Last year, Bills coach Doug Marrone said that he was “110 percent” certain that quarterback EJ Manuel would play in the season finale despite a knee injury.
Manuel wound up missing the game and Marrone said Monday that he was no longer going to be offering injury updates about players as a result. Marrone brought that up in response to questions about when wide receiver Sammy Watkins would return from the rib injury he suffered last weekend. It’s been diagnosed as a bruise, but Marrone wasn’t getting anywhere close to specifics about Watkins’ outlook.
“Unless I know for sure, I am not going to comment on when they’re coming back or when they might come back because it’s too difficult. You have setbacks. You wake up one morning and you have this or that and then I have to stand up here and hear, ‘You told us this and you told us that.’ So, I really don’t know,” Marrone said, via the Buffalo News. “You can practice the next day sometimes. You can come back into a game. Sometimes on the X-ray it shows that it’s a crack. Sometimes it shows that it’s not and then you take a better X-ray and there is a crack. Sometimes, depending on the player, you can be out two weeks, four weeks, six weeks or two months.”
Watkins didn’t do anything more than ride a stationary bike at Monday’s practice. The Bills are scheduled to play the Buccaneers on Saturday in their third preseason game and it seems we’ll be waiting until closer to kickoff before finding out if Watkins has a chance to take part.