The truth about the 2023 Buffalo Bills is that there weren’t that many sneaky roster cut survivors. Sure, players like wide receiver Andy Isabella, offensive tackle Richard Gouraige, or running back Jordan Mims could have made the team and didn’t. Overall, though, the Bills roster is what most expected. That said, there is one player who is both a little surprising and could make a big impact in 2023. That player is defensive end Kingsley Jonathan.

Kingsley Jonathan is the Bills roster cuts survivor who could make an impact

Last season, the Bills welcomed the Cincinnati Bengals and their MASH unit of an offensive line to Buffalo for the Divisional Round of the playoffs. The home team’s key to victory was dominating the backup O-line and getting Joe Burrow off his game.

That didn’t happen.

Buffalo got just one sack for a 2-yard loss and only produced three QB hits. Without Von Miller, the pass rushers just couldn’t generate pressure at the end of last season. While the Bills had the No. 2 scoring defense in the entire league last season, they were also tied for 14th in the league with 40 sacks. The D was also 14th in pressure rate, 12th in QB knockdowns, and 15th in QB hurry rate.

Take away Miller’s co-team-leading (with Gregory Rousseau) 8.0 sacks, and the Bills would be at 28th in the league last season.

The point is the Bills need a better pass rush badly, and the team didn’t really do anything this offseason to address that. General manager Brandon Beane didn’t sign a free agent DE nor pick one in the 2023 NFL Draft.

Improving the pass rush in Buffalo will now have to come down to two things. One is that defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier is now gone, and head coach Sean McDermott is running the show. Two is the fingers-crossed hope that 34-year-old Von Miller comes back from his knee surgery, regains his All-Pro form, and stays healthy for the entirety of his season, which won’t start until at least Week 5 as he’s starting the season on the PUP list.

This doesn’t seem like the greatest strategy for a team in the brutal AFC, where half the teams in the conference got significantly better this offseason.

One thing to note, though, among the Bills roster cuts is that second-year undrafted free agent from Syracuse, Kingsley Jonathan, survived and made the team. And he didn’t just sneak on the Bills roster. The DE, who spent most of last season on the Bills’ practice squad, made the team after Beane traded 2021 second-round pick Boogie Basham to the New York Giants.

Trading Basham to the Giants to clear room on the 53-man roster for Jonathan was a major statement that the team believes in the young edge rusher.

Jonathan earned that belief, too. He had one sack and two tackles for a loss in the preseason and showed enough skill and production that the Buffalo coaching staff made him one of their five DEs on the roster along with Leonard Floyd, Rousseau, AJ Epenesa, and Shaq Lawson.

Now, maybe Jonathan is simply a four-week stand-in for Miller, and he’ll be back on the practice squad in Week 5 when the two-time Super Bowl champ returns. He does have a month, though, to show what he’s got and earn a spot in the DE rotation or even on the starting line.