BY DAN BEGNOCHE
Crezdon Butler played nearly the entire game Thursday night as one of two bubble corners for the Buffalo Bills trying to gain any inkling of an edge before final cuts take place at the end of this week.
Did he do enough to survive? Even he’s not quite so sure.
“When you evaluate yourself and you’re a competitor, you will never think you’ve done enough,” Butler told reporters after the team’s 35-13 loss to the Detroit Lions.
Butler has been battling fellow corners Justin Rogers and T.J. Heath this offseason for a roster spot, which was elevated in the last week of the preseason after word came down that Stephon Gilmore is slated be out for an extended period of time with a broken wrist.
Butler, despite being seen by many as the front runner of the three for the perimeter corner role, was thrown into a full game’s worth of action Thursday, as the coaches apparently hadn’t seen enough consistency from him to don a night off. Rogers, on the other hand, did not play a snap.
“Obviously we rested Justin Rogers,” coach Doug Marrone said after the game. “I shouldn’t say rest Justin Rogers; we wanted to make sure we knew where those other two players were.”
Marrone had mixed reviews about the duo’s performance after the game, saying he would have liked to have seen a bit more aggressiveness when the play dictated it.
“I think we have to do a good job, a better job in press," he said. "Again, we’ve got to be up there and contend more of those passes that they’re winning. We’ve got to put them in a position that they can get the job done.
“I think that we do have a lot of tape now with them out there. We’ll be able to look at that. Obviously we wanted to look at both of those players to make a decision on where both of them were at.”
