Prime-Time Props — Thursday Night Football, Week 1
Prop God
Welcome to Sleepers, Busts and Bold Predictions for the 2024 fantasy football season. Our Chris Meaney and Daniel Kelley are going to go team-by-team around the league all summer. They’ll pick sleepers, busts and bold predictions for each team. Sometimes they’ll agree! Sometimes they will go completely opposite one another! And that’s fine, because they’ll defend their positions, and you can decide for yourself who to side with. Up today: The Buffalo Bills.
Below, they tackle the team, starting with their picks in “The Answers,” then expanding on their picks in “The Explanation.”
2024 Sleepers, Busts & Bold Predictions: Buffalo Bills
The Answers
Favorite Sleeper
Meaney: Khalil Shakir
Kelley: Khalil Shakir
Biggest Bust
Meaney: Josh Allen
Kelley: Dalton Kincaid
Bold Prediction
Meaney: Dalton Kincaid Is the TE1
Kelley: Josh Allen Will Lose You Your Fantasy League
The Explanations
Sleepers
Meaney: Khalil Shakir
Shakir is the cheapest wideout in Buffalo’s wide receiver room, checking in with a WR55 (109.5 ADP) at Underdog. That’s a fair price, and he’d be my favorite WR target in Buffalo even if he had the more expensive price tag. The fact he’s going later than Curtis Samuel and rookie Keon Coleman makes me like him even more. Shakir led the Bills in catch rate, and he was second to Stefon Diggs in yards per route run. With Diggs gone, there’s an opportunity for Shakir to get more work, and you kind of saw that toward the end of last season. Shakir had two 100-yard games in the final few weeks of the season, and he racked up 10 catches and two touchdowns in two playoff games. Shakir has a real shot at being the WR1 and second option in the passing game in Buffalo.
Kelley: Khalil Shakir
When more than two teammates at the same position have roughly equal ADPs, my guiding principle is to opt for the lowest-drafted one. Because three teammates at WR47, WR49 and WR54 (as Keon Coleman, Curtis Samuel and Khalil Shakir, respectively, are going as I write this) tells me the drafting community is fairly divided on the three, and that means the latest of the group has the most potential value — if all three put up similar numbers, the latest is bringing the most return, and if only one or two pops, the ADPs tell us it’s a crapshoot which, and the latest has the most potential return. Add in that Shakir was probably the best of the three in 2023 anyway — 75.7 PFF grade and 1.84 yards per route run for Shakir compared to 70.5 and 1.52 for Samuel and 72.7 and 1.82 for Coleman in college — and has the preexisting relationship with QB Josh Allen, and he’s comfortably the Bills WR I want in 2024.
Busts
Meaney: Josh Allen
The Bills’ offense changed last season when Joe Brady took over. It became more of a run-first offense with less shots down the field. Stefon Diggs was phased out, and the Bills realized they had more success running the ball and throwing to short and intermediate parts of the field. I think we’ll see a heavy dose of James Cook, and I believe he’ll get more opportunities in the red zone than he did last season. Allen won’t sniff 15 rushing touchdowns again, and he could take a bit of a step back in the yards and passing touchdown categories. Say what you want about Diggs, but he offered a lot to Allen’s upside. Now you have a wide receiver room with some questions, and I don’t believe any of them will flirt with Diggs’ numbers from the past couple of seasons. Allen is still going to run, and he could easily finish with 9-10 rushing touchdowns, but we have him for about 400 fewer passing yards, 50 fewer attempts and fewer passing touchdowns. His rushing floor puts him in the QB1 overall conversation yet again, but I think we’ll see a decline in numbers across the board. Therefore, I don’t believe he’s worth a top-40 pick in your fantasy football drafts.
Kelley: Dalton Kincaid
It’s not that Dalton Kincaid is bad. He very blatantly isn’t. But the hype has gotten out of control for a second-year tight end who only managed a TE11 PPR finish last year. He’s TE5 in drafts as I write this. The problem is Dawson Knox. Knox isn’t much of a receiver at this point (his best game last year was 36 yards), but as I noted in our TE pessimist article, when he’s healthy, Knox is on the field, and it hurts Kincaid. Kincaid saw 23.8% fewer targets, 35.5% fewer yards and 36.3% fewer PPR points per game when Knox was active last year, owing in large part to Knox’ elite blocking and Kincaid’s deficiencies. Sure, that probably moves a little in Kincaid’s direction as he heads into Year 2, but enough to make him TE5? No way. If you’re drafting Kincaid that highly, you’re betting on Knox not even being a Bill in 2024, and there’s no real indication of that right now.
Bold Predictions
Meaney: Dalton Kincaid Is the TE1
Kincaid is by far my favorite target on the Bills. Everyone is trying to figure out who the WR 1 will be in Buffalo with Diggs in Houston, but Kincaid will lead the Bills in targets, catches and yards. He turned into Allen’s favorite target down the stretch of last season and that was evident in his final two games of the regular season as Kincaid racked up 171 yards on 15 targets. He carried that over in the playoffs with eight grabs on 11 targets for 104 yards and a touchdown. Dawson Knox knows how to get in the way, and Allen loves to call his own number in the red zone, so he may not have enough touchdowns to be the TE1, but I fully believe he could lead all TEs in targets, catches and yards. Keep in mind, Diggs and Gabe Davis accounted for 80% of the Bills’ end zone targets, and they combined for nearly 2,000 yards in 2023.
Kelley: Josh Allen Will Lose You Your Fantasy League
All right, maybe this is too much, but it got your attention! Josh Allen is still an excellent fantasy quarterback, and both is and should be the comfortable favorite to be the fantasy QB1 again in 2024. The problem is one of sequencing. The Bills end their regular season with games against the Patriots, Jets and Patriots. Hopefully your fantasy league doesn’t play in Week 18, but even before that, that’s a tough road. Just look at PFF grades, Allen put up a grade under 68.0 five times last year, and four of those came in his Patriots/Jets games. The Jets held him under 68.0 in both matchups in 2022 as well. The people who draft and stick with Allen all year are very likely to make the playoffs and also fairly likely to lose in the semifinals or finals when he has one of his worst games of the season. That doesn’t mean not to draft him, but it is worth being aware of on draft day.
