2025 Team Previews: Buffalo Bills
All ADP data is courtesy of Fantasy Pros.
** = target in drafts at this ADP
Relevant Players
Josh Allen, QB (ADP: 23, QB2): Allen is the QB1 this year, and it’s fairly obvious why. At a position where running the football provides an inordinate amount of value, and touchdowns are the greatest resource for production, Allen is a dominant rusher who has become one of the most consistent sources of rushing touchdowns in the NFL. He’s racked up double-digit rushing touchdowns in back-to-back seasons, and has never scored fewer than six times on the ground in his career. Players like Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson and Jayden Daniels will probably put up bigger yardage than Allen, but his touchdowns more than close that gap, and Allen is still bankable for a minimum of 500 yards on the ground.
On top of the rushing production, Allen’s passing upside is elite. Last season was not his most prolific, as he fell below 4,000 yards for the first time since 2019, but he’d cleared 4,200 passing yards in each of the four previous seasons and surpassed 35 touchdown passes in three of the four. Even in what was a “down” season by his standards Allen put up 3,700 passing yards, 28 touchdown passes and ran for 531 yards with 12 more scores. Marry all that with his durability and this is the most rock solid QB available in the league. As I’ve said with the other elite QBs, I personally just do not like to draft QBs this high in the draft because of the depth at the position later vs. RB and WR, but spending this pick on Allen is pretty much guaranteeing a weekly difference maker. There’s no risk at all with the player himself, so it’s a fine pick.
James Cook, RB (ADP: 30, RB13): Cook’s contract drama is behind us now that he’s signed a brand new deal, so we can just focus on the player. He’s not the biggest back you’ll see out there, but he’s proven he can be a workhorse after logging 200+ carries in back-to-back seasons and being very productive. His yardage was down a bit from 2023, but he still piled up over 1,200 yards from scrimmage and he exploded from a TD perspective, finding the end zone 18 times. That’s up from six in 2023, and tied him for second in the NFL with Derrick Henry behind Jahmyr Gibbs.
Cook graded out as a Top 10 running back on PFF, and with this new deal his role as the alpha should remain unchanged. He does have a very talented back behind him in Ray Davis, but based on his performance the past two seasons Cook has earned his alpha status, and he showed there’s no call for him to be removed in goal line scenarios. I would expect some touchdown regression for him in 2025, but his ADP hasn’t gotten to an unreasonable level based on the good scoring luck last year, so his ADP is perfectly fine.
**Khalil Shakir, WR (ADP: 109, WR46): It truly sucks that Shakir is hurt right now, and I do hope he’s ready to roll by Week 1, because this guy is primed for a breakout. I wrote about his upside here, but it just seems wrong for Josh Allen’s WR1 to be this far down on draft boards. Now, Shakir is the Bills’ WR1 in more of a volume sense vs. the traditional WR1 archetypes; he hasn’t proven he’s a threat at all three levels of the field, nor has he shown he is a master of the whole route tree. But he has proven he can shred zone coverage, which Buffalo sees a ton of due to Allen’s threat level as a rusher, and he can really sting defenses on short stuff and after the catch. Shakir’s success rates on flats (91.3%) and screens (100%) are through the roof, and those two routes made up 23.5% of his patterns. Shakir was at 83.1% on slants, and that alone was nearly 30% of his routes. He also was at 75% on dig routes, which is wonderful because Allen’s cannon is built to get through the mess of defenders that is the middle of the field. With that kind of skill set alone, we’re looking at a Rashee Rice-esque upside at a fraction of the cost of Rice.
Now, there are weaknesses. He’s got ugly success rates on the routes down the field. His success rates on nines, posts and corners are all red and well below average. On the other hand, he didn’t run many of those routes, all of them except the post (10.5%) were run less than 10% of the time. Buffalo chose to use Shakir in a very specific role, and that was to be exceptionally steady for Allen to entice him to take the layup completions and endure less of a beating. Shakir was almost like another branch of Buffalo’s running game. That alone can be prolific for us, and if Shakir grows as a player and becomes more well-rounded then he’s bound for stardom. Or, he can be the same guy and have a little TD luck. Either way, this underwhelming, and largely undefined WR corps has one constant for arguably the top QB in football, and that’s Shakir.
**Dalton Kincaid, TE (ADP: 119, TE13): Kincaid was hyped last season and had many people believing he’d be the top target of the Bills’ passing game. That was very far from the truth, as he managed only 44 receptions, 448 yards and two touchdowns in 13 games. Injuries hampered Kincaid, but he also just showed that he might not be a special player like many of us had hoped. Kincaid is definitely a solid receiving TE; you don’t put up 73 receptions and 673 yards as a rookie without talent. It just isn’t clear whether he has another gear in him to push closer to the elite tier, vs. the tier he’s in now which is indistinguishable from about 7-10 other TEs. Kincaid surely has a clearer path to a big target share than many of those options because the Bills’ receiving corps is littered with flawed players, so I actually do think there’s some value at this ADP. He has season-long starter upside, which would be magnificent at this point in the draft.
Interesting Sleeper(s)
**Ray Davis, RB (ADP: 151, RB53): I was a pretty big fan of Davis as a prospect, and when he had opportunity last season he knocked it out of the park. The season ending numbers – 631 yards from scrimmage, six touchdowns – aren’t anything to write home about, but Davis was only on the field for 24.3% of the Bills’ snaps. He had only three games in which he saw double-digit carries and he cleared 60 rushing yards in each of them, piling up 97 in Week 6 vs. the Jets when their defense still had some fight left in it.
With Cook re-signing, Davis is probably going to be relegated to change of pace duties, but his performance as a rookie should be enough to push him past Ty Johnson, and if injury should befall Cook there’s a glimmer of league-winning upside here if he secured a three-down role. I’d be interested in grabbing Davis late if I’m a Cook manager this year.
Notable Players
Keon Coleman, WR (ADP: 129, WR51): Coleman was highly drafted, and based on the volume that should be available to him, he could wind up being a value in drafts. The problem was that in 2024 he was bad. Because of his size and speed the Bills want him to be their guy on the outside as an X receiver, and he looks the part, but he’s actually horrible at separating. Coleman posted a 50% success rate vs. man coverage, and was well below 50% against press. Those were 3rd and 8th percentile marks, respectively, and the only route he ran effectively was the slant (80%). Now the Bills were smart enough to spam that route for him, as he ran it 24.6% of the time, but he also ran a nine route 28.1% of the time and he was winning at a 42.1% clip.
Coleman’s final numbers say it all; he caught 29 passes for 556 yards and four touchdowns in 13 games. That’s grossly inefficient, and he putrid success rates on just about all his routes tell us that he’s not viable. Of course, he could just improve as a player. With his physical gifts we should definitely not throw him in the trash and assume he will always be terrible. But if you have hopes for him in Year 2, they’re based on dreams of him cashing in on those biological tools because nothing on the field points to a successful Year 2 as Buffalo’s X receiver.
Joshua Palmer, WR (ADP: 211, WR67): Palmer’s grades per PFF were on par with Coleman’s and we just established that’s not a positive. The Bills are looking for someone on the outside who can stretch defenses and capitalize on Allen’s insane arm talent. Coleman can get down there and win contested catches, but he’s never open. Palmer has shown he can make big plays in his career, as his yards per catch was over 15 in each of his last two seasons, but he’s been under 40 receptions in three of four campaigns. He’ll have some moments and make people happy on occasion who use him as a cheap DFS WR3, but I don’t see any upside in drafting him. You’d have to eat too many bad performances to eventually get the one or two spike games.
Elijah Moore, WR (ADP: 352, WR118): Moore is one of the NFL’s cardio kings, running tons of routes, allegedly being open, but providing very mediocre stats. Moore peaked as a rookie with the Jets, catching 43 balls for 538 yards and five scores in 11 games. He talked his way out of New York, and hasn’t matched those numbers since in Cleveland. Now, maybe with Allen, something clicks and he can be a Shakir-esque player on the outside as a flanker. I don’t think it’s impossible for Moore to rise up the ranks in this particular WR room, but I’m also not super bullish on his ultimate upside either.
Curtis Samuel, WR (ADP: N/A): I’ll admit I fell for the Samuel hype last offseason. I believed he could be “the rare Year 9 breakout” and all we got was 267 yards from scrimmage and a single touchdown. Samuel was bothered by injuries last year, but that’s always the case with him, and he was active for 14 games. He’s a very talented human, but he’s never put it together for a useful fantasy season and it’s time for me to admit I have a problem and walk away.
Dawson Knox, TE (ADP: N/A): Knox is a legit red zone threat, but with Kincaid here he’s just not draftable or playable. If Kincaid were out of the picture, Knox could be a spot start type, but without an injury he’s just a nice real life player for the Bills to have.
Handcuffs
Ty Johnson, RB (ADP: 306, RB88): Like Knox, Johnson is a nice role player to have on a team. He catches the rock well out of the backfield and is a competent rusher but he hasn’t been trusted to lead a backfield in his soon-to-be seven NFL seasons, and he won’t get that chance, even if Cook goes down. He could potentially have emergency FLEX option value in deep, full-PPR leagues if there was an injury to Cook or Davis.