Through the first stretch of Buffalo Bills training camp, Kaleb Elarms-Orr has done a convincing job of not looking like a rookie at all.
That is, until you remember he was the player Brandon Beane picked in the middle of the fourth round of the 2026 NFL Draft.
At St. John Fisher University, Elarms-Orr has been running with the first-team group from the jump, barking out pre-snap directions and showing up everywhere the ball goes.
Against the run, he has been quick to close space and make himself felt. In coverage, he has stayed attached and made plays look routine.
Tuesday brought the most memorable flashpoint. Elarms-Orr’s edge showed up in a big way when he hit Dalton Kincaid after the tight end came down with a catch during team drills, and the contact helped ignite a large scuffle.
It came after he had already delivered a thudding stop on Ty Johnson, blowing up what appeared to be a cleanly blocked run by slamming shut the lane. He later stayed step for step with Johnson on a wheel route to force an incompletion, then diagnosed a screen and looked ready to finish it for a tackle for loss against Buffalo’s first-team offense.
That kind of urgency tracks with what he’s been doing away from the field, too. WKBW Sports Director Matt Bove said Elarms-Orr told him he stayed in Orchard Park all summer to watch film with Bills defensive coordinator Jim Leonard on a regular basis, and that Leonhard is the member of the organization he considers a mentor. Leonhard, for his part, had already praised the rookie last week at camp after pointing him out again following minicamp in June.
Not everyone on the offense loved the late shot on Kincaid, but Spencer Brown liked the mentality.
“I don’t mind seeing a little piss & vinegar coming out of the rookies.”
That doesn’t mean Elarms-Orr is suddenly a finished product or immune to the usual first-year lessons. It does mean he has put himself squarely in the conversation for a starting job. From where things stand, he looks to have an inside track at one of Buffalo’s two inside linebacker spots for Week 1, even with incumbents Terrel Bernard and Dorian Williams back on the field this week after minor injuries delayed their camp debuts.
There’s also a fair amount of draft-day belief behind that read. Before the 2026 NFL Draft, I had Elarms-Orr graded as a first-round talent and compared him to former Jets, now Browns, linebacker Quincy Williams.
That isn’t a victory lap. It’s just part of the reason his early camp rise doesn’t feel especially surprising.
At TCU, he played like a no-nonsense, relentless, steady linebacker over the past two seasons, and he tested like a first-rounder at the combine. At 6-foot-2 and 234 pounds, he has the frame to play downhill as a thumper in a three-man base front, while still carrying enough juice to hold up in coverage.
Even his rookie teammates have noticed. T.J. Parker has felt the same way about him.
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