ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Observed and heard in the locker room after the Buffalo Bills' 37-22 loss to the New England Patriots:
Wide receiver Mike Williams dropped a bit of a bombshell Sunday morning, posting a backward photo of his jersey on Instagram along with a caption that said he was deactivated for Sunday's game. The caption on the photo included "#wastedJersey." At some point Sunday afternoon, Williams removed the photo from Instagram. Meanwhile, his nameplate in the locker room was also apparently removed. Of the Bills' seven inactive players, the six besides Williams had nameplates in the locker room. Williams did not have a nameplate above any locker. Two players near his locker told me they didn't know why the nameplate was gone.
Here is Doug Marrone's full explanation on why Williams was a healthy scratch: "Mike Williams' situation was really a tough call. It wasn't really the direction that we probably would have gone. What happened late in the week, we didn't really realize until about Friday night that Kyle Williams was going to be able to play. So by that time, we had put so much in game plan-wise for [the] three-tight end package that we practiced quite a bit that we played today with our tight ends playing. When you look through the roster, you have to say to yourself, 'OK, you're not going to not play Kyle [Williams], if he's healthy.' So we started to go through and see where we were banged up a little bit, where we needed guys to play, where we needed special teams, where we needed -- you know, you go through all those different scenarios and it's not an easy decision. We went with that decision. The process to go about it, we were really surprised that [Kyle Williams] was able to play, which was good. I brought Mike in on Saturday and told him I needed him to do this for the team. I said it's not a great situation, but due to the special teams and everything we needed to cover, we talked to him and he handled it like a pro. And he'll be ready to go next week."
