INDIANAPOLIS — The rise and fall of Gabe Davis through his first three NFL seasons with the Buffalo Bills has generated considerable talk/speculation that one of the team’s offseason priorities should be to find a new No. 2 receiver.
The success of the Bills’ passing game is, first, dependent on the right arm of Josh Allen. After that, it comes down to Stefon Diggs’ ability to make big plays, which he has done consistently since joining the Bills in a 2020 trade with the Minnesota Vikings.
After that?
Not much.
Diggs finished the 2022 season with the second-best numbers of his eight-year pro career for receptions (108) and yards (1,429) and best for touchdowns (11). A distant second was Davis, who the Bills made a fourth-round draft pick from Central Florida in 2020.
Though his 48 catches for 836 yards and seven TDs were career bests, they showed that the Bills had no one else in their pass-catching corps to challenge opposing defenses. They also did nothing to build on the excitement Davis sparked for his future with the team by catching four touchdown passes in the Bills’ divisional-round playoff loss at Kansas City after the 2021 season.
Tight end Dawson Knox also had 48 receptions, for 517 yards, and six touchdowns, but he, too, did not deliver the game-breaking threat that the Bills’ top competitors in the AFC – the Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals – have.
Yet, if you listened to Bills General Manager Brandon Beane as he addressed reporters at the NFL Scouting Combine, you got the feeling that he’s far from being ready to give up on Davis developing into that strong No. 2 receiver so many of us thought he would be last season. In fact, Beane thinks Davis might have been a victim of his own one-game splash performance against the Chiefs.
“Gabe, you know, coming off that Kansas City game the year before, you know, people probably had maybe some unrealistic expectations,” Beane told reporters. “But no one puts higher expectations on themselves than Gabe and there’s no one that trained as hard as that guy that I’m aware of on our team last year and he’s already preparing. I’ve seen videos of him training this offseason from his trainer. But Gabe’s a competitive guy, he wants it bad.”
There’s no questioning Davis’ work ethic. The questions are about his ability to regularly separate from defenders and, perhaps most troubling, avoid drops. Davis had a career-high 93 targets in 2022, 30 more than his previous high. It was a distant second to Diggs’ 154 targets, but the Bills clearly made a concerted effort to get Davis the ball.
But Beane was quick to defend Davis’ performance last year.
“Week 2, unfortunately, going into the Tennessee game on a Friday practice, he got a high ankle and not to make excuses, but it definitely bothered him,” the GM said. “You can just watch the film. When he was coming out of his cuts, he was taking an extra step which allowed that defender to stay attached to him as well and he had a few drops that he definitely wants back.
“But we’ve got a lot of faith in Gabe and, again, he’ll be back this year better than ever. This was his first year that he had a full-time starting role. I think he learned some things, too, and I know he’ll be even more prepared for (what’s) coming up.”
Nevertheless, Beane did not rule out the possibility of landing a receiver in the draft, in which the Bills own the 27th overall pick and have six choices overall, including one from a trade with Arizona.
“I always go looking for playmakers and whether that’s a receiver, a running back, a tight end,” Beane said. “You’re always looking for guys that are weapons with the ball, mismatches that you can get defenses … Say you took a tight end, and a guy that makes the defense come out of nickel and play you base.
“So, we’ll look at various ways to add playmakers. I’m not going to say we have to have a receiver or we have to have a tight end, but we surely are always looking to add guys that Josh can get the ball to and they can make plays with it in their hands.”