Sleepers, Busts and Bets: The 2022 Buffalo Bills

Nick Makowitz and Jeremy Popielarz continue with the 2022 Sleepers, Busts and Bets series to preview all 32 NFL teams for the upcoming year. Next up: The Buffalo Bills.

Nick and Jeremy will list their picks with confidence in “The Answers,” Then expand upon their picks with more details reason in “The Explanation.”

The Answers

Favorite Sleeper

Makowitz: Jamison Crowder
Popielarz: James Cook

Biggest Bust

Makowitz: Dawson Knox
Popielarz: Gabriel Davis

Boldest Bet

Makowitz: The Bills Have 3 Top-36 WRs
Popielarz: Jamison Crowder Outscores Gabriel Davis in PPR

The Explanation

Sleeper

Makowitz: Jamison Crowder

Wait, where’s Gabriel Davis? The third-year wideout has become such a popular breakout pick that it doesn’t feel right to call him a sleeper anymore. Instead, we’ll go with his vastly overlooked counterpart, Jamison Crowder.

Crowder will play out of the slot and serve as Josh Allen’s safety blanket, filling a role for Buffalo that’s been left vacant by Cole Beasley. Having that defined role in this high-powered offense should allow him to excel, even if he’s not the number one option.

In 2021, the Bills ran the third-most plays, threw the ball at the 12^th-highest rate and targeted wide receivers at the second-highest clip. All of that means Josh Allen and the Bills offense provide a ton of opportunity for its wideouts, who finished sixth in fantasy points as a unit last year. 

Despite that, Crowder is being drafted outside of the top-60 receivers. He doesn’t need to be great, just great in his role. What will make that easier is going from Zach Wilson to Josh Allen, from the 29^th-most efficient passing offense to the 11^th and from a team that ranked 23^rd in touchdowns per game to the team that ranked No. 1. 

Behind Stefon Diggs, the competition for the No. 2 option is wide open in Buffalo, and Crowder should be able to step in and command over 100 targets without encroaching on Diggs or Davis. If he stays healthy and scores at his career rate, he could pay massive dividends on his ADP. 

Popielarz: James Cook

This offseason the Bills made it a point to address the need for a pass-catching running back. After losing out on J.D. McKissic, they signed Duke Johnson and drafted James Cook in the second round. Cook was arguably the most efficient pass-catching back in all of college football last season — he saw 30 targets in the regular and postseason combined, catching 27 for 274 yards and four touchdowns. The most impressive statistic on Cook is that over his career at Georgia he was only credited with one drop on 74 targets through four seasons, per PFF. On top of this, he displayed versatility over his career, playing 19.5% of his snaps out of the slot and 6.9% outside over his career. This versatility will allow Cook to see some decent usage in 2022, as the Bills cut slot wide receiver Cole Beasley in March, opening up a lot of opportunities. With this and the fact that the Bills targeted the RB position 91 times last season, Cook will get a chance to display his 4.4 speed, and elusiveness to create after the catch, much like he did at Georgia, producing 705 yards after the catch over his career.

Although he is slightly undersized for a workhorse back (5-foot-11, 190 pounds) he is bigger and much quicker than current lead back Devin Singletary (5-7, 203). With this, there is a chance we can see him carve out a viable rushing role as well in this offense, especially because last season Zack Moss and Matt Breida combined for 122 rushing attempts behind Singletary. So, if Cook can carve out a path to 10-15 touches a game on a team that produced 28.4 points per game (third in the NFL) and 381.9 yards per game (fifth), it’s likely he becomes a fantasy-viable player weekly. On top of this, he is likely one injury away from being the lead back in this offense, which would make his ceiling extremely high in 2022. 

Bust

Makowitz: Dawson Knox

After two seasons of fantasy irrelevance, Dawson Knox broke out in 2021 and finished eighth among tight ends in points per game in half-PPR scoring. As a result, he’s being drafted between TE7 and TE9 (round seven) for 2022, depending on the platform. 

Last season, Knox tied for the most touchdowns by a tight end with nine despite ranking 15^th in yards, 18^th in receptions and 20^th in targets. New Bills’ offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey served as the passing game coordinator and QB coach in 2021, meaning the offense will probably look very similar. That’s not great news for Knox.

The Bills targeted tight ends at the third-lowest rate in the NFL last year. In the offseason, they added slot specialist Jamison Crowder and drafted pass-catching running back James Cook. Without a clear path to a bigger target share, Knox will need to rely on touchdowns again to be an every-week starter. Drafting a tight end at or close to his ceiling in the seventh round and leaving excellent running back and wide receiver talent on the board is a move that caps a team’s upside. I’m more comfortable betting against another league-leading touchdown year and taking a shot on a tight end with more consistent volume. 

Popielarz: Gabriel Davis

The Gabriel Davis hype has reached an all-time high this offseason, especially after his four-touchdown playoff performance in January. That has caused his ADP has skyrocketed to the WR28, and he’s gone even earlier in many drafts. Ignoring his impressive playoff performance, Davis has produced two fairly identical seasons that have never produced a finish higher than a WR5 level in PPR scoring:

The popular narrative is that Davis is in line for a significant portion of the 180-plus targets left behind by Cole Beasley and Emmanuel Sanders, but with the Bills adding Tavon Austin, Jamison Crowder, James Cook, Duke Johnson and Khalil Shakir this offseason and re-signing Isaiah McKenzie, it’s worth questioning whether Davis will soak up enough of the vacated targets to be worth the hype. 

Over the past two seasons, the slot role has typically been the second-most targeted player on the roster, in large part due to how defenses play the Bills, as they try to limit the big play and force them to dink-and-dunk down the field. Davis isn’t likely to play this role in 2022—he ran only a quarter of snaps out of the slot last year, and Crowder has a long history in the slot. He is likely to see some increase in targets and will likely be a viable flex option on occasion, but it’s likely he falls short of the massive hype and disappoints fantasy managers who see him as their WR2. 

Bet

Makowitz: The Bills Have 3 Top-36 WRs

Top-36 doesn’t sounds that exciting, but only the Cincinnati Bengals – Ja’Marr Chase (WR5), Tee Higgins (WR22) and Tyler Boyd (WR31) – accomplished this feat last season. Chase was the stud, Higgins was second fiddle with the ability to step up if need be and Boyd was the ever-reliable slot receiver.

In Buffalo, Diggs is the stud, Gabriel Davis showed in flashes last season that he could step up – to the tune of eight catches, 201 yards and four touchdowns in the playoffs – and Jamison Crowder will step in as the slot option.

To support three relevant fantasy receivers, the Bills’ passing attack will need to provide top-tier volume. Luckily, Buffalo threw the ball at the second-highest rate in neutral gamescripts last yearper FTN’s Pace Tool and directed 71% of its attempts to wide receivers, good for second highest in the NFL. There will be plenty of targets to go around.

I realize that the overwhelming consensus here is that Crowder ruins it for the Bills and they end up with just two top-36 receivers. It’s possible, but keep in mind he’s four years younger than his predecessor, Cole Beasley, who posted two top-36 finishes in his three seasons with Buffalo. 

If Diggs, Davis and Crowder play their roles as well as they can, Josh Allen and the Bills’ offense will do the rest. That’s the path to getting three top-36 wide receivers in Buffalo. 

Popielarz: Jamison Crowder Outscores Gabriel Davis in PPR

Jamison Crowder has only topped 100 targets once in the last three years with the Jets — 2019, when he produced 833 yards and 6 touchdowns and finished as the WR26 in PPR. He saw his production dip the last two years as he battled injury. But this offseason, he joined one of the highest-powered offenses in the league, one that averaged 252 passing yards per game last year (ninth best) and scored 28.4 points per game (third). The Bills cutting Cole Beasley opened up a big opportunity in the offense — Beasley topped 100 targets each of his three years in Buffalo, including a career-high 112 last year. That massive target share only turned into a WR39 finish in PPR, but that’s largely because of bad luck on touchdowns, as Beasley only scored once in 2021. That was despite an increase in work near the end zone — per the FTN Fantasy red zone report, he saw 10 red-zone targets in 2020 and then 14 in 2021.

Crowder could easily slide right into Beasley’s role in 2022, and if he can be even moderately productive in the red zone, it’s easy to see how he could surpass what the 32-year-old Beasley did last year.