By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Jason Peters – Signed by the Bills in 2004

Sometimes teams sign players who have great physical abilities but are on the raw side. The hope is that those players will develop into something special. Jason Peters is Exhibit A of this in Bills history.

Peters was signed as an undrafted free agent out of Arkansas. He played tight end there despite weighing more than 300 pounds. Peters started on the practice squad and was activated later in the 2004 season, when he showed a ton of ability on special teams. Along the way, Peters was coached to become an offensive tackle. He moved into the starting lineup in 2005, and stayed there for the next three seasons.

Peters made the Pro Bowl in 2007, but wasn’t happy about his contract as he had the third-biggest salary of the offensive linemen on the team (about $3 million).  The star tackle sat out training camp but returned for the 2008 season.

In the spring of 2009, the Bills dealt Peters to the Eagles, who promptly gave him a four-year contract extension worth $53 million. He finished his 16th season in the league in 2019. Looking back, Peters has been a first-team All-Pro twice and made nine Pro Bowls. You’d have to say he’ll be seriously considered for the Pro Football Hall of Fame when the time comes.

Here a quick clip of his college days:

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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