Category: Bills

Bills trading WR Stefon Diggs to Texans

Stefon Diggs is heading to the Houston Texans

Stefon Diggs time in Buffalo is coming to a close.

The star wide receiver will be traded to the Houston Texans, according to multiple reports.

Diggs has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Bills.

He will move to Houston, where C.J. Stroud gets an elite receiver.

In four seasons as a Bill, Diggs had 445 receptions for 5,372 yards and 37 touchdowns.

There will be a revenge game for the wideout in 2024 as the Bills are scheduled to visit Houston.

Vontae Davis, two-time Pro Bowl DB, dead at 35

Former NFL DB Vontae Davis died at 35

Vontae Davis, a first-round pick of the Miami Dolphins, has died at 35.

Davis’ body was found at his grandmother’s home in South Florida, police confirmed to NFL.com.

Preliminary information suggests that foul play was not involved in Davis’ death, according to police.

Davis played for the Dolphins, Indianapolis Colts, and Buffalo Bills.

He was a two-time Pro Bowler.

Colts owner Jim Irsay extended his condolences on social media.

The Dolphins did, too.

Davis played 121 NFL games (113 starts), totaling 395 tackles, 97 passes defended, and 22 picks over his 10-year career.

Bills give left tackle Dion Dawkins massive new contract extension

Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins had his best year in pass protection, and the team rewarded him with a huge new contract.

Dion Dawkins had his best season to date in 2023 as a pass protector, and the Buffalo Bills are rewarding him accordingly. Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Dawkins will receive a three-year, $60.5 million extension. That will make him one of the NFL’s highest-paid tackles.

Last season, Dawkins allowed just two sacks and 37 total pressures on 769 pass-blocking reps, and he had never allowed fewer than four sacks in any previous season.

Selected by the Bills in the second round of the 2017 draft out of Temple, Dawkins made his third straight Pro Bowl in 2023.

The sky is not falling on the Buffalo Bills

Some familiar faces may be gone, but this is far from Armageddon for the Buffalo Bills

Alright, everyone take a deep breath and listen up.

It was a bleak day at One Bills Drive in Buffalo. Several long-term stars, including center Mitch Morse, cornerback Tre’Davious White, and safety Jordan Poyer were all released as Buffalo continues to gear toward getting back under the cap. However, the reactions that followed made it seem as if the sky was falling on the Bills.

Talks of “well, it looks like the Bills’ Super Bowl window has closed” or “Buffalo is officially rebuilding” started making the rounds on the app formerly known as Twitter.

Mind you, this all stems from Buffalo releasing a 33 year-old safety, a 32 year old center (whom they may actually try to bring back on a cheaper deal) and a 29 year old cornerback who has missed 24 of the team’s last 34 regular season games. That is what has everyone sticking a fork in the Buffalo Bills? That is what their window is hinged upon? Folks, if you have Josh Allen, your window is never closed. You’re never rebuilding, you’re reloading.

Now, in terms of a fan perspective, the sentimental wound is very real, and I can respect that. Poyer and White helped end the playoff drought in 2017, and Morse has been a focal point of the team’s offensive line since 2019. These are guys that have built relationships with the fans and the community, so of course it hurts seeing them go if you are a Bills fan. However, in terms of the on-field impact, the Bills are more than capable to retooling.

And if there is one group that Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott consistently knock out of the park, it’s defensive backs. Poyer and Micah Hyde are prime examples of that, They took two cast-offs and made them the best safety duo in football for half a decade. They turned seventh-round pick Dane Jackson into a reliable rotational cornerback. They got the absolute most out of Rasul Douglas after acquiring him ahead of the trade deadline.

On top of that, according to Spotrac, if the Bills do a full base salary and roster bonus conversion to signing bonus to Josh Allen’s deal, they can free up $22.7 million in cap space, which would make them cap compliant.

The day was filled with hard goodbyes for fans, but the Buffalo Bills are fine. They’ll need to address the secondary in free agency and the draft, as well as wide receiver, but this is far from Armageddon.

Stefon Diggs’ killer drop on Josh Allen’s deep throw was the dagger for the Bills’ season

The Buffalo Bills’ missed opportunities this season can be summarized in one play — Stefon Diggs’ drop of Josh Allen’s deep throw.

In “The Xs and Os” with Greg Cosell this week, while previewing all the divisional round games, Greg made the point (which he’s made before) that Buffalo Bills receiver Stefon Diggs is not the deep target he used to be.

That played out in a highly unfortunate way for the Bills in their 27-24 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night.

With 8:23 left in the game, and the score 27-24 in favor of Kansas City, Josh Allen threw an absolute howitzer of a deep ball to Diggs, who had beaten safety Justin Reid on an inside release vertical route up the numbers. Diggs did have to slow down a tick as the ball came down, but the ball was right in his hands at the Kansas City 28-yard line – that’s a 60ish-yard throw, since Allen threw it from his own 12-yard line – and all Diggs had to do was reach out and catch the thing.

Which he didn’t.

NBC’s cameras panned to Allen after the drop, and his expression seemed to say, “That’s the best throw I’ve ever made, and I threw it to my best receiver, and we got nothing out of it.” Just brutal.

That was the first play of the Bills’ final drive, which ended with Tyler Bass missing what would have been a 44-yard game-tying field goal with 1:47 left in the game. There were a lot of things that went wrong on that final drive, but imagine how different things would have been if Diggs had caught that deep throw. It was probably a touchdown, and then, it’s literally a whole new ballgame.

Diggs was targeted three times on that final drive, with no catches. Which further complicates matters, of course. Neither of these were deep throws, but they further illustrate a separation issue. 

The first was on first-and-10 from the Buffalo 43-yard line with 5:47 left in the game…

…and the second happened one play later.

The Bills are in a perilous financial situation for the 2024 season, and if Diggs — one of the team’s highest-paid players — can’t find a better footing next season and beyond, we could be entering a dimension in which he’s more of a problem than a solution.

Jason Kelce endears himself to Buffalo forever, helps young fan meet Taylor Swift

Jason Kelce endeared himself forever to the city of Buffalo, and helped one young fan show her respect for Taylor Swift.

As great as the Kansas City Chiefs’ 27-24 win over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night was in a football sense, the highlight for most was a shirtless Jason Kelce going crazy after the first of Travis Kelce’s two touchdowns for the Chiefs, and interacting with Bills fans at Highmark Stadium.

As it turns out, the All-Pro Philadelphia Eagles center is a true Man of the People. Kelce, the most athletic center of his era, may have topped himself from a performance perspective by climbing out of his luxury box at the stadium without spilling a drop of his beer. He then held up one fan to take a selfie, and took another young fan with a sign for Taylor Swift to show the singer.

Every time you think this story can’t get any better, it does. And as one Bills fan said to Kelce, “You could play for us!”

Is this the end of the Buffalo Bills’ championship window?

The Buffalo Bills now face a complicated offseason in which what they can spend doesn’t come close to what they need. Is the window closed?

Let’s begin with the obvious: The Buffalo Bills were devastated by injuries this season. Losing their two best defensive players — linebacker Matt Milano and cornerback Tre’Davious White — to season-ending maladies was a major hit, and if either or both of those players were on the field in the divisional round, the result might have been different than the 27-24 Kansas City Chiefs win.

The Chiefs have been the Bills’ white whale over the last half-decade in the postseason, but there’s now a darker question for Buffalo’s NFL franchise.

Is this the end of the championship window that began five years ago? The Bills had made the playoffs once from 2000 through 2017, but they’ve never missed a postseason since Josh Allen became their quarterback in 2018. The litany of losses takes the bloom off the rose, of course, and if this is a narrowing of those possibilities without even a Super Bowl appearance to show for it, that’s in its own way more frustrating than the Bills teams that lost four straight Super Bowls from the 1990 through 1993 seasons.

On the surface, the Bills would seem to have a reasonably bright contending future… and then you look at the impending free agents, and Buffalo’s 2024 salary cap situation.

Most of the players in question are replaceable over time with smart free-agency and draft decisions, but as Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com points out, there isn’t any room to operate in an aggressive fashion. The Bills have the NFL’s fourth-worst cap deficit in preparation for the new league year, and the contracts that are most onerous based on cost versus performance aren’t really moveable.

Receiver Stefon Diggs carries a $27,854 million cap charge in 2024, and the dead money incurred with his pre-June 1 release would be $31,096 million. Maybe there’s a trade or a later cut, but the capital they might get from a declining receiver is minimal, and a later cut just moves the money down the road.

Edge-rusher Von Miller has a $23,799 million cap charge for 2024, and a $32,501 million dead cap hit were he released. The structure of Miller’s contract is even more unfavorable pursuant to a post-June 1 release.

Those are the two biggest albatrosses other than Josh Allen’s $47,056,281 cap hit for 2024, and Josh Allen is actually worth that.

So, the Bills are facing decisions with other players whose released might be more manageable. That includes White (whose recent injury history may accelerate that decision), offensive tackle Dion Dawkins, center Mitch Morse, cornerback Rasul Douglas, and safety Jordan Poyer. Problem is, there isn’t one player on the roster whose release would provide massive cap relief — the Bills will have to gut this thing to a point. That’s what happens when you go all in on a championship as general manager Brandon Beane has done, and you can’t blame Beane for trying, but things are where they are.

Yes, the Bills have dynamic young players you can build a rebuild around. But at this point, when you look at the upcoming free-agency carnage and the ways in which the team’s player contracts are currently structured, it’s tough to imagine any scenario in which the Bills won’t have to take at least two steps back before taking any more steps forward.

And with no Super Bowl appearances to show for it, that’s an extremely tough reality.

Once again, the Bills are devastated by a wide-right field goal miss

The last two words any Buffalo Bills fan wants to hear is, “Wide Right.” Sadly, it’s become a thing again.

The Buffalo Bills and their fans were heartbroken enough by their 27-24 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the divisional round of the playoffs, but Buffalo’s final scoring chance was scuttled by two words near and infamous to everyone who has ever loved this team:

Wide right.

With 1:47 left in the game, Tyler Bass attempted a 44-yard field goal that would have tied the game. Sadly, you can guess where the ball went.

Of course, the trauma is because of the field goal kicker Scott Norwood missed with eight seconds left in Super Bowl XXV on January 27, 1991.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPFZCGgjDSg

And now, the curse has sadly returned.

Shawn Hochuli’s dubious pass interference call gives Chiefs a fourth-quarter break

Shawn Hochuli’s pass interference call against the Bills was the latest embarrassment in a season filled with officiating errors.

Ah, more horrible NFL officiating. When will it ever end?

With 9:31 left in the fourth quarter of the divisional round playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills, Patrick Mahomes threw the ball away on third-and-6 from the Kansas City 46-yard line. There wasn’t a receiver in the area, because Rashee Rice — the intended target — was bumped over the middle by a Bills defender.

After a prolonged discussion delay, referee Shawn Hochuli’s “all-star” officiating crew decided to call pass interference on linebacker Dorian Williams, who made the bump. Here’s the problem — the contact happened within five yards of the line of scrimmage, so as long as Mahomes had not released the ball when the contact happened, it was legal contact.

Mahomes did not release the ball before the contact happened.

So, that discussion had to include at least one official insisting that Mahomes had released the ball, which is quite the embarrassment for a group of officials who have been awful all season long.

The Chiefs were unable to capitalize, but the point stands: When will the league do something about this obvious problem?

Josh Allen throws touchdown pass to Khalil Shakir to give Bills lead

It was Buffalo’s turn to take the lead against the Chiefs

Back and forth the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills were going on Sunday at Highmark Stadium.

It was Buffalo’s turn to take the lead in the third quarter as Josh Allen, who was having a monster game, threw a dart to Khalil Shakir for a 13-yard touchdown

The PAT made it 24-20.

Allen had a pair of rushing TDs to go with the passing score.

The 75-yard drive ate up 8:25 and took 15 plays.