By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Lorenzo Alexander – Signed by the Bills in 2016

Sometimes you get lucky when you sign a free agent. Lorenzo Alexander was one of those special cases.

The linebacker came out of California as an undrafted player in 2007, and found a spot with the Washington Redskins. Alexander spent six years there, and 12 of his 13 starts for the Redskins came in 2010.  Then it was to Arizona for two seasons and to Oakland for one. The Bills thought he still had something left in the tank, particularly on special teams, and signed him for less than $1 million.

They got much more than that. Alexander became one of the top pass rushers in the league in 2016 with 12.5 sacks. That earned him a Pro Bowl spot and a two-year deal worth $9 million. He continued to play well through the end of the 2019 season, and became one of the leaders of the team’s defense. Alexander’s teammates fell over themselves to praise him as a player and a person when he retired after last season.

Let’s hear him look back at his career:

(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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