The Bills are signing free agent defensive lineman Greg Gaines, Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports.
In a corresponding move, Fowler reports the Bills have released defensive tackle Tommy Akingbesote.
Gaines, 30, spent last season with the Buccaneers. He appeared in all 17 games with four starts, seeing action on 369 defensive snaps, and he totaled 23 tackles and two sacks.
The Rams selected Gaines in the fourth round of the 2019 draft, and he was with the team for four seasons. He signed with the Bucs in 2023 and spent three seasons in Tampa.
In his career, Gaines has appeared in 108 games with 34 starts. He has totaled 186 tackles, 14.5 sacks and 35 quarterback hits.
Bills Clips
The Patriots met with a pair of veteran defensive free agents on Tuesday.
Mike Reiss of ESPN.com reports that they met with linebacker Shaq Thompson and defensive lineman DaQuan Jones.
Thompson spent 10 seasons with the Panthers and signed with the Bills after being released early in the 2025 offseason. He had 56 tackles, a sack and a forced fumble in 12 regular season games before adding 13 tackles and an interception in the postseason.
Carolina drafted Thompson in the first round in 2015 and he was a regular starter for most of his run, but injuries limited him to six games in his final two seasons with the club.
Jones was Thompson’s teammate with the Panthers in 2021 and again in Buffalo last year. He spent the last four years with the Bills and started all 51 games he played for the team.
Jones had 22 tackles, three sacks, an interception, and a forced fumble last season.
There is some new information on Bills receiver Keon Coleman, who did not practice on Tuesday and was spotted in a walking boot.
Per Cameron Wolfe of NFL Network, Coleman is dealing with a strained foot/toe, suffered in the preseason opener on Saturday.
Coleman will miss more practice time, but early indications are that it should not be much of a concern moving forward.
Entering his third season, Coleman was on the field for 21 offensive snaps in Saturday’s contest. He caught three passes on four targets for 17 yards with a touchdown.
The Bills will have a joint practice with the Browns this week before playing the club in Cleveland on Saturday afternoon.
One of Buffalo’s key receivers has an injury concern.
According to multiple reporters on the scene, Keon Coleman is not participating in Tuesday’s open practice at Highmark Stadium and is sporting a walking boot.
Coleman played in the Bills’ preseason opener, catching three passes on four targets for 17 yards. While he got banged up during the game, head coach Joe Brady had said that he expected the receiver to be fine.
There are several receivers who aren’t practicing on Tuesday, with Khalil Shakir also sidelined. But DJ Moore is participating in the session.
Notably, defensive tackle Ed Oliver is out as well.
Buffalo will play Cleveland on Saturday afternoon for the second week of preseason play.
The condition of the playing field at the new Highmark Stadium was a talking point in the wake of last Saturday’s preseason game between the Bills and the Panthers.
It was the first time that the Bills played a game on their new home field and there were moments where chunks of the grass field were torn from the ground during play. That led to the replacement of divots and the surface looking torn up by the end of the game, but Bills president Pete Guelli said that those circumstances weren’t a surprise to the team.
Guelli told the Associated Press that “our grounds people were aware that was a possibility” with a field that was recently installed. He said the issues were “attended to quickly” and that the belief is the performance of the field will improve the longer that it is in place.
“From a playability and safety perspective, everybody’s very happy,” Guelli said. “It’s Year 1. So it’s a brand new field and it’s going to take time for the foundation to build up. So some of the things people saw in the game, those will dissipate over time.”
The Bills have one more preseason game at home this month and they will play their first regular season game in Week 2. The hope is that there will be more discussion about the quality of the play than the quality of the playing surface in those contests.
The Bills have made a pair of roster moves on Monday.
Buffalo announced the club has signed linebacker Otis Reese IV and waived fullback Jackson Acker.
Reese, 28, has been brought back after he was released last week. The linebacker has appeared in 20 games with five starts in his career, with most of his playing time coming on special teams. All of his regular-season playing time has come with the Titans.
Reese has also spent time with the Patriots.
Acker, an undrafted rookie out of Wisconsin, had signed with the Bills in May.
The Bills have dumped artificial turf for grass in their new stadium. But not all grass is high-quality grass.
The grass at Highmark Stadium drew mixed reviews in the preseason opener between the Panthers and the Bills.
As one unnamed player told Tim Graham of The Athletic, “The field is ass right now. But it’s early.”
Graham explains that one play resulted in a “massive clump” of grass flying into the air — “roots, dirt, and all.” Four players, including Bills quarterback Josh Allen, tried to stomp it back into place.
Another player told Graham that the field was “soft, but not in a good way.”
At least one Bills player spoke about the quality of the grass on the record.
“The grass looked good,” Bills linebacker Dorian Williams said, per Graham. “It was cool. A couple spots kind of chunked up a little bit, but it’s better than playing on turf.”
And, yes, grass is better than turf. But the goal should be high-quality grass that performs in a way that makes it unnoticed.
Wide receiver Keon Coleman came under fire at the end of the 2025 Bills season, but he got his 2026 season off on the right foot.
Quarterback Josh Allen found Coleman in the end zone for a nine-yard score at the end of Buffalo’s second offensive possession in Saturday’s preseason opener against the Panthers. The Bills are at home, which makes the touchdown the first one at the new Highmark Stadium.
The throw was the final one of the afternoon for Allen. He connected with new Bills wideout DJ Moore three times for 61 yards over his two series of work and finished the day 6-of-8 for 111 yards, so it was a positive first day for the quarterback in his new digs.
Kyle Allen took over at quarterback for the Bills, who will play their first regular season game at the stadium on Thursday night in Week 2.
Defensive tackle Vita Vea remains at odds with the Buccaneers over his contract and thus is not practicing. He wants a trade. The Buccaneers insist they aren’t trading him.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that the Bills, 49ers and Bears are among the teams who have called the Bucs about Vea.
Vea requested a trade ahead of training camp after spending the offseason seeking a new contract.
Philadelphia’s Jalen Carter, Dallas’ Quinnen Williams and Tennessee’s Jeffery Simmons all have signed extensions recently, with Carter now at the top of the defensive tackle market at $38 million annually. Williams ($35.3 million per season) and Simmons ($35.276 million) are close behind.
Vea now ranks 16th with an annual average of $17.75 million.
He is entering the final year of his deal, set to make $17 million in base salary.
Defensive back Wande Owens is back with the Bills.
The Bills announced Owens’s signing on Friday. Linebacker Otis Reese was waived in a corresponding move.
Owens signed with the Bills after going undrafted out of New Hampshire last year and spent the season on injured reserve. He returned to the Bills for the 2026 offseason, but was cut on July 31.
Reese signed with the Bills a little more than a week ago, so it was a brief stay on the roster in Buffalo.
The Bills also announced that wide receiver Quentin Skinner has switched to No. 18. He had been wearing No. 82 prior to the change.
