Bills' Deone Walker Shares Inside Look at Jim Leonhard's Defense After OTAs

There’s plenty of curiosity surrounding exactly how the Buffalo Bills’ new defense will look under first-year defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard. Still, a recent discussion involving a Bills defensive lineman took fans behind the curtain.

While speaking with Eric Wood on the Centered on Buffalo podcast, second-year defensive tackle Deone Walker shared an inside look at how Leonhard has begun to put his stamp on the Buffalo defense.

“It’s been fun,” said Walker. “We are going slower. He wants us to learn the whole defense.”

That includes understanding how things work beyond a player’s individual position, which Leonhard hopes will transform his group into a unit of knowledgeable, skilled players.

“He wants us to learn what the corners are doing, when they’re doing it, how they’re doing it, what type of coverage we’re playing,” added Walker. “What we’re thinking on each type of play, each call. So he really wants us to become smarter football players.”

Walker had a successful rookie season during which he started 16 games, recording 39 tackles, a sack, eight tackles for loss, four quarterback hits, a fumble recovery and four passes defensed. He earned a Pro Football Focus pass-rush grade of 71.5, which was 25th among 134 players graded at the position. However, his run-defense grade was an abysmal 49.2, ranking 82nd.

The 6-foot-7, 331-pound DT will be placed at the center of Buffalo’s defensive line as its nose tackle this season.

Leonhard will replace Bills longtime head coach Sean McDermott, who previously ran a 4-3 base front. Leonhard’s defense is expected to feature a multiple-front, but its base alignment will be an odd-man front. That will lead to an overhaul of terminology and other intricacies of an NFL defense, which many Bills veterans, who had spent years under McDermott, must relearn.

But it appears Leonhard and his defensive staff have gotten a good head start.

Additional changes

Wisconsin interim head coach Jim Leonhard arrives before a NCAA Big Ten Conference football game against Iowa, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022, at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa. | Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK

Along with welcoming Leonhard into the fold, the Bills also added several new position coaches who hope to elevate several areas of Buffalo’s resistance. That list includes new cornerbacks coach Jay Valai, defensive line coach Terrance Jamison, outside linebackers coach Bobby April III, inside linebackers coach John Egoruugwu and others.

Buffalo fared well on the defensive side of the ball last year, allowing 293.1 yards per game, which was the seventh-fewest of any team in the NFL. It will take a lot of things to go right in Leonhard’s first season to live up to the established culture of quality defense the Bills had enjoyed under McDermott. With so many new voices in the locker rooms and meeting rooms, we’ll see what level of impact the sweeping changes will have.

There is hope Leonhard’s new style will help Buffalo become more attack-oriented, leading to more stifling results, particularly late in games, when the Bills have come up short time and again over the years. Time will tell if this new group of coaches will guide Buffalo toward accomplishing that goal.

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