The Buffalo Bills had a busy Tuesday afternoon, and at this point in the season, they brought in quite an intriguing new member of the 53-man roster.
According to multiple reports, the Bills have signed tight end Logan Thomas off of Detroit's practice squad -- who had been with the Lions all of one day. Thomas, a former tight end at Virginia Tech who switched to quarterback while at college, entered the NFL as a quarterback and spent time with both the Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins over the past two years.
Peter Schrager of FOXSports.com was the first one to report the signing.
Thomas, 25, is listed at 6-foot-6 and 250-pounds, and finally made the decision to switch to tight end this past weekend. He likely takes the spot on the 53-man roster of the suspended offensive lineman Seantrel Henderson, who will be placed on the reserve/suspended list.
The Bills also placed two regular contributors on Injured Reserve on Tuesday. Wide receiver Walt Powell and defensive lineman Corbin Bryant are now both done for the season. Powell was carted off the field on Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars due to an ankle injury, while Bryant has missed the last three games due to a shoulder injury.
The Bills promoted two players off of their practice squad with the two open spots: wide receiver Dez Lewis and defensive lineman Deandre Coleman. Lewis now has his second stint on the active roster after being promoted late in the 2015 season as well. Lewis is a 2015 seventh-round draft pick of the Bills.
Coleman is a 6-foot-5, 341-pound nose tackle that spent previous time with the Dolphins during the 2014 and 2015 seasons. The Bills have yet to fill those two open spots on the practice squad.
Joe B's Take
As late season signings go, it doesn't get much more intriguing than bringing in a super-athletic project of a tight end like Logan Thomas. You simply cannot ignore his blend of size and speed, which is why the Bills moved as quickly as they did to sign him on to their active roster Tuesday.
They don't know anything about Thomas as a tight end -- and neither did the Lions, but they would rather find out for themselves with an open roster spot and a void with the team's third tight end. Since Chris Gragg went down with a torn ACL this summer, the Bills have had a rotating third tight end on the roster for the past few months -- mostly filled by players like Gerald Christian and Manasseh Garner, but neither really stood out.
Unless there is an injury to the tight end position over the next couple of weeks, I wouldn't expect to see Thomas active on game day while they teach him how to be a tight end at the NFL level. If things go awry over the next few weeks, I could conceivably see him getting some time on the field just to see him in game action -- but that would be a worst case scenario and only if the Bills are out of the playoff race.
Still, the Bills have him on their active roster with an entire offseason to develop him in the hopes that they just found a steal of a tight end.
As for the other two moves, Dez Lewis is getting another chance on the active roster to show he has learned from his mistakes of the summer in practice settings, but his role will likely be minimal on game days -- if he's even active.
Coleman is a big body that can be a fill-in nose tackle for Marcell Dareus if need be, but even if active, he would receive a minimal amount of time on the field. He has a shot to be active this weekend against Oakland, merely because of Dareus' current ordeal with abdominal pain.
All in all, they made three moves on Tuesday with an eye towards 2017. As the injuries have piled up, that's a smart course of action at this point of the season.
