In his first four seasons with the Buffalo Bills, defensive back Siran Neal became the sixth Jacksonville State alumnus to play in more than 40 NFL regular-season games.
If Neal plays through the end of his new three-year, $10.9 million contract extension, he’ll be fourth former JSU player with more than 85.
One of the NFL’s best special-teams players and a jack of all trades in the secondary, Neal could have become an unrestricted free agent next month. Instead, he signed last week to stay with Buffalo, which drafted him in the fifth round in 2018.Neal cited two main reasons for preferring to stick with the Bills.Buffalo’s 2021 season ended in 42-36 overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Divisional Round of the AFC playoffs on Jan. 23. The previous season, the Bills lost to the Chiefs 38-24 in the AFC Championship Game. That’s after Buffalo posted a 6-10 record in Neal’s first season. The Bills have gone 34-15 in the three regular seasons since. “There’s always unfinished business, not just that game (against the Chiefs),” Neal said on Thursday, “but I feel like from every game that we lost from the previous years prior to that game. But that’s a reason I’m back. We have unfinished business, and the guys here know we have unfinished business, and we know what we have to do.
