Sanders Out, Interior Line Down to the Wire

T.J. Sanders is headed for an appendectomy, leaving Buffalo's defensive interior thinner than it has been at any point this season. Sanders listed Questionable in the injury report, sits second on the DL depth chart behind Phidarian Mathis — who is still serving his three-game suspension for violating the league's substances of abuse policy. With both of them unavailable, Greg Gaines, Austin Johnson, and Ed Oliver are what's left, and Oliver is himself Questionable right now.

The Bills brought Gaines in specifically to add a body up front, and he has been the most reliable presence in the interior rotation this year. But reliable presence and reliable depth are different things, and this situation is testing the latter. The DL chart behind Mathis and Sanders runs to Landon Jackson, who hasn't logged meaningful snaps. That's a thin cushion for a unit that was already being asked to hold up without its top option.

Keon Coleman's foot situation adds a separate headache on the other side of the ball — he's Questionable too, and the receiving room behind DJ Moore has been a concern all season. The Bills are stacking injury questions across both units at the same time, which is how manageable problems become compounding ones.

The next ten days will tell you a lot about how much margin this roster actually has. My read is: not much.