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Injury bug arrives at Bills camp: Claypool, Edwards among players missing practice

The inevitable reality of football practice, especially training camp practice, caught up with the Buffalo Bills over the weekend.

When the team took the field at St. John Fisher University Monday morning for its first full pads workout, it did so without safety Mike Edwards, offensive lineman David Edwards, and wide receiver Chase Claypool.

All were injured on Sunday, and Mike Edwards might be the most serious as he pulled a hamstring and coach Sean McDermott termed him week-to-week which is never a good designation. It’s not season-ending, but it’s not day-to-day, either.

Bills lineman David Edwards will miss time with a concussion.
Bills lineman David Edwards will miss time with a concussion.

David Edwards is in concussion protocol so that will be an undetermined amount of time off, and Claypool has a toe injury and McDermott said that would be a day-to-day issue.

Who would fill in for Mike Edwards?

Mike Edwards was signed in free agency from the Chiefs with the intention of being the replacement for Micah Hyde, but his time in Buffalo has not gone well. He missed almost all of the offseason program with a shoulder injury, and now this will set him back even further and it could open the door for someone like Damar Hamlin or even rookie Cole Bishop to earn a starting job.

“It's a part of the game, on one hand,” McDermott said of Edwards’ run of bad injury luck. “The other part is, in order to get the scheme down the way you need to get it down, you need to be out there. But Mike's a pro, he's been around it before, so I'm sure he'll do his best to stay up as best as he can on the mental end of things.”

As for whether Bishop, the Bills’ second-round draft pick, is ready to step up, McDermott was mostly non-committal.

“I think that one of the bigger things I've seen and one of the bigger things you hope for is growth over the course of the break, meaning, it's been clear that he put time in on the mental end of things with the scheme and mastering the scheme,” McDermott said. “And he still has a lot of work to do. But he's improving in that area, he's improving with his understanding of how necessary it is at that position to communicate to get everybody lined up on the same page.”

Buffalo Bills training camp news

Be sure to return to democratandchronicle.com for daily updates throughout the Buffalo Bills training camp. You can also sign up for Bills Blast, Sal Maiorana's newsletter which will follow the Bills action all season long. Here are stories from camp:

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out every Friday during training camp and the preseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Chase Claypool, Mike Edwards among injured players at Bills camp