Big opportunity for 'Buffalo Joe' Andreessen as Buffalo Bills take on New England Patriots

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (WKBW) — Get ready for a heavy dose of Joe Andreessen on Sunday when the Buffalo Bills close the regular season against the New England Patriots.

"He'll play quite a bit this week," head coach Sean McDermott said. "I'm excited to watch him, he's a good football player."

"It's super important to get live snaps," Andreessen said. "You have them in practice but the game snaps are always different, so any time you get live snaps, even last week we were in there at the end of the game and there's been a couple of times throughout the season you get the fourth quarter snaps, so those are huge. Hopefully, now, there's a little bit more and you can put a whole game together."

Andreessen, a Lancaster native and former UB Bull, was the story of the summer. As an undrafted free agent, he made the Bills' 53-man roster. He impressed at the initial rookie tryout, earned a contract, and continued to make noise during training camp and the preseason.

This season, the 24-year-old linebacker has played in 12 games, getting mostly reps on special teams. But his workload is about to grow with the Bills closing out the regular season, especially on defense.

"That's my guy and seeing him make plays is awesome," fellow rookie Cole Bishop said. "He had a bunch of tackles and I don't know what the coaches had to say, but, I thought he looked good so excited to see what he keeps doing."

"You've got to remain grateful, you're living the dream that you were thinking about as a kid," Andreessen added. "This has been great, but I think the big thing is the Super Bowl that everyone wants, so just trying to make that push at the end here."

Andreessen would've likely gotten a lot of playing time regardless, but his role should expand even more because of an injury to Terrel Bernard. The Bills defensive captain will miss Sunday's finale with a leg injury McDermott called "somewhere between day-to-day and week-to-week." That said, McDermott didn't seem overly concerned about his outlook for next weekend in the Wild Card round.