With sixth-year kicker Tyler Bass sidelined by a pelvic injury, the Buffalo Bills signed Caden Davis to a one-year contract Friday. He wasn’t who the Bills trotted out for their first extra point of the preseason, though.
Another player with the same last name but different number got the call: part-time emergency kicker and full-time running back Ray Davis.
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Following Mitch Trubisky’s second-quarter touchdown pass to tight end Dawson Knox, Davis came onto the field wearing two different cleats. In that way, he looked the part of a kicker, at least from the knees down. In just about every other way, however, he looked like the 5-foot-8, 220-pound running back who piled up 631 yards and six touchdowns from scrimmage as a rookie last season.
Nevertheless, with his mouth piece dangling from his face mask, Davis drilled the 33-yard PAT right down the middle in Orchard Park’s Highmark Stadium Saturday.
The Bills used Davis at kicker in their scrimmage, according to the local broadcast, via NFL Network, and they must have liked what they saw.
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The second-year back and 2024 fourth-round pick — who bounced from Temple to Vanderbilt to Kentucky during his college career — followed through in exhibition action against the Giants.
When the Bills entered the red zone in the final seconds of the first half, thanks to a 58-yard downfield connection between Trubsiky and wideout Tyrell Shavers, Caden Davis got an opportunity.
He easily soared a 24-yard field goal through the uprights to draw the Bills within one score of the Giants before intermission. Davis, who previously spent time with the New York Jets this summer, went undrafted after finishing his college career at Ole Miss, where he set the school record for most 50-plus-yard field goals with four such makes.
Ironically, his first preseason attempt with the Bills was shorter than the extra point the team’s emergency kicker, and RB2, made earlier that same quarter.
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Non-kickers have flashed place kicking ability several times before. Earlier this week, Philadelphia Eagles punter Braden Mann traded places with Jake Elliott, who held for Mann as he comfortably made a PAT in the second quarter of a preseason game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Speaking of the Bengals, wide receiver Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson famously blasted an extra point for Cincinnati during the 2009 preseason.
On Saturday, Davis put his touch on one of football’s more peculiar rarities.
