ORCHARD PARK – At the moment when the Buffalo Bills used its first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft to select tight end Dalton Kincaid, the role of the team’s resident starter at the position, Dawson Knox, was immediately called into question.
Were the Bills really going to abandon their preferred three-receiver base offense and use more two-tight end sets to get Kincaid and Knox on the field? After all, a first-round pick is a significant investment, and they had just given Knox a big raise via a contract extension.
We’re now a season and five games into the Kincaid-Knox pairing, and no one really knows what the Bills are doing, although one thing is abundantly clear: Knox is the forgotten man in the passing game.
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He’s been on the field for 149 snaps and has only been in the loop 65 times, targeted on just five passes from Josh Allen, three of which were caught for 30 yards. He stayed in pass protection on 11, and he was used as a blocker in the run game on 73 plays. Not much from a guy with the fifth-highest salary cap hit for 2024 at $7.728 million.
“I think this team is full of guys who put me second,” Knox said, seemingly happy with the role he played in the Bills’ 3-2 start. “Of course, everyone wants a lot of takes, but that’s not what’s important. There may be games where I get 10+ targets, there may be games where I get zero. I’ll make plays when the ball comes to me, but I think it’s just about putting team over yourself and so far it’s taken a lot of work in the running game. I was able to work on the blocking elements. But you never know. It changes from week to week so we’ll see.
The Knox deal looks like one of Brandon Beane’s more questionable decisions. THE 2019 third round pick had flashed in his first three seasons, catching 101 passes for 1,263 yards and 14 touchdowns in 42 games, and made 18 more catches for 177 yards and four touchdowns in six playoff games.
Dawson Knox contract
Entering the final year of his rookie contract, Beane decided to give Knox a four-year extension worth up to $52 million, with $31 million guaranteed. It was a huge step forward, but Knox played well in 2022 with 56 catches for 602 yards and seven touchdowns combined in the regular and playoffs.
However, Beane then decided to draft Kincaid, and given Knox’s contract, that seemed a bit odd. Last year, offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey made it a point to have both on the field and through the first five games, the Bills were in two tight ends on 44.8% of offensive snaps, which was superior to their three-in-one usage. era when they had Stefon Diggs, Gabe Davis, Khalil Shakir, Deonte Harty and Trent Sherfield.
Things changed when Knox suffered a wrist injury mid-season and Dorsey was forced away from both tight ends, then Dorsey was fired and Joe Brady never really found a way to implicate Knox. While Kincaid set a Bills record for most catches by a tight end (73), Knox only caught nine passes counting the playoffs after returning from his injury.
Nothing has changed entering 2024, although Kincaid hasn’t exactly been a revelation either, and it has slowed down the Bills’ entire passing game, especially over the last two games.
“If we’re not producing, I still have to look in the mirror and point my thumb, right?” » said Brady. “When our guys play well and produce, I’m going to congratulate them, and when they don’t, it’s my fault. You can’t give the ball to everyone, but I’ve got to do a better job of us being able to move the ball.
“A guy like Dawson Knox helps us. And so whether it’s 12 people, 11 people, it doesn’t matter who, we have to do what we have to do to be able to stay on the field, stay in manageable first and second downs and not be in those long third downs. I think that’s been a big difference in the last couple of weeks.
Josh Allen says Bills need to find a way to move Dawson Knox forward
Allen, who has a close relationship with Knox on and off the field, knows he and Brady need to find ways to use Knox to help get the offense back on track.
“I know him as a player, as a person, and that pays dividends on the field, and I have the utmost confidence in him as a player and as a person,” Allen said. “We’re going to find ways to put him in good positions, get opportunities to make plays for us. And when opportunities present themselves, he’s going to make plays.
“We talk about everyone eating, and it’s good when everyone does, but sometimes there are people who get left out and you want to continue to incorporate them into your offense. And he’s a guy we need to move forward with. We know it, Joe knows it, I think the whole team knows it. We’re better when (Knox) plays well. Again, just find ways to get guys the ball in open space and that starts with me.
But how can Brady and Allen do that?
“I think that’s a good question, but maybe going back to our basics that we ran in training camp and just trusting what we call and not trying to be in the perfect position,” Allen said. “I just trust what our guys can do. It’s as simple as we want to make it. We have a lot of guys with a lot of different skill sets on this team and we want to utilize everyone’s talents. And he’s definitely a talented player that we need to use.
Knox knows that Kincaid is the preferred tight end in the passing game because he has the ability – although it has been underutilized thus far – to get downfield and make big plays. He is a great athlete who knows how to catch the ball and run after the catch.
So Knox will continue to do what he’s asked, especially in the running game, and then hope that when Allen needs to look his way, he can get open.
“I think the storylines change almost every week, that’s just the nature of this business,” Knox said. “As soon as teams start overreacting and trying to find too many things wrong or change too much in a given week, we get distracted from what makes us us.
“If we started 0-2 and then won three times in a row, we would have the same record but we would feel very different. So we’re not going to overreact. We’re not in crisis mode or anything like that. We have supreme confidence in Joe, our signal callers and Josh and we are going to do whatever it takes every Sunday to win the game.
Sal Maiorana covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades, including 35 years as a full-time staff writer for the D&C, and he wrote numerous books on the team’s history. He can be reached at [email protected] and you can follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Dawson Knox Stats: 3 catches in 6 games for high-priced Bills TE
