Gabriel Davis is ready for a potentially explosive season

Throughout most of the 2021 regular season, I never could understand why wide receiver Gabriel Davis wasn’t getting more playing time.

Yes, the Bills had signed veteran Emmanuel Sanders, essentially to replace the departed John Brown, but as a rookie in 2020, Davis had already replaced the oft-injured Brown. He made 35 catches for 599 yards and seven TDs, then had a great 100-yard wild-card game against the Colts.

When Sanders was signed, I really thought he was going to be the outside backup to Stefon Diggs and Davis, but that wasn’t the case. Coach Sean McDermott and then offensive coordinator Brian Daboll wanted to go with Sanders’ experience in a season when the Bills were clearly all in for the Super Bowl.

In the first 13 games, Davis had only one where he was on the field for more than 20 pass snaps, and while he was on the sidelines, likely a little frustrated, he watched as the aging Sanders averaged just three catches per game.

It wasn’t until after Thanksgiving when Davis began to cut into the banged up Sanders’ playing time, and even though he missed the critical Dec. 26 game in New England because of COVID, Davis made 18 of his 35 receptions in the last five games he played including four TD grabs.

And then, well, we all saw what happened in the postseason. Davis caught a TD pass in the blowout victory over the Patriots, and then erupted in the loss to Kansas City with eight catches for 201 yards and an NFL playoff-record four receiving TDs.

Sanders is gone now, and Davis is leaving no doubt as to who Diggs’ running mate on the outside will be this season. He has added a little weight and he has looked almost unstoppable at times. In the practice at Highmark Stadium Friday, he caught a pair of TD passes plus a two-point conversion, and that was just a continuation of the great camp he was already having at St. John Fisher University.

“Ever since I came into the league, that’s the mindset I always had is just no matter what position I’m in, to be able to execute at a high level,” Davis said. “And now I’ll have a little bit more opportunity to do that. I feel like it’s going to be a fun and good year for all of us.”

Diggs loves what he has seen so far.

“I watched him put a lot of time in in the offseason, watched him hone in on the things I feel like he felt like were his weaknesses,” Diggs said. “Gabe is a hell of a player. Gabe is having a hell of a career; he stepped in there as a young guy, he was playing early. And that second year all he did was make the second-year jump to me and I wasn’t surprised by it at all. I just felt like he was just doing what he had been doing. It’s just everybody got to see it at a high level (against the Chiefs).”

Which is the best Bills’ helmet of all time?

Josh Allen created quite a social media frenzy Friday night when he trotted out of the tunnel before practice wearing the Bills’ red helmet from the Super Bowl years. For the crowd of 35,911 that was actually aware of what was happening, and the media that furiously reported on this, you would have thought Allen was carrying the Lombardi Trophy in his arms.

Look, I’m going to be 60 in October, so this might sound like old grump guy barking at the moon, but the greatest Bills’ helmet remains the white helmet with the red standing buffalo which they wore exclusively from 1962-73. End of story for me. Just a simple, clean, elegance that looks great and screams no frills Buffalo.

The Bills switched to the charging buffalo logo in 1974, and that has remained ever since. The only change has been going to the red helmet in 1984, and then back to white in 2011.

I can see why people love the red helmet, given that it was the design that was worn during the golden age of Bills football from the late 1980s through 1999. However, I might remind you that it also carried on through the first 11 seasons of the still unfathomable 17-year playoff drought before the team switched back to the white helmet in 2011.

To each his or her own on this flammable topic, and I’m sure I’m in the minority on this one, but the white helmet with the standing red buffalo is the one I’ve always loved.

What they’re saying at camp

▶ QB Josh Allen on the number of scuffles that have taken place in practice: “When you bring in the guys that we’ve brought in, there’s competition all over the place. There’s competition on their side of their ball, on our side of the ball. And then when we play against each other, guys are trying to fight for a spot on this team and things get chippy when guys are working hard and trying to beat the other guy across from them. Guys want to win, guys want to beat each other. We’ve got a lot of talkers on this team, too. So it’s been a fun camp and I appreciate the intensity from both sides of the ball.”

▶ DE Von Miller on trying to build camaraderie with his new teammates: “I don’t really like to toot my horn on a lot of stuff, especially like football wise and what I do. I try to be humble, but when it comes to being a great teammate, I’m great at that. That’s one of the best things I do in this entire world is just hanging with the guys and kicking with the guys and showing them that I genuinely care about them. I learned that from greats like Peyton Manning, DeMarcus Ware, Matthew Stafford, and Aaron Donald. All these guys who are big names, and then you get around them and they’re like one of the guys.”

▶ WR Khalil Shakir, who played at Boise State, on practicing in front of 35,911 fans Friday: “I think this is probably the most fans I’ve ever played in front of, and it’s crazy that it was a practice, right? As we’re driving in, just traffic everywhere. They said the roads were going to be shut down or something like that, and I was like, ‘Oh, it can’t be too bad. It’s a practice.’ And it just shows how hard Bills Mafia, the fans, everybody, how much love they have for this team and this community, and it’s amazing to see it.”

Getting to know … CB Dane Jackson

Almost from the moment the third-year pro stepped on an NFL field for the first time, it looked like he was right where he was supposed to be.

It was Oct. 25, 2020 at empty MetLife Stadium, and Levi Wallace and Josh Norman were both inactive due to injuries so Jackson started opposite Tre’Davious White in the Bills’ 18-10 victory over the Jets, the game in which fellow rookie Tyler Bass kicked six field goals to bail out Josh Allen and the offense.

Jackson made his first career interception that day off Sam Darnold, broke up another pass and was in on three tackles. For a seventh-round pick who nobody thought would even make the team, it was a pretty nice debut.

Then came that horrible afternoon in the desert when Jackson made his second career start because COVID wiped out part of the cornerback room including Wallace and Norman. Before Kyler Murray threw the non infamous Hail Murray touchdown pass to DeAndre Hopkins to deliver a mortifying defeat, Jackson recovered a fumble, broke up a pass and was in on eight tackles.

So when White suffered his knee injury last Thanksgiving, the Bills had no qualms starting Jackson for the remainder of the season and his performance only solidified the belief that, with White still sidelined and Wallace gone to Pittsburgh as a free agent, Jackson can handle a full-time starting role this season.

“Dane’s his own guy, I think he’s his own player,” McDermott said. “He’s extremely mature in his approach off the field. He works his butt off and he’s gonna put his own signature on the position and I think he’s off to a good start.”

Here are a few things to know about Jackson:

• He’s a pretty good hoopster: In high school, he became one of eight athletes in the Pittsburgh area to land a major college football scholarship while finishing in the top 5 in scoring on the basketball court, and four of those (Jackson, Darrelle Revis, Bruce Gradkowski and Terrelle Pryor) eventually made it to the NFL.

• Favorite athlete: LeBron James.

• Favorite movie: Hardball.

• First job: Working at a Subway sandwich shop.

• Favorite cereal growing up: Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

• Dream sporting event o attend: NBA Finals.

• If he could play another sport: Shooting guard for the Philadelphia 76ers.

Buffalo Bills birthday bio: Mike Lodish

For more than 15 years, Lodish stood alone as the answer to this trivia question: Which NFL player has played in the most Super Bowl games?

Lodish - who turns 55 on Thursday - was that man, six in all, four on the losing side for the Bills from 1991-94, and then two on the winning side for the Denver Broncos 1998 and 1999.

But then on Feb. 1, 2015, Tom Brady tied Lodish when he played in his sixth, and the quarterback soon blew past the former defensive tackle and has now played in 10. And in 2019, Lodish was tied by Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski.

“I think it’s great,” Lodish said when Brady advanced to his sixth, Super Bowl 49, the one where the Patriots lucked out and won when Seattle QB Russell Wilson threw a mind-numbing interception at the goal line in the final seconds. “How could you not think it’s great? It’s been lonely for 15 years. In a selfish way, sure I want to be the only guy.”

Another former Bill, wide receiver Don Beebe, was on six Super Bowl teams - four with Buffalo and two with Green Bay - but Beebe played in only five because he missed Super Bowl 25 with a broken leg.

Lodish was a 10th-round pick in the 1990 draft out of UCLA, and as the ultimate longshot, he earned a roster spot on a team that had already won back-to-back AFC East titles and was about to begin its four-year domination of the AFC.

A few years ago, Lodish shared a funny story with Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports about the day he was drafted. When the Bills called to say they had picked him at No. 265 overall, he said, “What the hell took you so long?”

“So everybody laughed in the background on the speaker phone,” Lodish remembered. “My second thing was, ‘Who is the defensive line coach?’ and, ‘Send me the playbook.’ My mentality was, I am going to be a part of this team and there is nothing they can do to prevent it.”

Lodish essentially took Fred Smerlas’ spot on the roster after Marv Levy released the great nose tackle after 1989. Jeff Wright became the starting nose tackle, and Lodish was his primary backup in the middle of the Bills’ 3-4 defense.

He played five years and 74 games (12 starts) for Buffalo, and while defensive statistics are sketchy, ProFootballReference.com has Lodish with 74 tackles, four sacks and three fumble recoveries. He also played in 13 Bills playoff games.

Lodish signed with Denver as a free agent in 1995 and became the Broncos starting nose tackle in 1996, playing all 16 games and making a career-best 22 tackles. After that season the Broncos cut him, but in 1997 training camp, coach Mike Shanahan brought him back because of a spate of defensive line injuries.

That led to history because Lodish would play on back-to-back Super Bowl winners thereafter before retiring after the 2000 season, finishing his career with 188 games played counting postseason. “I was in the right place at the right time,” Lodish said of his six Super Bowls. “I was very fortunate.”

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This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Gabriel Davis is ready for a potentially explosive season