General manager Brandon Beane went to decent lengths in an effort to once again remake the Bills’ wide receiver room.
Late last week we asked readers of Buffalo Rumblings to weigh in with their thoughts about 1,000-yard pass-catching options for the Buffalo Bills in 2025. That is, among every realistic 53-man roster option at wide receiver, tight end (and, sure, even running back), which player (if any) stands the best chance at posting a 1,000-yard campaign?
Bills Mafia well-understands that even with everybody eating in the post-Stefon Diggs era, reigning NFL MVP Josh Allen has established favorite routes, targets, and situational go-to players. Last season, that was wide receiver Khalil Shakir — whose Velcro hands and pinball wizardry decimated defenses over the middle time and again. It’s true that Shakir operates similarly to an all-purpose featured running back in traffic, and that he served as Buffalo’s WR1 last season. But he only netted 861 yards through the air.
Too often, the Bills displayed a severe inability to meaningfully involve the other wide receivers on the team, with Mack Hollins taking on a bigger role than expected within a room that failed to separate from the pack.
Shakir is back of course, and with a handsome new contract. Hollins is gone, and — despite his penchant for drawing coverage at times — the Amari Cooper experiment joined another failed midseason swap of third-round picks for talented receivers (Kelvin Benjamin).
So our query was to see who among you felt that the likes of Shakir, Keon Coleman, Curtis Samuel, Joshua Palmer, Elijah Moore, or Dalton Kincaid harbor enough buzz and potential to serve as a bona fide 1,000-yard top receiving option.
Well, the results are in and it’s decidedly undecided. That’s right: Just 52% of Rumblings voters believe the team will post a 1,000-yard receiver of any sort in 2025. Perhaps it’s the family-style bowl of pasta keeping anyone from feasting too hard, or it’s possible that the Bills really need to prove they’ve made the right moves to add receivers capable of beating man coverage and getting open.
One might look to the roster of the Detroit Lions, where there are plenty of options for quarterback Jared Goff, yet wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown stands above everyone as the clear-cut WR1. It’s conceivable to say that everyone eats with the Lions, yet St. Brown still commands the biggest chunk.
Why couldn’t Shakir perform similarly to St. Brown? Perhaps we’ll dive into that in another article in the coming days.
Whatever the case may be, there’s plenty of doubt to go around early in July. One thing’s for certain, and that’s how important training camp snaps will be toward building chemistry and more for the regular season. That work may provide defining roles for individual players and influence their statistical odds in the regular season with FanDuel Sportsbook.
Stay tuned for this week’s survey, where we dig further into Buffalo’s offensive potential for 2025.