Buffalo Bills: Breaking down the snap counts in Week 17

These are the snap counts for the Buffalo Bills in Week 17.

The expectation was that even though the Buffalo Bills had some uncertainty about what seed they would be, they were going to rest a number of starters. The fact that they could not fall lower than third, it didn’t make sense to open key players up to potentially suffering an injury that would force them to miss time during the playoffs.

The coaching staff did elect to rest some players but also had a number of starters play longer than most expected. It made this week’s snap counts interesting and these are a few takeaways from this past week.

Buffalo Bills Offense

The Bills had three players play every snap, all of which came on the offensive line. The team had starting right tackle Daryl Williams, starting center Mitch Morse, and starting left guard Ike Boettger on the field for 100% of the snaps. Meanwhile, Jon Feliciano and Dion Dawkins played 55% of the snaps and were replaced by Brian Winters and Ryan Bates.

As for Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs, they played more than most expected being on the field for 55% and 48% respectively. This week also marked the return of starting receiver John Brown who played 47% of the snaps.

Buffalo Bills Defense

The coaching staff rotated players more on the defensive side of the ball as there was only one player who played more than 70% of the snaps, which was cornerback Dane Jackson who played 89%. After Jackson was A.J. Epenesa who played 69% of the snaps, which was a season-high, and Josh Norman who played 58% of the snaps.

The Bills also were able to get some players on the field that haven’t played much on the defensive side much recently starting with Trent Murphy. The former starting defensive end has been inactive since Week 10 but this week against the Dolphins played 53% of the snaps while Tyler Matakevich, who has primarily played special teams, played 47% of the snaps.

The fact that there was no preseason this year, this game gave the coaching staff an opportunity to get a majority of their players onto the field and some live game snaps which could be a big benefit if the need arose during the playoffs.