On the heels of his stunningly excellent 2016 campaign, the Bills aren’t ready to watch linebacker Lorenzo Alexander depart in free agency. The team is prioritizing re-signing Alexander and “working hard” to lock him up, tweets Ian Rapoport of NFL.com.
Alexander settled for a minimum salary benefit deal with the Bills in free agency last spring, when he was a special teams-first journeyman who had racked up only 9.5 sacks in his first nine NFL seasons. But Alexander broke out last season in Buffalo, where he accumulated 76 tackles, 12.5 sacks, three forced fumbles and an interception across 16 starts en route to second-team All-Pro honors and the only Pro Bowl berth of his career.
The first real defensive success of Alexander’s career came under the Bills’ previous head coach, Rex Ryan, whom they fired with a week left in the season. Buffalo has since replaced Ryan with another defensive-minded coach, Sean McDermott, but the team clearly regards Alexander as a player capable of thriving in its new system.
If the Bills prevent Alexander from hitting the market, it would remove yet another quality edge rusher from a thinning class of free agents. PFR’s Dallas Robinson ranks Alexander as the fifth-best rusher available, and the defender’s agent, Peter Schaffer, expects him to garner anywhere from $5MM to $10MM per year on his next deal.
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Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.