EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsCall it a not-so-mad scramble.The Buffalo Bills lost defensive lineman Ed Oliver and wide receiver DJ Moore to injury before and during their 41-31 win over the Detroit Lions on Thursday night. As coach Joe Brady told reporters on Friday, the team will slow-play the evaluation process with both Oliver and Moore.The Bills don't return to the practice field until Sept. 23, and as such Brady said he's holding off on rushing judgments or prognoses on the two starters until the team can see what rest does for them.Moore is considered day-to-day with a shoulder injury sustained in the second quarter of the win over Detroit that's not considered serious, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter.Oliver, meanwhile, didn't play against Detroit. He sustained the hip injury just minutes before the pregame deadline for players to be ruled inactive. Brady said Friday that Oliver was in the training room getting evaluated about three minutes before the deadline came, which forced the Bills to make a quickfire choice about one of their cornerstone defensive linemen."If it was normal maybe you'd have an hour or so to run some tests and see what happens," Brady said. "We didn't have that time. We just had to make the decisions."Bills defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard described Oliver -- who's logged 30 sacks and 57 TFLs across eight seasons in Buffalo, but missed 14 games last year with injuries -- as a player you build a gameplan around. Removing his presence from the gameplan barely an hour before kickoff creates a scramble, but not one Leonhard would describe as "frantic."Leonhard said the minutes following Oliver's deactivation consisted of meetings with defensive position coaches to strategize not just who'd replace Oliver in certain packages, but also conversations about what the domino effect in the rotations would be and which packages needed to be eliminated entirely."It's not necessarily just one chess piece away," Leonhard said. "It's a couple moves away that we'd have some deviations. Just trying to go through all the scenarios of what can happen and make sure all the depth and the rotations are going to be in a situation to allow you to play 45 snaps or 85 snaps. That's the uncertainty; you never know how the game is going to play out."The Bills return to action in Week 3 with a home game against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sept. 27.
