Josh Allen hasn’t had a real receiver room since March 2024.
That’s not an exaggeration — it’s what the numbers say. Since Buffalo traded Stefon Diggs to Houston, the Bills have cycled through Amari Cooper (a midseason trade that produced 20 catches and wasn’t renewed), Curtis Samuel (a big-money signing who became so invisible he was tagged the “forgotten man” on his own team’s depth chart), and a rotating cast of rookies and role players asked to be more than they were built for. The cost showed up in the play-calling: last season, Allen posted the lowest pass rate of his career and the lowest wide receiver target share of his career, 22nd in the league. James Cook is excellent out of the backfield and there’s solid options at tight end. But when an elite quarterback stops throwing to his receivers, that’s usually not a quarterback problem. That’s on the receiver room.
Which is what makes this offseason different. For the first time since Diggs left, Buffalo didn’t patch the position — they rebuilt it, with three additions that each solve a specific piece of what’s been broken.
DJ Moore is the No. 1 Buffalo hasn’t had in three years — and it’s not a blind bet.
The trade cost Buffalo a 2026 second-rounder, and the reflex reaction around the league was that Moore’s stock was falling — he was coming off the worst statistical season of his career in Chicago. But look closer at why. Moore’s best years — back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons in 2020 and 2021 — came with one specific play-caller: Joe Brady, then Carolina’s offensive coordinator. Under Brady, Moore averaged 13.2 air yards per target. In three fading years with the Bears, that number dropped to 9.7. That’s not decline. That’s a receiver in the wrong system for three years, walking right back into the right one — with the same coach now running the whole offense in Buffalo. He’s also buying jerseys for Bills Mafia.
Greg Dortch is the piece nobody’s talking about, and he might matter more than you realize.
Dortch isn’t walking in to be a No. 1 or a No. 2. He’s walking in to be the underneath, high-floor security blanket Buffalo hasn’t reliably had since Cole Beasley — someone who takes pressure off Moore and Shakir instead of adding to it. What makes it a low-risk, fast-integration signing: Dortch already has real history with both WR coach Drew Terrell and special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers from their years together in Arizona. That’s less install time and immediate trust for staffers. There’s also a sneaky special-teams angle here — a legitimate shot at grabbing the punt-return job.
Skyler Bell is the wild card who could make this room better than the Diggs-era version.
Moore and Dortch fix what was broken. Bell adds something that was never really there. The rookie fourth-rounder barely got on the field in preseason — a groin injury kept him out from August 8 until the final week of camp — and then he went out against Pittsburgh and put up 7 catches for 49 yards, got moved around the formation, and capped it with a 28-yard rushing touchdown on an end-around. Joe Brady’s own reaction said it clearly: “It’s been a while” since a rookie made that kind of first impression. If Bell’s role grows the way his preseason usage suggests it might, Buffalo isn’t just fielding a competent receiver room for the first time since Diggs — they’re fielding one with a dimension the Diggs-era offense never actually had.
The bottom line for the Bills: this isn’t three names added to a depth chart. It’s three specific answers to three specific failures — no true No. 1, no reliable underneath option, no versatility beyond straight route-running — stacked on top of Khalil Shakir and Keon Coleman, who are now free to play their actual roles instead of overextending into gaps that shouldn’t have been theirs to fill. Three years after the Diggs trade, Josh Allen finally has a receiver room built to be thrown to — and the pass-rate numbers should show it fast.
