JACKSONVILLE — A lot has changed since 2018.
Back then, a young and wide-eyed Tre’Davious White was one of the key pieces in Sean McDermott’s first season as Buffalo Bills head coach, and the cornerback helped McDermott deliver the team’s first playoff appearance, breaking a 17-year postseason drought. There they went to EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville, inexperienced in the playoff arena, and fell to those Jaguars.
But sometimes, things have a way of coming full circle.
McDermott has taken his battle scars with one road playoff loss after the next, and White, just five days shy of his 31st birthday, has been on a journey that would have ended many players’ NFL careers. There they were, together, eight years later, in an ever-so-poetic moment in the very same EverBank Stadium.
Buffalo clung to a three-point lead against the Jaguars with one minute to play and needed a defensive stop to give the McDermott-led Bills their first road playoff win 2,926 days after that distant loss — and to end another playoff drought. The franchise hadn’t won a postseason road game in 33 seasons.
As if it were a carefully crafted movie script ready to play out in real time, there White was, all these years later, giving the Bills one of those playoff moments that will stand the test of time.
On his very first dropback with under one minute to play, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence attempted to fire one into Jakobi Meyers. White was in man coverage on Meyers, had a step and a beat on the ball, and closed down on the pass as it zoomed toward the receiver. White helped deflect the pass into the air, where second-year safety Cole Bishop roped it in for the game-clinching interception.
Game over.
The Bills secured a 27-24 Wild Card win over the Jaguars, in the same stadium where White and McDermott’s playoff journey began with the Bills. It almost had to be White making that play to send the Bills on their way to a sixth straight AFC Divisional round.
“I don’t even know how to feel right now,” White said. “I’m just trying to be in the moment with my teammates, just trying to enjoy it and not think about too much of the ins and outs of it, but man, it’s huge. Huge for myself, huge to the team, huge for Buffalo, and it’s a step in the right direction going towards our ultimate goal, which is to win the Super Bowl.”
The parallel nature of the Bills’ wild-card victory is rare in sports.
“I didn’t even think about that. That’s crazy,” said nickel Taron Johnson of White’s Jacksonville-to-Jacksonville playoff journey. “That’s dope as hell to be back in this moment, what is it, eight years later? I mean, it’s special.”
Johnson, almost as well as anyone in the Bills locker room, knows what White has gone through over the year. White is Johnson’s close friend and even stood in his wedding. He knows what this moment means to White.
“It just shows his resiliency and his love for the game as well, because he wants to be great,” Johnson said. “Even when you come off an injury… but you work your way back to that level, and, he’s here.”
Sean McDermott said nobody has worked harder than Tre’Davious White to battle back from injuries. (Corey Perrine / Imagn Images)
Early in White’s career, he ascended to become one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL and a key piece of the organization. The Bills and White likely thought and hoped he’d be that player for them until he retired.
The series of events for White from 2021 through the end of the 2024 season can only be described as an odyssey, and a true test of strength no one could have seen coming.
White suffered a torn ACL on Thanksgiving Day in 2021, ending his season and severely impacting the next. The cornerback didn’t make his in-game return in 2022 until the Bills’ Thanksgiving Day game, but he clearly wasn’t the same player. White finally got to a place where he began to feel like himself for the 2023 season, only to suffer a devastating torn Achilles on the first day of October.
For a second time in three seasons, White’s season was over, and another full year of recovery was needed. The Bills, who once looked at White as a key building block, faced a lot of difficult cap decisions in the 2024 offseason and decided to let White go.
From there, the odyssey continued. White signed with the Los Angeles Rams, only to get benched and eventually moved for next to nothing to the Baltimore Ravens during the season. White hung around with the Ravens the rest of the year, but it just wasn’t the same as a bit player.
White entered the 2025 season just hopeful for one more chance, and he hoped for it to be in one place — Buffalo.
Just ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft, the Bills made the reunion a reality, signing him to a one-year prove-it deal, likely serving as White’s last gasp to find the player he was before all the injuries began in 2021. It wasn’t without hiccups.
“When he came back, he still wasn’t really Tre, because he was working through two major injuries. And yet in Tre’s fashion, there’s nobody that works harder,” McDermott said, reflecting moments after their road playoff win. “He’s gotten himself back now to where he is… he’s just as good as there is in terms of his determination, his heart, and his resilient nature.”
A series of events, including a long-term injury to rookie and first-round pick Maxwell Hairston, made it clear that, no matter what, White was going to play meaningful snaps for the Bills upon his return.
Slowly but surely, White began looking more like the player they had before all the injury misfortune began. And with Hairston suffering yet another injury in Week 18, it opened the door for White to turn back the clock yet again and be a full-time starter for the team that drafted him.
Fast forward to the end of the Jaguars game, and White’s return as one of the Bills’ most important starters, for a defense that has been improving and helping to secure wins nearly every week, is complete. White was buzzing around the ball all game, whether in man or zone coverage. With three total pass breakups, he came close to making a game-changing play even before the game-ending one.
“It was great to see him ball like that,” top cornerback Christian Benford said. “He’s a baller, and he was meant for it.”
“I’m just out there playing ball, and I’m having fun, I’m enjoying it, man,” White said. “… For me to take all the credit, that ain’t the way to go. You know, it’s a team sport, but I feel like I did my 1/11th pretty good today.”
When White was first asked to reflect on his journey, he instantly deflected it toward the team — displaying the very fabric that makes the Bills and McDermott love him as much as they do.
But when it comes to being counted out, which is just what White had been after a tumultuous 2024 season that many thought could have been the end of a great career, White opened up a bit more on Sunday.
“Every time I think about how far I’ve come, what I had to overcome, the landmines I had to go around to get to where I’m at right now. Even coming into this year, like, it’s huge,” White told The Athletic. “I just want to pat myself on the back because I always say, when God made me, he just put something in me with a burning desire to, no matter what I’m facing, I’m going to keep pushing. If I continue to keep pushing, it is going to pay off. That’s the story of my life.”
All of White’s moments over the last four years, mostly challenging but recently increasingly good, have led him and the Bills to this point.
“I never doubted myself. It’s just me,” White said. “How much I pushed myself and how much I put into the game, I just always genuinely believe that it’s gonna pay off no matter when. Right now, I’m in the midst of it paying off.”
The Bills’ defense and White’s journey share a lot in common. Entering the playoffs, many counted their defense out and dismissed them as flawed, despite how far they’ve come in big games over the last two months.
And, like White’s personal arc, even if it isn’t perfect, should this pay-off continue the way it did Sunday, the Bills have proven to be a defense capable of getting key stops against just about anyone.
“On to next week,” said White. “We’re gonna enjoy this one on the plane, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”