ORCHARD PARK — It’s hard to imagine Rasul Douglas having a bad day.
Douglas walks off the practice field, into the field house and heads over to catch passes from the JUGGS machine, where he insists a Buffalo Bills staff member does push-ups to settle a friendly bet. Finally satisfied that the staffer did the correct amount of push-ups (and did them correctly), Douglas heads over for his weekly press conference, and once that’s over with, he settles in for a quick game of dominoes with Von Miller before team meetings.
It has been a little more than a year since the Bills struck an agreement with the Green Bay Packers to acquire Douglas and he wasted little time fitting in. Almost immediately, Douglas thrust himself into locker room games and strikes up an unfiltered conversation with anybody who catches his eye.
The closest bond Douglas has formed in Buffalo, though, is with two other cornerbacks, Christian Benford and Kaiir Elam. The trio are almost always the last players on the practice field each day, using the extra time to work on footwork, along with change of direction and ball skills.
The 30-year-old Douglas — who is usually the last to leave the locker room after games — is closer to the end of his career than the beginning, a contrast from Benford and Elam, who are third-year players carving out their NFL paths. Neither appointed Douglas the ringleader, but Benford and Elam have improved since he arrived.
Douglas and Benford have emerged as one of the top cornerback tandems in the league, and when Benford missed Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins, Elam slid right in without difficulty.
“We try to work on what we feel like we’ll be in a game doing the most that maybe we may have not gotten to at practice,” Douglas told the Gazette. “We always just try to get extra. So that’s every day after practice where for maybe 20-30 minutes, just whatever we feel like. … If we mess up at practice, we try to look over what else to do.”
While Douglas says his work with other cornerbacks was no different when he played for the Packers, it was a much different scenario for Benford and Elam before Douglas arrived. The duo was still frequently among the last of the practice field, but they often worked alone.
It’s not that Benford and Elam disliked each other, they were just in direct competition. Elam was a 2022 first-round pick, expected to slide in opposite Tre’Davious White, but instead, Benford, a sixth-round pick the same year, battled him from the start and won the opening-day job three years in a row.
Douglas didn’t hatch a plan to bring the two younger players together, it was just a relationship that developed organically. Going from the SEC pressure-cooker at Florida and then moving to the NFL, where it’s ratcheted up a notch, Elam always assumed it was all about competition.
“The support we have for each other, it’s like no man is greater,” Elam said at his locker Wednesday. “Everybody just wants to help each other out, which is something I never was a part of. I never expected it to happen. But it’s been awesome, because I get to learn from them. Even though I’m not playing, they give me all their wisdom. And when I am playing, they cheer me on.”
Competition still exists, but it’s not personal. After a big play, Elam is the first person on the sideline to greet Benford and Douglas with a pre-planned handshake.
So it’s no surprise that Douglas offered an unsolicited opinion from his corner locker after the win over the Dolphins. Standing a few feet away, Elam dressed with an ease that indicated a heavy burden was lifted off him.
Elam’s first 2 ½ years in the NFL have been a struggle. An uneven rookie season that featured glimpses of first-round talent and healthy scratches bled into training camp last year, when he battled Benford and Dane Jackson for the No. 2 cornerback job opposite White. Not only did Elam finish third in that race, but he injured his foot in the process.
As the fourth cornerback, Elam was again inactive for the first four games. But when he got a chance after White tore his Achilles tendon in Week 4, Elam showed he wasn’t truly healthy.
Elam struggled to play through the injury in two starts with White out and Benford and Jackson dealing with various bumps and bruises and he didn’t start the third week against New England and was once again out of the lineup the following week.
The Bills dealt for Douglas after that, allowing Elam to go on injured reserve to heal, missed seven games, and even when he was healthy again, was inactive the final two weeks of the regular season.
Injuries ravaged Buffalo’s cornerbacks near the end of the year, and when Douglas was injured in the regular-season finale, Elam was thrown into the lineup against the Steelers, making five tackles and a key interception of quarterback Mason Rudolph in the end zone.
Although Elam couldn’t win a starting job in training camp this season, he has seemed more calm and more confident. And Douglas didn’t miss a chance to hype him.
“He don’t complain, he don’t say nothing, he just puts his head down, and he works,” Douglas said. “… He’s been ready, man. He can play in this league, but I think he knows that. I hope he do if he don’t, because we tell him.”
Perhaps Elam’s refreshed demeanor comes from being healthy and maybe it’s due to him feeling more comfortable in Buffalo’s defense, but the new environment surely had a small role. Douglas refused to leave his family for Buffalo’s voluntary offseason workouts, and was genuinely surprised to learn this was the final year of his contract.
Former Bills cornerback Josh Norman insisted last year that Douglas cheats at cards in the locker room, while Douglas railed Thursday on defensive coordinator Bobby Babich’s inspirational quotes and head coach Sean McDermott’s dad jokes in team meetings.
Douglas’ personality is a great contrast to Benford’s, as one of the quietest players on the team, but they both share the same confidence. Upon being asked what style of receiver he prefers to face, Benford said, “Whoever is getting the most targets.”
And Douglas also delivers on the field, with six takeaways in nine games with the Bills last season. Douglas has surrendered just 225 yards on 35 targets this season, and while he’s gone 10 games without an interception — his longest drought since 2020 — dating back to last year, he’s been a fraction of a second late on a pick the last three games.
Since Douglas’ trade, Benford has seen completion percentage on his targets go from 69% to 62.3%, while yards per completion have dropped from 12.5 to 9.1. Meanwhile, Elam’s completion percentage has plummeted more than 10 points and his yards per completion dropped from 13.5 to 11.2.
“It’s been a veteran that has two younger guys there that have a lot of respect for each other,” Bills defensive coordinator Bobby Babich said. “I believe Rasul wants nothing but success for those guys. I think he provides them a little bit of a sounding board on things they might see and he can confirm or say, ‘Hey, maybe look at this a little bit differently.’ But it’s been really cool to see.”