Doug Marrone: 'Kevin Kolb will start against Minnesota Vikings'

Doug Marrone has revealed that Kevin Kolb will be the Buffalo Bills' starting quarterback for their pre-season game against the Minnesota Vikings.

The former Arizona Cardinals player missed the 44-20 win over the Indianapolis Colts at the weekend because of a knee injury and family bereavement.

The head coach told reporters: "Just to give everybody a heads up, I talked to the quarterbacks [yesterday] after the walk-through and we're going to go ahead and start Kevin Kolb at quarterback this week.

"Just the one thing I hope everyone understands is not to read in to this because we were very, very happy with EJ [Manuel]'s performance in the first game. Matter of fact, what we were looking at is probably if Kevin was healthy he was probably going to start the first game and EJ start this game. Again they're in a competition and we just switched it.

"I just wanted to make sure he was healthy. I asked him if he was healthy and I said here we go. Obviously it's a competition and we want to be equal. The same thing, I'm going to repeat it again, I told EJ, it's not a reflection of how you played, actually it's the opposite. We felt you played really well for a guy in his first NFL game."

The Bills play the Vikings on Friday.