The Buffalo Bills have a new head coach, who has a new defensive scheme, and now Gregg Williams will need a new strong safety to play the "46" design.

	Jones

On a roster cutdown weekend highlighted by the releases or trades of a dozen veteran backup quarterbacks, the Buffalo Bills' canning of strong safety Henry Jones arguably rated as the most surprising transaction, one that resonated shock waves through the team's locker room and left a giant question mark in the secondary.

"Stunned," said Jones, a 10-year veteran, after his release. "There's no other word for it. I never saw it coming. There were no hints at all."

The team's first-round choice in the 1991 draft, and one of Buffalo's last remaining links to its Super Bowl glory seasons, Jones simply was not perceived by a new coaching staff as a good fit for the "46" scheme that Williams and coordinator Jerry Gray brought with them from the Tennessee Titans.

While the coaches insisted they would reconfigure some elements of the "46" defensive blueprint to better meld with Jones' abilities, and to compensate for his shortcomings, in the end they decided he would be a square peg attempting to fill a round hole.

In the aggressive scheme that crowds the line of scrimmage, the strong safety aligns more like a linebacker much of the time, as Tennessee strong safety Blaine Bishop has done for years. Despite starting 61 straight games, and appearing in 144 contests during his 10-year Bills tenure, Jones was never regarded leaguewide as a big hitter. In fact, some personnel chiefs felt he was miscast as a strong safety, because his coverage skills were better than his hitting ability.

That said, Jones, 33, averaged 89.8 tackles for his career and posted more than 100 stops each of the last four seasons and five of the past six years. He started all 16 games last year and had 109 tackles, two interceptions and 11 passes defensed.

Buffalo officials began to feel over the last couple weeks, though, that Jones would not be sufficiently physical to fill the strong safety role as defined in the new job description. The release of Jones, who should generate some interest as a free agent, is reflective of the direction of a Buffalo team rebuilding with younger players under the stewardship of Williams and first-year team president Tom Donahoe.

A team source confirmed late Sunday that the decision to release Jones was based solely on football considerations and not finances. Jones had restructured his contract earlier in the spring, reducing his salary from $1.7 million to the veteran minimum of $477,000, and having the balance guaranteed, essentially in a signing bonus. Jones will still count $2.967 million against the Buffalo salary cap this year and a like amount in 2002.

The Bills will consider two scenarios for replacing Jones: The first is to elevate backup Raion Hill, not an especially physical hitter, either, into the starting lineup. The other would involve moving free safety Keion Carpenter to strong safety and inserting second-year pro Travares Tillman into the lineup at free safety.

It is almost a certainty that Williams will not be able to locate a physical strong safety on the waiver wire.

With several personnel directors surveyed by ESPN.com allowing that Jones probably was the most surprising roster purge victim of the weekend, here's a thumbnail look at the rest of the top 10 most surprising cuts: