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After the Bills drafted linebacker Shaq Lawson in the first round, they and Lawson dismissed reports that he would need shoulder surgery that would keep him off the football field for an extended period of time.

Lawson didn’t make it through his first month of work with the team before he aggravated his shoulder injury during a drill and went in for an operation that sidelined him for the remainder of the offseason program. There hasn’t been a concrete timetable given for Lawson’s return to action, although Louis Riddick of ESPN shared some of what he heard while discussing the Bills’ need to pressure the quarterback more often than they did last season.

“How are you going to get that if the guy who you thought was going to be so instrumental in helping you do that, Shaq Lawson, had a shoulder injury that at one point you said didn’t think was going to need surgery, and now it does need surgery, and from what I hear could be anywhere from — he could miss half the season to maybe even the entire season,” Riddick said on WGR 550, via the Buffalo News. “That’s the No. 1 question you need to answer.”

Lawson responded on Twitter a short time later. He directed a tweet at Riddick that said “can’t believe what everybody say about you.”

When reports of the need for surgery originally surfaced, a timeline of 4-6 months was given as an estimate for Lawson’s absence. Lawson had surgery in May, so the short end would have him ready to go before September is over. That would obviously be the best-case scenario for Lawson and the Bills, although there’s likely some way to go before they’ll know anything for sure.