Following the Buffalo Bills’ opening night win over the Rams, a simple stroll into the locker room revealed a smiling and laughing A.J. Epenesa. There was something a bit lighter, maybe freer, about him than in his first two seasons.
Of course, he was quick to credit the entire defensive effort for the team’s thorough shutdown of the high-powered Rams attack. But they wouldn’t have been able to do it without Epenesa.
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“It makes you feel good,” he said. “It makes you feel like the work you put in is worth it. To come out and get 1.5 (sacks) today, make a couple of plays and then for the whole D-Line to eat, the best opening day you could ask for, really.”
With those 1.5 sacks, the defensive end nearly doubled his career total in one evening. But his productive night went beyond just those two plays, and teammates took note.
“A.J. Epenesa coming off the side, blinding the vision of (Matthew) Stafford and forcing him to sail the ball,” safety Jordan Poyer said of his interception. “(Cooper) Kupp had to go high and it tipped, and that’s just what happens.”
“His swagger is totally different,” left tackle Dion Dawkins said of Epenesa. “Even when he’s, like, lined up, I can feel his presence now.”
Even in Week 1’s successful outing, the humble and hard-working Epenesa quickly pointed out his flaws.
“Being myself and knowing who I am, I’m already critiquing myself,” he said. “I already know that there’s a couple of things I did today that could have helped prevent them scoring in the first half. There’s some things I could have done to tighten up.”
He’s being hard on himself, something he’s had to do to get where he is today. At least from the outset of the 2022 season, he’s worked himself into a spot where his teammates and coaches could count on him to deliver a big play as he did on opening night. But it’s been a long road to this point.
While he had an entire college season and the NFL Combine as usual for draft picks, everything changed once the league left Indianapolis in early March 2020.
Losing weight in buckets
The COVID-19 pandemic altered the rest of the offseason in ways never seen before. Colleges canceled pro days. The NFL Draft was held both virtually and in commissioner Roger Goodell’s basement. The NFL indefinitely postponed the usual in-person offseason workouts after the draft, replacing them with virtual meetings by video conference.
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The Bills’ pass rush desperately needed a good, young prospect to join the group that offseason. And with the Bills trading away their first-round pick in 2020 for receiver Stefon Diggs, Epenesa became the de facto top pick at 54th overall. Epenesa was a projected first-round pick entering the draft, so the pressure for early impact was on immediately.
What’s more, the Bills wanted him to slim down from his college weight to better fit their system. Epenesa had been 282 pounds his senior year at Iowa and then 275 pounds at the NFL Combine. The Bills’ normal target weight is near 260 to 265 pounds.
That’s when the weight roller coaster began. The eager-to-please Epenesa got to work, and then situational circumstance met a self-inflicted error he couldn’t have seen coming. Away from the Bills’ building until camp began due to the pandemic, Epenesa was losing weight in buckets.
When things opened up enough for teams to begin training camp, Epenesa looked like a ghost of his college self. He dropped down in the 245- to 250-pound range upon arrival. And at one point during his rookie season, he was 243 pounds.
Not for lack of effort in getting the weight where he needed, his new enemy became metabolism.
“I would eat food, but it wouldn’t stick,” Epenesa said. “I would eat, eat, eat. I’d be up 5 pounds, but if I go out and run, or if I sweat a little bit, it’s all gone. I got to the point that I couldn’t gain that weight back, or I was really struggling.”
It wasn’t all bad for Epenesa in the 240s. He said he felt like a “new man” and could dunk a basketball in a way he never had before. His specialty is the windmill, and he rated himself among the top five dunkers on the team.
But the newfound dunking prowess didn’t help his ultimate desire — to live up to his expectations and become an impact player for the Bills. But, due to his metabolism and almost 40-pound loss from college to pros, Epenesa had to reinvent himself.
“What’s funny is I actually played him in college my senior year, and he was heavier back then,” Bills offensive tackle Tommy Doyle said. “In college, he was really powerful and had that long arm.”
The ability to walk college offensive tackles in the backfield was zapped. He had to find a new way.
“It’s different,” Epenesa recalled. “You have to change your style of play. I can’t be so power oriented because now I’m 40 pounds down. I don’t have 40 of those pounds that I got acclimated to, and so, I went from being a power-to-speed rusher to a speed-to-power rusher.”
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Although the power was gone, the speed and twitchiness ramped up. It’s where he was finding his most success in practice. But the transition wasn’t seamless, and Epenesa struggled to find his way as a rookie.
As the Bills’ top pick in 2020, Epenesa was a healthy scratch for his first career game. He was active in all but one game the rest of the season but played on only 31 percent of snaps in those games as a rookie.
While some early-round rookies were making an impact, Epenesa was merely trying to find his footing, on the fly, in a brand new body.
“It’s just tough to be able to do your job when your weight fluctuates like that,” Bills defensive line coach Eric Washington said. “Especially when you play on the line of scrimmage against the biggest and the strongest guys on the field.”
Conquering the roller coaster
His first year passed, and Epenesa had one sack in 14 appearances. With a full offseason in 2021 and an in-person offseason program, he tried to get his weight back where it needed to be but could only get to the 250 mark, where he stayed all season. It was an improvement, but his metabolism was relentless.
Another 14 games passed, this time Epenesa had 1.5 sacks, bringing his career tally to 2.5 in 28 games. But unlike in his rookie year, Epenesa gave a flash of massive potential in a Week 2 blowout in Miami.
On only 26 pass-rushing snaps, he had an unbelievable 11 pressures. According to TruMedia and ProFootball Focus, there were only three players with more pressures in a single game all last season. The list included the Rams’ Aaron Donald (14 vs. Cardinals in Week 14), the Raiders’ Maxx Crosby (13 vs. Chiefs in Week 10) and the Steelers’ Cameron Heyward (12 vs. Bills in Week 1).
The Bills hoped it was the start of Epenesa’s breakout, only to watch the second-year pass rusher fade into the background. He had only 14 pressures in the other 13 games combined.
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“That was our concern for a period,” defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier said. “Would he be able to not just flash what we thought he could be, but to consistently make plays down in, down out?”
Heading into a crucial third offseason, Epenesa received support from his coaches despite the uneven results, and they pointed to the big-time effort against the Dolphins.
“He did that. That wasn’t a mirage,” Washington said. “It wasn’t some figment of someone’s imagination. That was him going out on an NFL field and just really being a factor almost on every snap in a bunch of different situations. It’s just about understanding what you did, using that to buoy your confidence and just finding that level of consistency and not allowing yourself emotionally go from one extreme to the other.”
Epenesa knew to get where he wanted to be, he needed to bring the power threat back to his game. In his first two years, he had to rely on his speed around the edge, more of a finesse game, and it allowed opponents to scout him a bit easier.
It was time to conquer the weight roller coaster for good. Epenesa spent the offseason with his sister, who served as a nutritionist and was intentional with every step to help him gain the weight and keep it on.
“I would say for me it was all about taking that next step,” Epenesa said. “It’s really about that consistency and doing that every single day.”
It worked, and when Epenesa returned to Buffalo, he was a new man. He worked himself up to the team’s target weight of 265 and then started to see on-field results.
He flashed in the offseason workouts, then when training camp began, Epenesa worked his way into the backfield for pressures almost every day. Something clicked for Epenesa, and they began increasing his opportunities. It all came back to the 22 pounds he’s added since his rookie season.
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“Now that I’m back up to 265, I can really feel the power being applied on other people,” Epenesa said. “They feel my power now.”
Potential through the roof
Bills offensive tackles started taking notice in practice.
“Oh, a hundred percent. I have longer arms than A.J., but if he connects, I definitely get a recoil out of it, so the weight has helped him out a lot,” right tackle Spencer Brown said.
“There’s been a few times I’ve definitely felt his power,” Doyle said. “He’s definitely put me on my back in practice here or there.”
“He’s using his body as a weapon now and not just his hands,” Dawkins said. “He’s not afraid to hit you and thud you and let us feel his presence. Now he’s coming at you like BOOM, and coming off. It’s just a different vibe.”
Anotha one.#BUFvsLAR | #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/wbji145lUE
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) September 9, 2022
The added power move to his pass-rush arsenal can help open the doors to counter moves for Epenesa while also maintaining the twitchiness he developed in his first two seasons. It makes him a more unpredictable player to block and provides more opportunities to make impactful plays, as he did against the Rams.
“So much growth, not just athletically as far as maturing in his body, but the mental part of it,” Frazier said. “Early on, and he used to make some mistakes on some things, and we’re like, ‘Come on, A.J.’ But now? Rarely. Rarely. So your confidence really grows when you put him out there no matter what the call is that comes in, he’s going to be able to handle.”
It helped him separate from teammates Boogie Basham and Shaq Lawson in the summer, and now Epenesa is firmly entrenched as the team’s third defensive end and an essential piece of their pass-rushing puzzle. The Bills were rewarded in Epenesa’s first game with four pressures.
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“I think there’s momentum there, I do,” coach Sean McDermott said when asked if he thinks Epenesa is looking ready to come into his own. “Again, it’s one game at a time here.”
McDermott kept his optimism in check, but some teammates believe Epenesa’s potential is through the roof.
“He just keeps coming,” Dawkins said. “He understands now that there’s not one play in the game. The way that he plays, if there’s let’s say 30 (plays), he’s going to get there at least twice. If we say twice a game, that’s two times 20 games? Come on now. Like, what are we talking about? Pressures, sacks? He’s winning. In his position, he just has to get there once. If he gets a sack once a freaking game, he’s a superstar.”
Epenesa realizes everything he’s done has built up this prime opportunity on a Super Bowl contender. All the challenges, the learning curve and the success of this summer, it now rests on him to finally evolve from potential to production.
“I hate to say that it took me so long to transition and to get used to it, but now, I mean, it’s definitely a transition from college to the NFL and being able to feel the weight of the tackles, the speed of the transitions are different,” Epenesa said. “You know, I just kind of had to get accustomed to it at first. And then now that I think I’ve been here for so long, I’ve had enough reps. It’s time to really prove it and show it.”
(Top photo of A.J. Epenesa: Rich Barnes / USA Today)
