Greg Gaines is in Buffalo, and that helps — up to a point

The Bills signed veteran nose tackle Greg Gaines this week, slotting him into a defensive tackle rotation that lost Phidarian Mathis to a three-game suspension. It's a sensible move. Gaines has NFL experience, he's available, and the interior line needed a body it could trust for the first month of the season.

The catch is that Gaines patches one specific hole while the broader picture at defensive tackle stays uncomfortable. Ed Oliver is the other piece of that rotation, and neither player is operating at the level you'd want from a starting interior tandem. The Mathis suspension runs through Week 3, so the Bills know exactly how long they need Gaines to hold things together — but "hold things together" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Worth noting: the defensive line isn't the only place Buffalo is asking veterans to paper over a gap. The receiving room is running a similar exercise with Dante Pettis behind DJ Moore, and Keon Coleman's foot is still questionable. The Bills have a championship-caliber offense and a fanbase Nielsen just ranked first in the league. What they don't have, right now, is much margin for error on either side of the ball — which is a familiar feeling after January.