Franklin gets his reps, but the Bills would rather not need them

C.J. Gardner-Johnson was carted off during Saturday's practice with a lower-body injury, and by Monday, Sam Franklin Jr. was taking starting reps in his place. Further tests came back encouraging — Gardner-Johnson is expected to avoid anything serious — but the Bills ran the contingency anyway, which is the right call.

Franklin is the third safety on the depth chart behind Geno Stone and Gardner-Johnson, and his footprint in the secondary last season was minimal. Bumping him into starting reps three days into camp is less a vote of confidence than an acknowledgment of how little margin exists behind the top two. Dorian Strong remains out, so the Bills are already short elsewhere on defense heading into August.

This is the third note I've filed in four days about Buffalo's depth absorbing a hit. The receiver room is still patchy, the defensive line rotates thin, and now the secondary is doing its own version of the same shuffle. None of these are individually catastrophic — Gardner-Johnson's prognosis is good, and Franklin is a capable insurance option — but the pattern is worth watching as camp continues.