Geno Stone’s Buffalo stint is already looking shaky, and that should sound familiar to anyone who watched him in Cincinnati.
The former Bengals safety, who signed a one-year, $1.4 million deal with the Bills, is now showing up on early cut-candidate lists after a rough start to camp and preseason. NFL.com’s Kevin Patra included Stone among Buffalo’s possible waiver-wire casualties, pointing to a performance that hasn’t done much to change the reputation he carried out of Cincinnati.
“Stone has struggled during camp and was outplayed in Saturday’s preseason game by Damar Hamlin, who gets my nod in the safety room.”
That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, and Bills fans are already reacting like they’re seeing the same movie Bengals fans sat through for two seasons. Stone was a major part of a Cincinnati defense that finished near the bottom of the league, and the tackling issues were impossible to miss. The Bengals led the NFL with 170 missed tackles last year, while the next closest team, the Washington Commanders, had 131.
Stone’s numbers stood out in all the wrong ways. He led the league in total missed tackles and finished sixth-worst in missed tackle percentage.
Buffalo at least gave itself an escape hatch. If the Bills decide to move on, Stone would free up $1 million in cap space while leaving behind just a $187,500 dead money hit. That makes the decision easy to understand if the play doesn’t improve fast.
And if Buffalo does cut him loose, it probably won’t take long for another team to talk itself into taking a chance. Some front offices will look at Stone’s time with the Baltimore Ravens, where he played on a top-10 defense, and decide that’s the version they’re buying.
Others will point to the fact that he has six non-consequential interceptions over the past two seasons and label him a ball-hawking safety. His Bengals stint, with all its missed tackles and frustration, can be explained away as a bad fit in a dysfunctional defense.
But Bengals fans know exactly what they saw.
At this point, they’d probably prefer Stone stays in Buffalo, especially if Cincinnati ever finds itself facing the Bills in the playoffs and can run right at him. And if the Bills do release him, one thing is already clear: he won’t be headed back to the Queen City. He burned that bridge.
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