Zach Benson is a 20-year-old terrifically talented, ultra-pesky, super-skilled Buffalo Sabres forward who has ascended to cult hero status with dazzling, bordering-on-dirty play throughout the regular season and particularly during the team’s first-round defeat of the Boston Bruins.
It got me thinking.
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Who is Zach Benson on the Buffalo Bills?
After the team’s series-clinching win over the Bruins, I sent this tweet, in search of a Benson nickname:
By the time I started writing this article, it had 82 replies with spectacular suggestions such as River Rat, Scrappy Doo, Benny the Butcher, Bennis the Menace, and Carnie.
I first thought to myself — OK, there’s no one like Benson on the Bills… mostly because the NFL hardly allows Benson-style play in its game. The question I originally wanted to pose was more centered around identifying the young player on the rise who you recognize is not necessarily the best player on the Bills yet someone you would not trade under any circumstances, which is precisely how I feel about Benson and his status on the Sabres.
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Then it dawned on me — the Bills DO have a Benson-esque character, but he hasn’t played a snap for the team just yet.
CJ Gardner-Johnson.
Over the years, we’ve seen him repeatedly get under opponents’ skin.
In his second season, as a member of the New Orleans Saints, Gardner-Johnson was punched multiple times by Chicago Bears receiver Javon Wims that led to a two-game suspension for the wideout. Those two teams met in the playoffs that January, and in that contest, Chicago receiver Anthony Miller got into it with Gardner-Johnson, which resulted in two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in the Saints’ win.
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The following season, Gardner-Johnson famously flexed on Tom Brady after the quarterback fumbled late in the third quarter.
And like Benson, Garder-Johnson’s value doesn’t solely come from his innate ability to annoy the opposition.
In the fourth quarter of that game, with New Orleans leading 9-0, Gardner-Johnson undercut a Brady pass for an interception that sealed the Saints’ victory.
As a member of the Philadelphia Eagles in 2022, Gardner-Johnson was leading the NFL with six interceptions in early December before he was placed on IR with a lacerated kidney.
A torn pectoral muscle in September of 2023 limited his time with the Lions to just three games, yet he did have two pass breakups in the Lions’ surprise win against the Chiefs inside Arrowhead Stadium to begin the regular season that year.
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He followed with another six-interception season in 2024 on the Super Bowl winning Eagles.
The ironic part of this comparison, pertaining to my original “Benson has reached untradeable status,” take is that Gardner-Johnson has been traded twice in six seasons. He’s been on the Eagles two separate times and spent his 2025 on the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears. In the Windy City, Gardner-Johnson hauled in two picks along with four pass breakups and set a career-high in sacks with three.
The Bills will be his seventh team in eight seasons.
But there’s really no need to ask — who is the Bills’ Zach Benson?
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And only time will tell if Gardner-Johnson becomes as invaluable to the Bills’ as Benson has become to the Sabres.
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