Buffalo Bills tight ends were one of the stories of the game for the team\u2019s victory over the New York Jets in the final regular-season game at Highmark Stadium, and some other members of the team were awarded a little extra monetary reimbursement to pay off those Christmas credit card bills.<\/p>\n
Tight end Dalton Kincaid was surprisingly active and caught three passes for 48 yards in in an attempt to get him warmed up before the Bills travel to Jacksonville to face the Jaguars in the AFC Wildcard Round next weekend. Dawson Knox, who had seen an uptick in passing game usage over the last few weeks of the season, was an early focus from quarterback Mitchell Trubisky (who came in after Josh Allen took a snap to extend his consecutive start streak to 135). Knox came into the game as one of many Buffalo Bills looking to earn a little extra cash through contract incentives for specific statistical milestones, needing six catches, seven receiving yards, and one touchdown to get an extra $100,000 for each of the three achievements.<\/p>\n
When the final seconds came off the clock, Knox had hit two of those three incentives and went home knowing he had another $200,000 in compensation coming his way (before taxes).<\/p>\n
Running back Ty Johnson needed two touchdowns to collect a $250,000 incentive and 57 receiving yards to collect another $125,000. He picked up his two touchdowns, with the Bills very clearly prioritized Johnson\u2019s touchdown when inside the five with multiple consecutive touches, finally getting him his money with a fast flat route in the fourth quarter to go up 35-0.<\/p>\n
Teams frequently prioritize players with contract incentives when possible (specifically on offense) in the last game of the season when winning the game is not the team\u2019s most pressing priority. Head coach Sean McDermott even mentioned in his halftime interview with CBS\u2019 AJ Ross that it was \u201cgood to get (James Cook) some yards\u201d and Knox \u201ca touchdown and some yards\u201d. Coaches are aware of what needs to happen and will frequently make good faith attempts to help players hit those contract incentives. In a game when Josh Allen doesn\u2019t play more than a perfunctory snap, \u201ccash watching\u201d was always going to take center stage apart from the regular season send-off to Highmark Stadium.<\/p>\n
The list of Bills who didn\u2019t reach notable contract milestones includes, per Adam Schefter of ESPN:<\/p>\n
…and that\u2019s the way the cookie crumbles. I\u2019m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive<\/a> and look for new episodes of \u201cThe Bruce Exclusive\u201d every Thursday on the Rumblings Cast Network \u2014 see more in my LinkTree!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo Bills tight ends were one of the stories of the game for the team\u2019s victory over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048],"tags":[215,214,53,18563,2086,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-654570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-bills","8":"tag-bills","9":"tag-buffalo","10":"tag-buffalo-bills","11":"tag-buffalo-bills-game-information","12":"tag-buffalobills","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115839719539893640","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}