Playing Buffalo Bills rookie quarterback Josh Allen with the starters in a preseason game is “one thing we are considering,” Bills head coach Sean McDermott announced Wednesday morning. This is a step forward for Allen, who played with the third string during Buffalo’s first game against the Carolina Panthers.

After spending time almost exclusively with the third string, occasionally pulling short stints of action with the starters, Allen practiced fully with the second string for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as the Bills closed out training camp. McDermott noted that this was a chance to evaluate Allen with a different group of players around him. An even better chance could come Friday, if we see Allen slotted with the second string against the Cleveland Browns.

This is a slight shakeup to Buffalo’s quarterback competition, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that Allen has passed any of the other two candidates. Rather than swapping between 1s and 2s, veterans Nathan Peterman and AJ McCarron have alternated between the starters and the third string while Allen worked with the immediate backups. What this would really mean is that instead of 1a and 1b, we added a 1c to the mix. For the moment, there is still no front-runner, nor do we have a sense of what McDermott’s “process” for Allen’s development entails. That aside, the recent developments are a positive indicator for Buffalo’s rookie.