Buffalo Rumblings
In the first installment of this series, we covered the offensive backfield and the offensive line — the engine room of Joe Brady and Pete Carmichael’s system. Now we move to the perimeter, where a blockbuster trade rewrote the depth chart at receiver and left one of the more compelling three-way fights on the entire roster sitting right behind it. Without further ado, let’s check the state of the WR and TE rooms.
Buffalo sent a 2026 second-round pick to Chicago and got back DJ Moore and a fifth-rounder — the clearest signal of intent this front office made all offseason. Moore is walking into a system he already knows. Joe Brady was his offensive coordinator in Carolina for two seasons, and that stretch produced the best football of Moore’s career: 1,193 yards and a career-high 18.1 yards per catch in 2020 alone. He comes off a down year in Chicago — a career-low 682 yards on 50 catches as Ben Johnson leaned on younger weapons — but that says more about a crowded target competition than about Moore losing anything physically. He’s the WR1 the moment he steps on the field in Orchard Park, even if Dalton Kincaid and Khalil Shakir end up challenging him for the majority of targets. I see him, at minimum, getting Stefon Diggs’s role in Brady’s first year as an OC.
Speaking of Shakir, he is WR2, and I don’t think where he lines up changes that. Brady has talked about using him more on the outside instead of living almost exclusively in the slot, which is a real scheme wrinkle worth tracking in camp. But alignment is a side conversation next to production. Shakir led this offense in every meaningful category last season — 72 catches on 95 targets for 719 yards and four touchdowns — and he led the entire NFL with 173 receiving yards off screen passes. Whether he plays more X or Z this year or stays mostly in the slot, he’s this team’s second option in the passing game. Moore and Shakir are the two constants in this room.
Everything else is a fight, and the WR3 job is the best subplot at this position. Keon Coleman opened 2025 with an 8-catch, 112-yard, one-touchdown explosion against Baltimore and then all but disappeared — 38 receptions for 404 yards and four touchdowns on 59 targets over 13 games, with more headlines about missed meetings than about production. Brandon Beane fielded trade calls on him this spring and turned them down, saying in April he wanted to “hit the reset button.” That’s a GM staking real credibility on this specific player, and this...
