For Baldwin Wallace alumni tracking Anthony Kendall's NFL journey, this week brought a roster move that stings on paper but may amount to little more than a procedural shuffle.
The Bills waived the cornerback from their 53-man roster during the week of October 12, but Buffalo intends to bring Kendall back on the practice squad — keeping him firmly in the NFL ecosystem and, critically, in the organization that gave the small-school product his shot.
What the move means
Being cut and re-signed to a practice squad is one of the more common — and least alarming — roster transactions in the NFL. Teams use it regularly to manage salary cap flexibility, activate short-term needs at other positions, or shift a developing player into a lower-pressure role where he can absorb the game without the weekly cut risk. For Kendall, the expectation of a practice squad return signals that Buffalo's coaching staff still values him as a developmental piece. If they didn't, he simply wouldn't be asked back.
The Bills were also coming off a 37–34 result against the Los Angeles Rams on Monday, October 12 — a game that likely informed some of the roster tinkering that followed. High-leverage wins and losses alike tend to prompt front offices to sharpen their depth charts heading into the next stretch of the schedule.
The bigger picture for a BW alum
Kendall's path to the NFL from Baldwin Wallace — a Division III program in Berea, Ohio — was never going to be linear. Making a 53-man roster at any point as a D-III product is the kind of achievement that doesn't come with guarantees, and the waiver wire is part of the terrain every player at the roster bubble navigates. The fact that Buffalo is willing to keep Kendall on the practice squad rather than let him test free agency suggests there's something the coaching staff sees worth preserving.
Practice squad players remain eligible to be elevated to the active roster on game weeks, meaning Kendall isn't out of the picture for in-game action. He also becomes poachable by other teams, which, if it happened, would represent its own form of validation.
For Yellow Jackets fans, the headline reads "waived" — but the footnote reads "expected back." In Kendall's case, that footnote is the whole story.
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