Bills sign two more free agents: What to know about the former AFC East rivals
The Buffalo Bills continued to chip away at their needs Monday, and they did it by poaching two players from AFC East rivals.
Monday afternoon they signed wide receiver Trent Sherfield who spent the 2022 season with the rival Miami Dolphins. And Monday night, they signed running back Damien Harris who has been with the New England Patriots since entering the NFL as a third-round pick in 2019.
Harris is certainly a nice get for the Bills, if for no other reason than he can no longer hurt them. He has played four games against the Bills and in three of those, he topped 100 yards rushing and totaled five touchdowns.
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It was Harris who broke a 64-yard touchdown run that keyed the Patriots’ 14-10 victory over the Bills in the 2021 wind game at Highmark Stadium. For his career he has rushed for 2,094 yards and caught 40 passes for 281 yards with 20 total touchdowns.
Numerically, he’s had a less significant career that Devin Singletary who was selected by Buffalo 13 spots before the Patriots took Harris in the draft. Singletary - who is ready to sign a one-year deal with the Houston Texans - rushed for 3,151 yards, caught 145 passes for 971 yards and scored 20 touchdowns. The main reason for the disparity is that Singletary has played 23 more games than the oft-injured Harris.
But Harris is considered to be a tough between the tackles runner which was not Singletary’s strong suit.
Sherfield joins Deonte Harty as the newest members in the receiver room, and while Harty may be viewed as the replacement for the released Isaiah McKenzie, Sherfield could be the new Jake Kumerow, only with more ability to impact the offense.
Kumerow, who has been a valued member of Buffalo’s special teams, is an unrestricted free agent who the Bills have not re-signed, and Sherfield has been a productive special teams player in his first five NFL seasons.
“I kind of had to make my way, sneaking through the back door of this league, being a special teams player and those type of different things,” he said Monday with a tinge of pride.
“My role, at the end of the day, my plan is being a weapon on offense, being a guy that can be depended on to make plays and situations for the offense and just being able to be readily and excessively available to be needed potentially on special teams.”
As a receiver, Sherfield is an interesting addition because not only does he bring needed size to Buffalo’s wide receiver room at 6-foot-1 and 219 pounds, he also has impressive speed. The Vanderbilt product went undrafted in 2018, but his 4.45 clocking in the 40-yard dash at his pro day caught the eye of some scouts, and the Cardinals ultimately signed him.
As a rookie he caught 19 passes for 210 yards and began to make a name for himself as a solid special teamer. His playing time on offense dipped in 2019, and then took a nose dive in 2020 when he was almost exclusively a special teams player.
Sherfield signed with the 49ers in 2021, then joined the Dolphins in 2022 after Miami hired former San Francisco offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel to be its head coach. Given his familiarity with McDaniel’s system, Sherfield earned a more prominent role on offense as he caught 30 passes for 417 yards and two TDs.
“My goal has always been to prove myself as a receiver in this league and no job is too small for me,” he said. “But I think that being a guy that can make plays for this offense and kind of carryover what I did last year in Miami, kind of took another step forward as far as being a receiver and being the guy who can be used on offense.”
Indeed, Sherfield said the one thing that changed once he got to Miami was the trust McDaniel showed to use him.
“I think I took the biggest step last season, honestly, really just getting the opportunity,” Sherfield said. “I think that’s something that I’ve been kind of searching for my whole career. Now it’s more about going into those finite details of what can I do to increase my game and take it to another level.”
One of his TDs last year came on a dynamic 75-yard catch and run on the first play of the Dolphins Dec. 4 game against the 49ers which showed some of Sherfield’s breakaway speed.
With Miami, one thing he did well was make plays on contested balls as he came down with the reception on 62.5% of those situations, by far his career best figure.
Another aspect to his game, which Sean McDermott always places importance on, is downfield blocking, not only in the run game but for other receivers who have caught passes. Pro Football Focus has rated him very high as a run blocker and pass blocker.
“I think that’s just the willingness,” Sherfield said. “That’s all it is – just wanting to do it, and it’s something that I know that I’m good at, something I take pride in. When you say that to a receiver, they’ll probably shy away from it. But it’s like, for me, it’s a job, right? And if that’s my job, I’m going to be the best at it.”
Last year in three games against Buffalo he caught only one pass for five yards despite playing 107 offensive snaps. In the Week 3 Miami victory, Sherfield handed the Bills a safety when he got in the way of a Thomas Morstead punt from the end zone.
He was in protection and Morstead kicked the ball right into Sherfield’s rear end and it bounced out of the end zone pulling the Bills withing 21-19 early in the fourth quarter.
“I think that playing the Bills three times last year I could just see and just feel the chemistry of the team on the sideline and that’s something that we always knew that we had to get ready for when we were in Miami,” Sherfield said. “We knew it was always gonna be a tough game.
“This is the best opportunity for me and my family. So, I made the decision to come here because based off of those facts, based off of the way that offense plays, and special teams and everything like that. And talking to former players that played here, all the great things that they were telling me about, telling me that, hey, this is the place where you belong and so I just couldn’t ignore that.”
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which will come out every Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bills sign free agents Trent Sherfield, Damien Harris: What to know
