Bills DE Von Miller reflects on his first sack in nearly two years

Buffalo Bills defensive end Von Miller recorded his first sack in nearly two years in his team's Week 1 win over the Arizona Cardinals.

Kyle Silagyi | Sep 9, 2024

Mark Konezny-Imagn Images

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When fans ultimately look back on Von Miller’s lauded professional career, they’ll remember one of the most vaunted pass rushers in NFL history, an uber-impactful defender who earned countless accolades throughout an immensely productive decade-plus career.

With this in mind, it’s perhaps a bit surprising to realize that entering the Buffalo Bills’ recent Week 1 clash with the Arizona Cardinals, he hadn’t recorded a sack since November 13, 2022. He tore his ACL roughly two weeks after that date in a Thanksgiving Day clash with the Detroit Lions, an ailment that sidelined him for the remainder of the 2022 season and through the first four games of the 2023 campaign. He looked like a ghost of his former self upon his ultimate return, at times being more a detriment to the Buffalo defense than a benefit as he finished the season with just three tackles and zero sacks.

The Bills’ brass claimed to see signs of the Miller of old as the season progressed, setting the stage for a 2024 offseason in which several within the organization noted that he had fully bounced back from his 2022 injury. Talk, however, can only go so far; members of the Buffalo faithful were eager to see Miller perform in the team’s Week 1 matchup with the Cardinals, to see if the NFL’s active all-time sack leader had truly returned to form or if he, again, would be a rather expensive and unimpactful rotational defender.

He largely delivered.

The 35-year-old recorded two total tackles in the win and was credited with a sack on a play in which he pushed Arizona tackle Kelvin Beachum back into quarterback Kyler Murray. It wasn’t the most elegant or picturesque sack of Miller’s career, but it was his first in nearly two years, a quarterback takedown that got the proverbial monkey off his back and could set the stage for a bounce-back 2024 campaign.

Miller played a pivotal role in a Buffalo pass rush that rebounded after a poor start against the Cardinals, finishing the game with four total sacks (Greg Rousseau tallied the other three). The veteran spoke about his sack and the general performance of the defensive front after the game, telling reporting that this takedown felt a bit different.

Mark Konezny-Imagn Images

“It felt good,” Miller said. “You think about it for so long, you think about it all of last year, then when you get hurt, ‘can’t wait to get a sack, can’t wait to get a sack,’ and then when you get the sack, it’s just business as usual. You act like you’ve been there before.

“I’m not going to lie, it definitely felt good after the type of season that I went through and the type of season that we all went through last year, to come in here and get multiple sacks and really just do what we do and go out there and showcase everything that we’ve been working on throughout the offseason, it definitely feels good.”

Few are expecting Miller to again be the dominant pass rusher who once constructed double-digit sack seasons with ease, but his returning to form and again being a reliable member of the defensive front would provide a major boost to the Buffalo defense. One-game sample sizes are often misleading, but it looks as though the veteran is set to be productive yet again this fall; he’ll have his next opportunity to torment opposing quarterbacks when the Bills take on the Miami Dolphins this Thursday night in a Week 2 clash.

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