How Bills Can Replace WR Stefon Diggs ‘Across the Board’

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In the 2011 film starring Brad Pitt MoneyballOakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane finds himself in a quandary: After being drafted in the ALDS, the A’s have several key players set to become free agents and an owner who is unwilling to spend the money to keep them. In a later scene, Beane meets with his scouts to solve the team’s problem, and he suggests that there simply isn’t a better first baseman than impending free agent Giambi, and even then, they couldn’t afford him. Instead, they need to recreate him “from the ground up.”

It’s a scene that has become famous for sports fans looking to create some hope after a key player leaves their favorite team in free agency or via trade. It’s a strategy the Buffalo Bills appear to be employing for the 2024 season after general manager Brandon Beane (no relation to the aforementioned Billy) made the difficult decision to trade Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans in the spring.

The move meant the Bills had to find a way to replace Diggs’ immense production, but they couldn’t afford a 1:1 replacement given their salary cap situation. Given their 11-6 record last season, the team also wasn’t in a position to take a true No. 1 receiver in the 2024 NFL Draft. The constraints prompted the Bills’ Beane to take a cue from the A’s’ Beane and decide to recreate that production altogether.

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But what does this mean? What does it look like? How will Allen succeed without his favorite target?

These are all very interesting questions and I’m glad you asked them.

Essentially, what the Bills are looking for now is multiple players to fill the void left by Diggs rather than one player to replace all of his production. Diggs’ departure means the Bills will have to replace his 160 targets, 107 receptions, 1,183 yards and eight touchdowns this upcoming season. If you’re not sure if that’s a lot, it is.

The Bills will look to players like Dalton Kincaid, Curtis Samuel, Khalil Shakir and second-round pick Keon Coleman to replace those losses. Those are just the basic numbers, but there’s more than just the raw numbers that are important to Diggs’ replacement. The fact is that despite his drop-off in production later in the season, Diggs still commands a lot of respect from opposing defensive game plans. Joe Brady, the Bills’ interim offensive coordinator in 2023, understood that and used it as a way to create more space for other players to operate. As a result, Diggs’ production plummeted. Now that Diggs is gone, however, there is no pass catcher in the Bills’ offense who commands that level of respect and attention… yet.

On one hand, the Bills have been preparing for Diggs’ departure since the moment they drafted Dalton Kincaid in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft. Kincaid was considered a big receiving threat coming out of the University of Utah, and in his rookie year, he lived up to that hype, catching 73 passes for 673 yards and two touchdowns. Those numbers should all increase this year, and for good reason: Kincaid is a fluid athlete with good hands who can make a lot of things happen after the catch when given space.

Another player who can create after the catch is the Bills’ biggest free agent addition, Curtis Samuel. The 27-year-old had the best season of his career (97 targets, 77 receptions, 851 yards, three touchdowns, and 200 rushing yards on 41 attempts) with Brady as offensive coordinator with the Carolina Panthers in 2020, and now that they’ve got a quarterback as special as Josh Allen, we can assume a statistical leap from Samuel, who is coming off a disappointing three-year stint with the Washington Commanders.

Khalil Shakir, a fifth-round pick in 2022, has seen a nice improvement in every statistical category in 2023. Shakir has gotten more opportunities as the season has gone on and has taken advantage of them when his name has been called. One would imagine that in 2024, in a receiver room that doesn’t have a clear, strong presence, Shakir will see another improvement in his production.

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There are two X-factors in this particular equation that I want to point out. The first is obvious, and that’s Keon Coleman. There are a lot of good vibes surrounding the Florida State rookie, whose personality has caught the attention of fans in Buffalo and elsewhere. If football were played solely on vibes, Coleman would be considered a perennial All-Pro. Since that’s not how football works, questions remain about the talented Coleman. Despite his productive final season at Florida State, many questions remain about Coleman’s ability to get out there and his overall brutality as a route runner.

Historically, under the Beane/Sean McDermott regime, these are the types of players they like to take early in the draft; talented balls of clay that they can mold and coach into better players. Josh Allen, Tremaine Edmunds, Greg Rousseau, and Kaiir Elam are all examples of their philosophy and emphasis on talent over Day 1 preparation. Unfortunately for Coleman and the Bills, they need him to be ready from Day 1. What will that be? What will a successful rookie campaign look like for Coleman? It’s hard to say, but Bills fans should probably keep their expectations low for Coleman, not just because of his overall rawness, but also because this offensive identity will likely focus on running the ball and finding more ready-made players like Kincaid and Samuel to win, rather than trying to make it easier for the rookie Coleman to get into the game.

Speaking of ready-made players, let’s talk about X-factor number two. You may have forgotten about him in the shuffle, but don’t worry, Dawson Knox is still here. It wasn’t that long ago that Knox was a legitimately important receiving threat for this Buffalo offense. Injuries and a role change under former offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey were the main reasons for Knox’s decline in production. However, if the Bills decide to lean more toward the 12-man personnel under Brady, they could manage to have both Knox and Kincaid on the field, and Knox could surprise many by having a bounce-back year after having the lowest statistical output of his entire career in 2023.

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To be perfectly frank, we already started to see what life would be like without Diggs when Brady took over play-calling duties. As mentioned earlier, Diggs didn’t have the same level of production in the second half of the season once Brady became the play-caller, and while there are other strategic advantages to having Diggs on the field, a decoy doesn’t matter much if the production isn’t there. Now, the Bills need to be a true spread offense, finding different ways to get multiple targets down the field rather than focusing primarily on one target and hoping that opens up the way for other guys throughout the game. It takes commitment to make a plan like this work, and it also takes other players being really good to replace a big talent. That being said, the Bills have plenty of talent in both the wide receiver and tight end rooms, it’s just a matter of figuring out what the actual ceiling is for that group of players.

Beyond that, the Bills clearly changed their offensive identity relative to the run-to-pass ratio once Brady took over. He committed to running the ball far more than Dorsey did, and as such, if projected over a full season, one could come to a reasonable conclusion that some of the targets given up by the Diggs trade simply won’t be there in 2024 due to a shift toward the run game. How many targets? It’s hard to say, and it could be a small margin in the end. Either way, it’s another piece of the puzzle that comes into play.

Ultimately, we’ve seen teams win with big-name receivers. We’ve also seen teams win without big-name receivers. You can see the Green Bay Packers taking this approach after trading Davante Adams in 2022. The 2022 and 2023 Kansas City Chiefs are a perfect example of a team that gave away its best receiver and still managed to win back-to-back Super Bowls. They did this by spreading the ball around more, running the ball better, and in 2023, playing elite defense. The Bills are certainly more than capable of doing those things, but without Diggs, it’s no longer a choice, it’s a necessity.

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