Healthy again, DeWayne Carter aims for a bigger role on Bills' defensive line

DeWayne Carter’s rookie season was on a steady upward trajectory.

The Buffalo Bills defensive tackle played just seven defensive snaps in his professional debut in the 2024 season opener against Arizona.

Just four days later, he more than tripled that number, playing 25 snaps in Week 2 against Miami.

From there, Carter solidly was a part of the Bills’ defensive line rotation. His first start came in Week 5 at Houston, in place of the injured Ed Oliver. Carter impressed against the Texans, making two tackles for loss in a 23-20 loss.

Then, in Week 7, things changed.

Carter had three tackles in a 34-10 home win over Tennessee. After the game, he shook somebody’s hand, but something felt off. He grabbed the scissors to cut off the athletic tape around his ankles, but dropped them. He then went to check his phone in his locker, but he dropped that, too.

Once Carter got his wrist brace off, he discovered the problem. He had torn a ligament, leading to a separation of his wrist bones. His left hand basically couldn’t function. Immediate surgery was required.

Just like that, Carter’s promising rookie season was put on hold. He wound up missing five games, returning in Week 14 at the Los Angeles Rams.

“I had to learn a whole new identity for myself,” Carter told The Buffalo News after the team’s final practice of mandatory minicamp last week. “When you get injured, physically they can fix you. But then, it’s the mental piece. Am I strong enough? Is it going to break if I touch somebody? Can I still punch the same?”

Carter actually played a lot in Weeks 17 and 18 of the regular season, but the Bills’ playoff seeding was secure, so the priority in those games was to rest the starters as much as possible. When the playoffs began, Carter was a healthy inactive.

Naturally, that was tough to stomach.

“I think the best way to describe it for me is business is business, regardless of whether you think it’s right, wrong or indifferent, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “You don’t take business personally. You want to be out there every snap that you can be, but at the end of the day, that’s not how it works.”

As the first three-time captain in Duke University football history, Carter, not surprisingly, took the right approach to sitting out. He focused on being the best player on the scout team, giving the offense a good look in practice. All the while, he was still strengthening his wrist in case his number was called.

“Of course I’m not happy to watch the playoffs and be around the atmosphere in a different capacity other than being on the field,” he said. “But how do you get better, how do you grow? I think that was a testament to me as a person and how I treated it.”

That has continued this spring, according to Bills general manager Brandon Beane.

“I think DeWayne’s come back with a purpose,” Beane said last week. “The wrist is not bothering him anymore.”

The Bills had a bizarre run of wrist injuries last year, with Carter and fellow rookie Keon Coleman going down midway through the season. Both returned to the lineup, but found that recovering from injury midway through an NFL season presents a challenge. For Carter, the hand fighting that occurs on the line of scrimmage requires full confidence that his wrist can withstand the contact.

“Easier for us to say to go do it than, you know, if you’re the guy that’s actually coming off the procedure that he had,” Beane said. “But he’s been here a lot this offseason, and I think he’s working hard. I’m sure he knows what he’s got to do.”

Beane didn’t need to verbally challenge Carter because of the general manager’s actions this offseason. The Bills drafted two defensive tackles in the first four rounds of the draft – South Carolina’s T.J. Sanders with a trade up in the second round and Kentucky’s Deone Walker in the fourth. Given where they were picked, Sanders and Walker safely can be considered roster locks. Oliver and veteran DaQuan Jones are the presumed starters, making for a crowded defensive tackle room.

“Competition breeds excellence. Business is business. They added who we felt we needed,” Carter said. “We added some great guys. I get to learn from them and they get to learn from me. I’ve always been an internally motivated person, especially the way my season went last year.”

Carter, 6-foot-3 and 305 pounds, is a bit of a tweener. He’s not a true, run-stuffing, one-technique defensive tackle, nor is he more of a penetrating, three-technique pass rusher. That can be viewed one of two ways. The pessimistic view is that he lacks a true position, which gives him a high floor but low ceiling. The optimistic view is his versatility allows him to play multiple positions, giving the roster greater flexibility.

He lined up everywhere on the line at Duke – a fact the Bills liked.

“I play football,” Carter said. “I feel very comfortable learning the whole playbook. That’s just part of me doing my job. I’m trying to be as healthy as I can, as strong as I can, as fundamentally sound as I can to be better, and everything else will fall where it may.”