​In the second installment of this series, we broke down the perimeter—DJ Moore’s arrival and the three-way competition behind him on the Bills’ roster. Now we shift to the other side of the ball, where the stakes are higher and the starting point is uglier. Buffalo finished 27th in pass-rush win rate last season, and the front seven Jim Leonhard inherited hardly resembles the unit that closed out the 2025 season in Denver. Joey Bosa, A.J. Epenesa, Matt Milano, and Shaq Thompson are both gone and unsigned. What’s in place instead is a rebuilt 3-4 front stocked with fresh faces, veterans returning from injury, and, for our purposes here, some of the most consequential camp battles on the entire roster. Today we start with the three-man defensive line.
Ed Oliver suited up for only three games in 2025. Three. A biceps tear, an ankle issue, and a knee injury limited him to that handful of appearances—and here’s the part that should concern you more about the injuries than the player: he logged a sack in every single one of those games before landing on IR. When the scheme shifted and everyone assumed his $24 million cap hit would force a move, the front office chose to restructure instead—converting his base salary to a signing bonus and dropping his 2026 cap figure to $13.6 million. That change screams how Jim Leonhard views him as a starting inside defensive lineman in this 3-4 front.
Deone Walker stands out as the best story on this defense. A fourth-round rookie in 2025 who stepped in right away, he became the one true constant through the position’s injuries and earned a spot on ESPN’s All-Rookie first team. A 6’7”, 330-plus-pound nose tackle entering year two in a scheme that plays to his strengths, Walker could become the X-factor, unlocking everyone around him.
In a 3-4 front, three linemen are on the field, and the last of those three spots is currently unsettled. TJ Sanders enters camp as the frontrunner. Buffalo traded up to No. 41 in the 2025 draft to acquire him, but his rookie year was wiped out by a knee injury that put him on IR in October. This essentially marks his second rookie camp, and with the pedigree and youth he brings—and the front-office hope that he can grow into at least an above-average starter—he has a real chance to win the job. Still, he can’t afford to grow too comfortable.
Landon Jackson is entering camp with a different path to the job. The 2025 third-round pick was drafted as an edge in McDermott’s scheme, has added size, and is now moving inside to a 4i-technique in this front. Honestly, he might be a better fit at his new position than the one he was drafted to play. And then there’s Zane Durant, the fifth-round rookie out of Penn State who profiles as an Ed Oliver-like presence: undersized, explosive, and built to provide the same kind of athletic disruption Oliver offers. Durant is the immediate backup on paper, but nothing stops him from playing well enough to turn this into a true three-man competition.