Bills’ Von Miller eager to re-establish himself as top pass rusher after no-sack season

of one on Miller said that he felt as if he has regained his former dominance.

And this time the NFL’s active leader in sacks lives up to it.

Analyzing it I can say that after the attempts made last season when the player tried to persuade himself that he has the ability to eliminate the outcome of major knee surgery in less than a year the Buffalo Bills edge rusher came to the training camp this week determined, upbeat and ready to show that he still has not lost a step.

“I haven’t felt like this in two years,” Miller said Thursday after Buffalo practiced in the second day of the training camp. “I am tempted to say that I am quite fired up, I mean, I am baked to the gills ready to go and hoping not that we didn’t produce the kind of outcome that I desired last year. ”

Zero sacks in 14 games they played including the playoffs is not any easy number to swallow for a 35-year-old man who has been playing his 13 th NFL season, winning has been the hallmark of Deflorit, consistency and work ethics.

“I’m Von Miller. I’m kind of judged by sacks,” the Denver Broncos’ two time Super Bowl champion said smiling and shaking his head. “No I didn’t even get any last year all I did was 3 tackles. ”

Despite how much Miller wonders if it would have been wiser to sit out all of last season, he uses the knowledge and absence of scoring as motivation.

Boosting his confidence even further is the fact that he has been training and not rehabbing throughout the Summer.

The brace Miller wore on his right knee last year is missing. Also relevant are the concerns he engaged in, hence Miller avoiding or minimizing pass rush movements that may cause the right leg to get struck. He did not site this freedom until the later part of the season and playoffs.

“As I was trying to learn that, I learnt that we cannot force things and as I tried my whole entire life being a football player, you just try to make things happen,” Miller said.

“Sometimes it was nice for me,” he said “But sometimes like last year, it wasn’t good for me. ” “The time I have to spend at rehab and the time I have to spend away from football I feel in the regular season I will be able to make up the time on the field. ”

Much is expected of Miller in getting back to the starting point in Buffalo where in his first season in 2022 with the Bills, he was the team-leader in sacks with eight in 11 matches before he suffered a right knee injury in a game against Detroit on Thanksgiving.

For Buffalo, there is an emphasis on the front four for which their linebackers and secondary drop back into coverage, or for which one of them blitzes in a passing scenario. The pass rush also needs upgrading to replace free agency gone Leonard Floyd, who contributed 10 ½ of the team’s sacks last year.

Essentially, one can opine that Miller needs to bounce back to have a future in Buffalo and quite possibly the NFL. He is in his second season of a 6-year $120 million dollar deal, and in 2025, increases by $9 million making him expensive for the Buffalo Bills.

This offseason Miller made changes to his contract to ensure he took some of the load off the rattled team’s salary cap.

Sean McDermott, the head coach of the team went on to accept Mills’ limitations in the previous season, citing it is rare that the average player in the NFL fully recovers from the surgery in less than two seasons.

McDermott said that is ‘‘going to be the challenge and that’s why Von is here for. ’’ “There has been a lot of speculation talking about him but I know he has been active in the off-season and that will be an addition to our team as we continue the game up front. ”

Miller has lots to play for be it pride, or dreams of being part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame or where he stands in the NFL’s all-time sacks list at the moment.

Combined Miller has 123 and a half sacks placing him the 19th standing; however, he needs 15 sacks to overtake Richard Dent and John Randle who ranked 10th. Miller that projected 15 sacks entering the previous season before not getting any.

Buffalo’s opener against Arizona on Sept. 8 will be the latest point in NFL history that the team has gone without a sack from the defensive end position by Miller since his sack in that 33-30 overtime loss to Minnesota on Nov. 13, 2022.

Whereas a year before, such run-stoppage was a decisive play that played a role in creating Miller’s initial reputation, it is now difficult to come by and the defender is practically counting the days until he gets his next sack.

“I feel like each and every sack that I make from here on out will be so special,” Miller said. “It doesn’t have to to be one or two, it doesn’t have to be 15, each one would mean the world to me. ”