6% of the snaps on defense.

Envisioning a different role for Epenesa due to his ability to lineup at the three-technique, he should be able to out snap the two players above.

At defensive end Epenesa should be similar to Ealy in the mid 30 percent range and his flexibility on passing downs to line up inside could see him somewhere in the mid to low 40s percent.