Tre'Davius White has been elite but it's a three-way race for the Bills' second CB spot

The one thing that we know for sure about the cornerback position for the Buffalo Bills is that Tre’Davious White is back to looking like the CB1 he has been since 2017.

After a laborious recovery from his late 2021 knee surgery that forced him to miss the first 10 games of 2022, White finally got onto the field for two defensive series on Thanksgiving Day in Detroit, but, understandably so, he never really regained his Pro Bowl form.

Now, with a full offseason to get his body and mind right, White has looked tremendous in the early going at St. John Fisher University.

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“The first year coming off an ACL … there’s going to be challenges and my hat goes off to Tre and the way he pushed through those,” coach Sean McDermott said. “It’s a mental challenge, sometimes as much as a physical challenge in terms of just the resiliency it takes day after day after day, not only get yourself ready to play, but also continue to rehab your knee and he’s been steadfast in his approach.”

Every time White lines up opposite Stefon Diggs in a one-on-one drill, or even when their paths cross in 11-on-11, it’s a must watch for everyone at Fisher. In the one-on-ones in particular, the receiver has a distinct advantage every time, but no matter who White faces, nothing has come easy for the receiver, or for Josh Allen trying to squeeze the ball in.

“With each day, because he puts so much into it, so much time not only to his recovery but also now in his process of getting back to being a top tier corner, you’re going to see that level of comfort,” defensive backs coach John Butler said.

“With each step that he has, obviously consistently going up against the Stefon Diggs’ of the world and the Gabe Davis’ of the world that I think are elite level receivers, and against a quarterback like Josh, that that exposure in practice is going to keep allowing him to get to that feeling of ‘I’m getting back to where I need to be’ and playing at the level that we expect him to play at.”

So, all good there. However, on the other side of the field at CB2, things are nowhere near settled as Kaiir Elam, Dane Jackson and Christian Benford remain locked in a three-way battle for the starting job, and no one has inched ahead of the others at this point.

“I think it’s just a matter of time,” McDermott said Thursday. “I don’t really have a set date (to decide) … you’ll know when you know and you’d like it to be sooner than later for all these decisions. We’re gonna have a great opportunity to evaluate as coaches and Brandon (Beane) and his staff come Friday night in the stadium with the crowd, which will be putting guys in a position that they haven’t been in in some time or ever, especially for some of the new players.”

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Butler is well aware of the importance that CB2 battle is, joking, “Yeah, I’ve been prepped on that. That’s a huge topic of concern for everybody in the Bills Mafia and media.”

Butler said a plan has been put in his place to make sure the reps with the first team are evenly split so that he and the rest of the defensive staff can evaluate each player, “Not only for their exposure with the first group and the first defense but also the exposure against top tier wideouts like we have. We’re encouraged with it. Obviously have a long, long way to go.”

On the one hand, it’s nice to have a healthy competition like this, but on the other, the Bills need someone to step up and win the job so that they can avoid the situation they were in last year rotating those three in and out of the lineup, or even in years past when Levi Wallace was still trying to lock down that spot and participated in a time share with various players.

“In an ideal world you’re playing two corners that are locked into the game,” Butler said. “Let’s just say if you’re rotating series, one corner may not see what happened in the previous series so he might not be able to make that adjustment physically. Even though I may go over it with them, it’s just spatially. Whatever happens as we move forward, we’re going to do whatever it takes to win the game and get our players playing at the highest level.”

Elam has more pressure than the others because he was Buffalo’s first-round draft pick in 2022. He came from a press man-to-man system at Florida and he struggled to adapt to McDermott’s zone heavy concepts which is why he was lacking in snap counts as a rookie until both Jackson and Benford missed time with injuries.

Now in year two, he’s starting to get more comfortable with what the Bills ask of their outside corners, but he remains a work in progress. He had a particularly strong practice on Thursday

“Kaiir is still a young player, he’s still learning, he’s still growing,” Beane said. “This is still a total different system than he played. He is a very talented player, he’s a hard worker and he’s still working his way, but it’s year two. And we’ve seen players in this league, maybe they didn’t thrive year one but he is still an ascending guy.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana and on Threads @salmaiorana1. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which will come out every Friday during training camp, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Tre'Davious White has been tremendous at Buffalo Bills training camp