According to this analysis.
https://twitter.com/benbbaldwin/status/1781373722567352810
Makes sense given all we see and know. But it does make me think about expectations for the draft. Kincaid will be better and I like what they have. But I worry that we aren't going to find the answer in the draft for this season unless we get very lucky.
Or do we think that WR are more nfl ready than ever? That's certainly an angle isn't it?
7 comments
It’s not about finding the answer this season, it’s about the future. Our WR corps is small and getting old. We have Curtis Samuel who is 28, we have Hollins who is 30/31. Khalil Shakir is great and young, Shorter is there? Hamler is a flyer and might not be on the team.
Point is it’s old and the list of WRs we have is extremely small.
The Bills don’t need a Puca Nacua like season from whomever they draft at WR. The Bills will make up for the volume they lost in Diggs and Davis in part by the addition of Samuel and giving Shakir and Kincaid more targets.
They do need a good rookie WR that can play the boundary consistently and take in 70-80 targets efficiently. That’s not going to be easy but in 2023 9 rookie WR had over 70 targets.
Of those 9 I would say about 6-8 of those rookies took that volume on well and produced efficiently.
Those WR’s were Nacua, Rashee Rice, Jordan Addison, Zay Flowers, Jayden Reed, Tank Dell, Smith-Njigba and arguably Josh Downs.
2023 was a bit of a high year but usually 4-6 rookie WR’s each year have those impactful seasons. Given the depth of this years WR class I think a repeat of 2023 is more likely. So the Bills just need to end up with an impactful good WR not an elite one. That’s not going to be easy to find but it’s not a near impossible task either.
I hope we take 3 or 4.
Aiyuk !
Regardless of whether or not we find a guy who makes an immediate star impact. We have guys to target with Kincaid, Curtis Samuel and Shakir.
I’ll never understand why people think losing Diggs makes us not a playoff team, especially when the Chiefs literally just won back to back with half the talent we have at the moment.
Josh Allen is in the back half of his career. You find a young WR NOW so you’re not scrambling to stay afloat with pass-catchers 2-3 years from now
That might be true in the aggregate but there are a ton of exceptions. And depending on how Shakir and Samuel do we may not even needed a complete stud, just a consistent contributor.
Biggest thing though is that we are going to have plenty of cap space and draft capital this time next year to get a proven vet receiver if we feel we still need more help at the position. I’m really not worried given that Beane seems to be playing this smart and thinking about the long-term rather than doing the panicky wheeling and dealing thing.