Tag: Greg Van Roten

ESPN names veteran on Bills’ roster bubble ahead of training camp

There’s a few candidates for this one spot:

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Because the Buffalo Bills have such a deep roster there might be a few veterans considered to be on the “roster bubble” as 2022 training camp approaches.

But ESPN took a stab at naming one that stands out the most near the edge of the 53. The former world-wide leader named offensive lineman Greg Van Roten as the selection.

First, here’s the breakdown on Van Roten’s roster status:

The Bills don’t have many roster battles, but there will be a fight for the final offensive line spot. After spending the past two years with the Jets, Van Roten, 32, was signed during the offseason program and brings needed experience to the interior of the Bills’ line. That doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed to make the final 53-man roster, and he’ll be battling for a spot with veteran interior lineman Greg Mancz, who has more experience playing center, and tackle Luke Tenuta, a sixth-round pick.

Van Roten signed in Buffalo just before minicamp. He was a bit of a surprise addition, but not just because of Mancz or Tenuta, there’s a fourth player worth tossing into the equation: Cody Ford.

Ford, a second-round pick of the Bills in 2019 after Buffalo traded up for him, might be fighting for his NFL career. Ford has disappointed during his time in the league, having been given opportunities at both guard and tackle.

While general manager Brandon Beane did say Ford has a fresh slate in 2022 with the addition of new offensive line coach Aaron Kromer, Van Roten’s addition does not bode well for Ford.

Regardless, the best man for the job will win this roster spot that’s wide open right now.

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11 players to watch at Buffalo Bills’ minicamp

11 players to watch at #Bills’ minicamp from rookies to vets:

The Buffalo Bills are getting after it as minicamp starts on Tuesday. To this point, spring practices were voluntary, but now we’re at the stage of a few mandatory workouts.

Since all players are supposed to be in the building and on the field working out, here are 11 players to watch for during the Bills’ minicamp:

Buffalo Bills sign OL Greg Van Roten

#Bills sign OL Greg Van Roten:

The Buffalo Bills have signed a piece to compete along their offensive line.

The team announced on Monday that lineman Greg Van Roten, 32, inked a one-year deal with the team.

Van Roten is no stranger to the AFC East despite just joining the Bills. Previously Buffalo had faced Van Roten the past two years while he was a member of the New York Jets.

In that time span, he started 23 games for the Jets.

Van Roten also previously played for the Carolina Panthers.

Van Roten came into the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Green Bay Packers in 2012, but he didn’t make a single start until 2018 – his second year with the Panthers. After playing 27 games for Carolina in 2018 and 2019, he then joined the Jets in 2020 and played the next two seasons in New York.

Despite his Carolina connections, Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane had already departed the team by 2017.

According to Pro Football Focus, Van Roten earned an overall grade of 68.1 last season, allowing 37 pressures on 474 pass-blocking snaps.

In recent seasons Van Roten has mostly lined up at a guard. There, Buffalo has Rodger Saffold and Ryan Bates as their likely starters currently. The top depth options include Cody Ford. That’s likely where Van Roten might find himself competing for playing time and a roster spot.

The Bills are set to host their mandatory minicamp on starting on Tuesday.

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Bills sign former Panthers OL

OL Greg Van Roten is the latest former Panthers player to shuffle off to the Buffalo Bills.

The Carolina Panthers-to-Buffalo Bills pipeline is unofficially on its sixth year and alas—it’s still going strong!

As first reported by CBS Sports lead NFL insider Jonathan Jones on Monday, Buffalo has signed former Carolina offensive lineman Greg Van Roten to a one-year deal. He, along with what probably feels like an army of former Panthers, now joins the organization’s old defensive coordinator of six seasons in Sean McDermott up north.

Van Roten joined the Panthers for the 2017 season, where he appeared in 10 games on what was mainly special teams duties. He’d then sign a two-year extension with Carolina and proceeded to earn the starting job at left guard in 2018.

Following an injury-shortened 2019, the Mineola, N.Y. native flew back to his roots and inked a three-year pact with the hometown Jets in 2020. He was released, after 30 games in the green, on May 6.

The kicker here, however, is that Van Roten and McDermott never crossed paths in Charlotte—with the former coming and the latter going in 2017. Nonetheless, it’s still another former cat shuffling off up north.

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Zach Wilson thanks Jets offensive line with roundtrip plane tickets

Zach Wilson showed his appreciation for his offensive line, gifting them roundtrip plane tickets for a destination of their choosing.

Zach Wilson’s protection wasn’t always on the up and up in 2021, but the rookie quarterback was still appreciative of the effort his offensive line put in to keep him clean throughout the course of the season.

Wilson thanked the Jets’ offensive line with a special gift on Friday — roundtrip plane tickets for anywhere they want to go. Wilson used his family ties to make the token of appreciation happen, as his uncle, David Neelan, is the founder of JetBlue.

New York’s offensive line had its occasional struggles this past season, but the unit performed relatively well considering it was without Mekhi Becton for all but three quarters. Alijah Vera-Tucker blossomed into a star at left guard as a rookie, while Connor McGovern flipped the script and played well after a rough first season with the Jets. The tackle duo of George Fant and Morgan Moses also stepped up and delivered after Becton went down with a dislocated kneecap in Week 1.

According to Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus, New York had the 11th-best offensive line in the NFL in 2021.

The only real issue the Jets faced on their offensive line for a portion of the season was right guard play. Greg Van Roten struggled in the first half of the year and was eventually replaced by Laurent Duvernay-Tardif after he was acquired from the Chiefs at the trade deadline.

New York will look to upgrade its offensive line during free agency and the draft — Joe Douglas’ pursuit of help in the trenches is a never-ending one — in order to give Wilson the best protection possible. This season was a step in the right direction, though, and Wilson recognized that enough to give the big fellas in front of him a parting gift before returning home for the offseason.

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Robert Saleh explains Jets’ lineup changes vs. Dolphins

Robert Saleh explained why the Jets made a pair of tweaks to their starting lineup against the Dolphins.

The Jets shook things up on both sides of the ball against the Dolphins.

In addition to Joe Flacco starting, New York inserted the recently-acquired Laurent Duvernay-Tardif at right guard in place of the struggling Greg Van Roten. Meanwhile, Jarrad Davis took a back seat in the linebacker rotation in his fourth game back from an ankle injury.

Robert Saleh went into detail on the two lineup changes after New York’s 24-17 loss to Miami, explaining his search for production on the offensive line and managing Davis as he tries to find his footing after missing an extended period of time.

“LDT, just giving him a chance to go out there,” Saleh said. “GVR, he’s been playing his butt off. It was just a chance for us to get LDT in there and see if we can get some more production out of that right guard spot.

“As far as Jarrad, he’s not all the way back yet. He’s not. It’s as simple as scaling back his reps. Let him get healthy, get his legs underneath him and give himself a chance.”

Duvernay-Tardiff fared well in his first start with the Jets, helping Michael Carter average seven yards per carry before he was forced out of the game with an ankle injury. Tevin Coleman rushed for just 16 yards after Carter went down, but Duvernay-Tardiff did his part on the interior.

Quincy Williams stepped up yet again with Davis on a pitch count, totaling a career-high 15 tackles and two tackles for loss for his second double-digit tackle performance of the season.

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Jets will start Laurent Duvernay-Tardif over Greg Van Roten vs. Dolphins

The Jets are finally pulling Greg Van Roten from the starting lineup.

The Jets are finally pulling Greg Van Roten from the starting lineup.

Laurent Duvernay-Tardif will start at right guard on Sunday against the Dolphins, according to The Athletic’s Connor Hughes. Duvernay-Tardif was acquired just before the trade deadline in a deal with the Chiefs and briefly made his Jets debut last week on special teams.

Duvernay-Tardif has not played on the offensive line or started since 2019. He opted out of the 2020 season to work as a doctor battling COVID-19 on the frontlines of the pandemic in Canada. The 30-year-old Quebec native was the first NFL player to opt out. He returned this season but broke his hand in training camp and subsequently fell out of Kansas City’s rotation.

A Super Bowl champion with the Chiefs, Duvernay-Tardif started 57 games from 2015-2019. He waived his no-trade clause to join the Jets in search of a chance to play. New York sent backup TE Daniel Brown to Kansas City. The Chiefs waived Brown on Saturday.

Van Roten, meanwhile, has struggled all season. He has allowed 32 pressures this year, the most among right guards, per Jets X-Factor’s Michael Nania. Van Roten recently acknowledged that Duvernay-Tardif could challenge him for his job. Now the former Chief has taken it, at least for Week 11.

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8 things to know about new Jets RG Laurent Duvernay-Tardif

Get to know new Jets offensive lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, one of the more interesting players in the NFL.

The Jets turned out to be buyers at this year’s trade deadline, acquiring RG Lauren Duvernay-Tardif from the Chiefs in exchange for reserve TE Daniel Brown on Tuesday afternoon.

New York’s interior offensive line play and depth have been a question mark all season. Alijah Vera-Tucker has looked like a star in the making in his rookie season, but Greg Van Roten has struggled on the right side of the line, bringing his capability as a starter into question. It remains to be seen what exactly Duvernay-Tardif’s role with the Jets will be, but he is excited to embark on the next chapter of his football journey in the Big Apple.

With his new chapter about to begin, below are eight things to know about Duvernay-Tardif, one of the more interesting players in the NFL.

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Numbers don’t lie: Jets RG Greg Van Roten is a liability

A well-known offensive line coach recently called Jets RG Greg Van Roten a “liability.” The numbers couldn’t agree more.

Duke Manyweather, a noted offensive line trainer, said it best when he called Jets RG Greg Van Roten “a liability.”

Manyweather, who coaches Mekhi Becton, among others, added that the Jets should pursue an upgrade over Van Roten, who has arguably been the team’s worst offensive lineman and one of the NFL’s worst guards through three games this season. Van Roten has allowed 15 pressures this season – second-most at his position – and ranks 50th among all guards.

It’s no wonder Zach Wilson leads the NFL in sacks with 15, hurries with 24, and has been pressured on 38.5 percent of his dropbacks.

All the blame can’t be pinned on Van Roten. There are a lot of issues with this Jets offense. Wilson isn’t getting the ball out fast enough, which Van Roten was quick to point out. The running game has been inconsistent. Mike LaFleur’s game plans aren’t sound. Other linemen aren’t playing well.

But Van Roten’s performances have been especially poor.

Broken down by game, Van Roten has clearly been a major contributor to the Jets’ offensive woes. The guard accounted for 43.8 percent of the Jets’ pressures in Week 2 and 37.5 percent of them in Week 3. That means Van Roten has allowed almost half of the team’s pressures in the past two games, even though he’s just one of five starting linemen.

If you’re looking for excuses for these numbers, there aren’t many. But let’s try to absolve Van Roten anyway.

The most obvious one is what Van Roten noted after the Jets’ Week 3 loss regarding Wilson. The rookie does tend to hold onto the ball too long, which gives defenders more opportunities to beat Van Roten and the rest of the line. Wilson completed just 45 percent of his passes when he didn’t throw the ball in less than 2.5 seconds and he leads the league with eight sacks that took at least 4.5 seconds, per Next Gen Stats.

But if that excuse was truly the reason for Van Roten’s failures as a blocker, shouldn’t the pressures have been more equally dispersed among the other four linemen?

Maybe his matchups were harder. The Patriots and Broncos do boast some solid interior defensive linemen. That would partly explain why fellow guard Alijah Vera-Tucker has underperformed so far as a rookie. LaFleur’s scheme could play into Van Roten’s inability to block as well. Not everyone is adept at zone blocking, especially if the running backs and tight ends are not doing their jobs well, either.

Those explanations don’t vindicate Van Roten, though. They just push the blame onto someone else. But the numbers don’t lie: Van Roten has not been a good guard through the first three weeks of the season, and the Jets have suffered as a result.

Maybe that will change as the season progresses. But for now, Van Roten is exactly what he looks like: a liability for the Jets’ pass-protection.

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