Buffalo Two-Step: Bills Bank on New Starters at Receiver

After the Buffalo Bills’ season ended with yet another playoff disappointment, the team retooled, hoping for a better fate.

Despite another division title, the Buffalo Bills decided to hit the hard reset on several parts of their franchise. With lofty expectations comes severe scrutiny. In all honesty, the Bills, despite employing talent all over the field, never lived up to where many thought they could ascend to. In other words, the last three years continue to serve as a painful reminder of the gap between really good and the truly great. Buffalo falls squarely on the former, without sniffing the latter. What does post-draft 2024 look like for the Sons of Levy? The offense will look dramatically different in the fall. Their fate rests in the hands of rookies and players that need to step up and help.

Conflicting Loss

When the Bills shipped Stefon Diggs to Houston, a cloud of mixed feelings covered large parts of the fanbase. During his four years as a member of the Bills, Diggs averaged 110 catches and nine touchdowns. On a superficial level, those numbers couldn’t be frowned upon. Diggs showed up and showed out, so to speak. From first snap to last whistle, defenses keyed on him and he still produced. Yet, when things didn’t go their way, you could see the cracks in Buffalo. If Diggs didn’t fire off cryptic, mopey tweets, you would have found Diggs and Josh Allen yelling on the sideline. Chemistry remains the glue that holds championship teams together. Granted, teams don’t need to act like families, but they must be on the same page when the official put the ball in play.

The Replacement

While losing their top wideout and his understudy, Buffalo looked to scramble in finding suitable replacements. Luckily, Khalil Shakir steps up. First, he differs greatly from his former teammate in several ways. First, Shakir is faster, not quite as shifty. However, he plays much stronger and displays a greater degree of contact balance. More importantly, you never hear a dissenting work from him. If you look at his Twitter account, Shakir mostly hypes up the team or his alma mater, Boise State. Granted, replacing Stefon Diggs will not be easy. Yet at least the Bills will have peace and calm in the wide receivers room. Some can see it as an addition by subtraction.

The Rookie

By drafting Keon Coleman, Buffalo wants to take a different approach. While Gabe Davis did bring a semblance of size to the passing game, Coleman immediately upgrades that. At Florida State, you saw a wideout that climbs the ladder and wins 50/50 ball. Moreover, Coleman possesses far better hands at all three sections of the field. Plus, he does not mind contested catches. Davis did not use his strength to his advantage. Coleman slipped to the second round because of a 4.61 time in the forty-yard dash. That number caught eyes, but people didn’t discuss the ten-foot-seven-inch broad jump which shows more of an explosive quality than the forty.