The Buffalo Bills spent the early portion of the NFL's free agency period trying to strengthen the depth of their defensive line, adding Joey Bosa, Larry Ogunjobi and Michael Hoecht to their roster. They found out on Friday that the latter two players — Ogunjobi and Hoecht — are going to miss the first six games of the 2025 NFL season due to suspension.
General manager Brandon Beane announced that both players will be facing six-game suspensions for violating the league's PED policy.
"It's not ideal to have two guys with that, but both guys have never had any issues off the field. It's a tough lesson of where do you get your supplements or whatever happened," Beane said, per the Bills' official website. "We'll embrace those guys and if they were guys that this had happened before, we probably would have avoided them."
Beane acknowledged that they knew about Hoecht's suspension at the time of his signing, but that Ogunjobi's suspension was a surprise.
Hoecht spent the first four years of his career with the Los Angeles Rams and is coming off a 2024 season that saw him record three sacks in 17 games.
Ogunjobi spent the past three seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, tallying six sacks in his time with the team. Prior to that, he spent time with both the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Both players will be able to participate in offseason workouts and training camp before having to serve their suspensions at the start of the regular season.
From a big picture standpoint, this should not hurt the Bills too much in 2025, because both players will be back in the lineup before the team gets into crunch time and the playoffs later in the season. It will be a short-term, temporary hurdle for their defensive line depth, but it should not keep them from getting through that part of their schedule. Especially since they have months of advance notice and will be able to prepare for it.
As long as both players are able to serve in their defensive line rotation for the stretch run of the regular season and the playoffs, that is all anybody in Buffalo will ultimately care about. It is, however, a good way to take a little wind out of the sails for the offseason when you find out two new players are going to have to wait until Week 7 to actually see the field.
