5 Buffalo Bills on defense to watch in Week 2 against Tennessee Titans
Buffalo Bills Players to Watch: Christian Benford and Kaiir Elam
Just like in Week 1, the rookie cornerbacks for the Buffalo Bills are going to be players to watch. One of the big reasons is that both players may be asked to start this week as Dane Jackson was also a player who missed practice on Thursday, as he is dealing with a knee injury.
In Week 1, Christian Benford would get the start and play about 60% of the defensive snaps with Kaiir Elam rotating in and playing the rest of the defensive snaps. While Cooper Kupp had a great game, and this wasn’t overly surprising, the performance of both rookie cornerbacks was promising and the secondary as a whole did a good job limiting the other Rams’ wide receivers.
However, this week the thing to watch with these rookies this week is how they do in-run support as the Titans do try to call run plays that get Henry on the outside and force cornerbacks to come up and make open field tackles. This is usually a losing proposition for them due to Henry’s size.
If Dane Jackson is not able to play, this certainly becomes a little bit more of a concern. Jackson does a good job in supporting the run and is a good tackling cornerback. However, this was something that was a negative on Elam’s scouting report coming out of Florida and would be a downgrade from Jackson.
Last week, the Buffalo Bills were expected to be tested through the air against the Rams and they passed that test. If these five players play well, they should have an equally impressive performance slowing down Derrick Henry.
