A suspension and a kicker signing. Neither will make a highlight package, and both will cost somebody something real before the season is out. That's October in the NFL: the transactions that decide the standings are the ones nobody argues about in August.
Buffalo Bills' Sam Franklin has been suspended one game for spitting, and per ESPN he will appeal. The appeal is the whole story here. Spitting is a conduct call the league office does not treat as a judgment call, so Franklin's side has to win on the video being wrong about who did it, not on the punishment being excessive. My read: the suspension stands. Franklin shows up in the Buffalo Bills' box score with three tackles and none of them solo, which tells you he is not a player the defensive plan is built around, and Sean McDermott's staff will not have to change a coverage call to cover the week.
The cost lands on special teams, where a reserve who dresses on game day is worth more than his tackle line suggests. That's the part of the roster Buffalo Bills fans notice only when a punt return breaks. If the appeal somehow lands, it will be because the footage is inconclusive, not because Franklin had a case. I'd take the under on him winning it.
Los Angeles Rams are signing free-agent kicker Brandon McManus, per NFL Network, which makes him the third kicker in three weeks in Los Angeles. The Rams released Harrison Mevis, then lost Blake Grupe to injury, and now they're back in the market. Read that sequence again. A released kicker, an injured kicker, and a signing, all inside a month, is what happens when a team treats the position as a slot to be filled rather than a job to be developed.
Kicking is the one spot on the field where continuity is the actual skill. Snapper, holder, kicker: the whole operation is timing, and every change resets it. McManus buys the Los Angeles Rams a veteran body and zero certainty. My expectation is that Sean McVay gets more aggressive on fourth down inside the opponent's 35 for the next month, because a staff that has cycled through kickers stops trusting the kick, and that aggression is measurable in a way the carousel isn't.
Here's the connection between the two items, and it's the only one that matters: both live at the bottom of the roster, where front offices file the decisions they'd rather not explain. A one-game suspension for a reserve and a kicker signing rarely show up in a win-loss column by themselves. They show up in a December game decided by a field goal, when one team has a body and asnapper who knows his holder, and the other is still holding tryouts.
My verdict: Franklin's suspension survives the appeal, and McManus is a Band-Aid, not a fix. If the Los Angeles Rams are still cycling kickers in December, the front office owes an answer on why the position was treated as an afterthought in the first place. The Buffalo Bills lose a week of depth and move on. The Rams lose something harder to replace, which is the staff's willingness to send the kicking team out there at all.