Ja’Mori Maclin got three targets against Cleveland. He turned them into 108 yards and a touchdown, and suddenly he’s the most talked-about name on the Bills’ receiver depth chart. The question worth asking isn’t whether it was a good day. It obviously was. The question is whether one big day actually means anything once roster cuts arrive.
On a 37-yard catch and a 71-yard touchdown from Shane Buechele, the undrafted rookie out of Kentucky, who’s the cousin of former Pro Bowler Jeremy Maclin, led the entire team in receiving yards on two catches. He’d managed just one target and nine yards the week before against Carolina. This was one explosive afternoon.
Can he be a space maker? That’s the entirety of the role Bills WRs are tasked with. Create space underneath and downfield for Josh Allen to seize on. There’s more to Maclin’s afternoon than the box score suggests. Head coach Joe Brady didn’t frame this as a surprise. He framed it as a payoff.
“If you’re undrafted and you’re battling injuries in OTAs, you better hope that you show something early to be able to continue to stick around, and he showed us a lot,” Brady said. Brady specifically pointed to what Maclin did during his early-offseason injury, staying in the building instead of disappearing to rehab elsewhere. “He took advantage of the time when he was off and stuck around in the offseason, making sure that when his time was going to come, he was going to be ready.”
Buechele backed that up from the quarterback’s side. “He’s been balling,” Buechele said. “He’s been doing a good job, he works hard, he’s got some juice to him, so it’s fun.”
That’s exactly the kind of pattern I look for this time of year. In this Browns game specifically, there were multiple individual flashes worth tracking beyond just Maclin: Kani Walker’s third-down tackle, Landon Jackson’s push up the middle, Damar Hamlin’s interception on the goal-line stand. Those are the plays that mean something if a team can replicate them once the games count. Maclin’s touchdown fits that same category, a real flash of ability, not just a product of soft coverage or a busted assignment.
The receiver room math is the real hurdle. Buffalo added DJ Moore this offseason, which reshuffles the entire depth chart above Maclin regardless of how he performs. Joe Buscaglia of The Athletic reported this week that Maclin now “has a chance to stick with the Bills past this summer,” but that’s a notably careful phrase, a chance, not a certainty. Trent Sherfield is showing signs of carving out his own role in that same room. Mecole Hardman had a touchdown on Saturday, and despite his roller coaster summer, always flashes as a returner and gadget piece. The competition for the bottom of that roster isn’t thin.
Here’s my honest read: one preseason game doesn’t make a roster spot, but it does something almost as valuable this time of year. It gets a coaching staff to keep watching. Buffalo has one more preseason game left, and Maclin has exactly one more chance to turn buzz into an actual decision in his favor. If he was fighting for a practice squad spot before Cleveland, he’s fighting for the 53 now. That’s the entire value of a game like this: not a guarantee, but a real, earned look.
