The Bills return LeSean McCoy as their No. 1 running back from last year, but several moves made this offseason indicate the spot may now be open to competition.
A rough 2018 season for McCoy led Bills to acquire Frank Gore, T.J. Yeldon and Devin Singletary this offseason. Yeldon said that the team pitched him on the idea of a robust fight for playing time before he signed on as a free agent.
“That’s a blessing,” Yeldon said, via the Buffalo News. “Coming in my first couple years, I didn’t have vets like that. Being here in this situation, I can learn a lot from those guys. It’s a lot for me to take with me in my future years. It’s going to be a heated competition. That’s one thing they told me coming in. There’s going to be competition regardless.”
The “heated competition” might beg the question why Yeldon even signed with the Bills in the first place, given that he almost certainly could have had a larger role with another team. Then again, other team's don't have running backs coach Kelly Skipper.
“That's one of the main reasons why I wanted to come here,” Yeldon said of Skipper, who was with the back in Jacksonville. “We had a bond my first two years there. He taught me a lot, so coming here I felt like was the right decision.”
The fact that Yeldon remained on the market a month after free agency opened is another reason he could have chosen to take a chance to prove his worth with the Bills.