The Bills pass-catching corps is in transition. With Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis leaving the team this offseason, Buffalo will enter 2024 without its top two receiving yardage-earners and their first and third-most targeted players.
Surprisingly, these departures could serve as a springboard for growth and evolution rather than a catastrophic setback for the Bills offense.
Diggs has been an elite receiver in this league for some time, but last year, he didn't separate in the vertical game on film at the same level as his previous seasons. We know his influence on the offensive game plan declined in the second half of the year, and there was some overall discontent between player and team. The Diggs trade to Buffalo was an overwhelming success for the two parties but it was likely time for a divorce. As for Davis, while he's had highlight moments in big games, he's a replacement-level starting receiver whose volatility made him a bit miscast as one of the team's top target-getters.
So, while these are losses and watching players walk out the door doesn’t make you better, you only ensure you get worse by not responding to departures with new additions and/or the development of young players on your roster. The Bills have welcomed newcomers and some youth they’ve been letting marinade on the team the previous two seasons. The question is how those players project to vacated roles on the team and where the targets will be distributed.
Let’s dive into some possible answers by reviewing each of the Bills' receiving options, starting with holdovers before analyzing the newcomers. Any offense with an elite quarterback like Josh Allen is still going to be a strong unit so getting the order of his pass-catchers correct is essential.
TE Dalton Kincaid
The second-year tight end should be considered the odds-on favorite to lead the team in targets. His 60th overall consensus ADP in early Yahoo drafts is the highest among any Bills wide receiver or tight end.
Kincaid is coming off a solid rookie season at a position that usually doesn’t lend itself to Year 1 production. He was ninth among all tight ends in targets and hauled in 82% of his looks. He was a reliable receiver for Allen as a rookie who displayed good hands on quick-option routes.
Some of the under-the-hood stats show areas where he needs to grow in order to take the next step as a talent. Among tight ends with 75-plus targets, Kincaid was around the middle or bottom of the pack in yards per route run (1.59) and first downs per route run (0.068), per Fantasy Points Data. Some of this is because he wasn’t the featured receiver, with a mere 17.9% first-read target share, nor was he deployed on downfield routes. At least one of those things will have to change to facilitate a significant breakout.
Among that same cohort of 75-plus target tight ends, Kincaid’s 60.6% slot route rate, per PFF, was the highest. When Dawson Knox returned from injury in Week 14 through the AFC Divisional Round, Kincaid averaged a 57% snap share. These two things are related. Kincaid needs to more fully displace Knox, who is on a multi-year extension with the team, for more traditional tight-end duties if he’s going to be a true featured receiver for this Bills offense in the same vein of a Travis Kelce or Mark Andrews-type at the position. This is especially the case when you consider almost all of the top wide receivers on this team should be in line for some slot work.
All of this is possible if Kincaid emerges as an improved player who has taken the next step in Year 2. At this position, gradual growth is typically the expectation, and Kincaid is already ahead of the curve based on his performance as a rookie. I don’t view it as a certainty, but if someone is going to push for 120-plus targets on this team, Kincaid is the best bet because of both his pedigree and the fact he already has a year’s worth of work with Allen baked in.
RB James Cook
We must include Cook in this equation because he took a significant step as a passing down weapon in his second NFL season. Cook’s 0.20 targets per route run ranked third on the team behind Diggs and Kincaid.
More interesting was how Cook was targeted. The Bills running back had a 2.4 aDOT in 2023 which led all players at the position with at least 50 targets. It may not seem like much, but even the best receiving running backs’ aDOTs are usually much lower — fewer than 1.0 or even into the negatives. Cook and Saquon Barkley are the only ones with an aDOT north of 2.0 in the last two years.
If Cook remains a big part of the receiving hierarchy — and given how critical his role was last year, there’s no reason to assume he’ll be phased out — then it matters for the wide receiver projections on this team.
WR Khalil Shakir
Khalil Shakir is the lone holdover wide receiver who played a significant role last year. I was a fan of Shakir as a sleeper in the 2022 NFL Draft and have been happy to see him carve out a good standing as a reliable target in a good offense.
The question is, beyond the good work we’ve seen so far, how much more is he capable of offering?
Shakir ran 78.1% of his routes from the slot last season and checked in with an 8.6 aDOT. I personally think Shakir has demonstrated man-coverage-beating ability dating back to his days at Boise State, which could translate into more snaps outside. He's also popped up for critical plays in the intermediate area. Again, this is all just my evaluation of him as a player, but I see him as a reliable slot-mostly but not slot-only player.
WR Curtis Samuel
Curtis Samuel is the most interesting of the newcoming pass-catchers. Samuel is an underrated player best suited to work as a No. 2 receiver. He had his best year in the NFL with current Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady in Carolina during the 2020 season. He signed with Washington in free agency after that, but he was held back by injuries and a quarterback play.
However, when he’s been healthy, Samuel has long shown a strong ability to separate and get open against man and zone coverage.
Samuel’s alignment will be particularly critical to solve. He’s spent time during his career as a slot and gadget receiver but began his time in Carolina as an outside flanker. Samuel’s strength is beating man coverage on isolated routes, which helps his case as an outside receiver. He’s likely not an X-receiver candidate, but neither is Shakir. That could make their positions overlap a bit, but as much as I like Shakir as a role player, Samuel is a superior talent.
I expect the 27-year-old to offer up one of his best NFL campaigns and lead the Bills wide receiver room in yards. He pairs up well with Josh Allen and, among all the receivers on this roster, carries the most skill-set similarities to Diggs as a route runner.
Keon Coleman
The rookie out FSU was a quality albeit slightly flawed prospect in the 2024 NFL Draft. The strengths of Keon Coleman are easy to spot. He’s a hulking target with strong hands who works best against zone coverage and is flexible enough to win routes over the middle of the field. The weaknesses are just as pronounced; Coleman didn’t separate against man coverage at FSU and is not a vertical threat.
Most of the prospects who have come in with these issues in their scouting report and succeeded in the NFL have moved from outside receivers to the slot. That’s an interesting fit on this team given the other options on the roster.
At least for now, that doesn't appear how the team views this player. General manager Brandon Beane indicated in the post-draft press conference that Coleman's primary position would be as the X-receiver. From a size perspective, that makes sense when compared to Samuel and Shakir, but it's also not the best way to maximize him. Of course, these comments aren't binding.
My guess is that Coleman will end up moving to a flanker/big-slot role, but that may take some time to implement. When you see him start taking more reps off the line and inside, that will be the moment to move his stock upward.
The Castoff Crew
So, if Coleman isn’t going to be the Bills' full-season X-receiver, who is? This is the least enthralling section of the discussion, but it’s worthwhile to remember that the Bills added three big receiver castoffs, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Chase Claypool and Mack Hollins, to the roster this offseason.
My guess is that those three are competing for roster spots given where they are at this point in their career. However, I’m a little obsessed with the idea of “the sacrificial X-receiver” in today’s NFL and my antenna is up in regards to this theory when looking at the Bills depth chart.
As teams are implementing more pre- and at-the-snap motion, and overall doing more than ever to give their best receivers optimal deployment, top targets are being played in the slot or flanker position. In order to pull that off, you need a receiver to do the thankless work of running routes from the boundary simply to stretch out the defense. That player isn’t going to get the ball often, and they don’t draw particularly efficient targets, either. However, their presence allows the coaching staff to free up other players and for plays to be conceptually well-executed.
With so many of the Bills' best players being candidates for slot and off-the-line work as flankers, it’s worth wondering if one of these bigger wideouts ends up playing more than we think — at least, early on in the season. That player won’t matter individually in fantasy, however, their role could be critical in solving the mystery of how playing time gets distributed for Samuel, Shakir and Coleman.
Not one person reading this piece is going to like that as a final thought, but often, a player like this ends up crowding the picture for a receiver room. That is especially true for a pass-catching corps like the Bills that lacks one true alpha but has a number of quality pieces. We typically see situations like this end up with a variety of players between 70 and 90 targets but no one over 110. If I had to guess, that’s how I see this playing out for Buffalo in 2024.
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