1. Could this be Buffalo's breakout player in 2021?
The Bills saw production from several players on offense and defense during the 2020 season. Bleacher Report went through every team and picked their breakout candidate for next season. B/R thinks Bills wide receiver Gabriel Davis could have a big season in 2021.
Selected in the fourth round out of Central Florida, Davis emerged as a significant piece of Buffalo's passing puzzle. He appeared in all 16 games with 11 starts and finished with 35 catches, 599 yards and seven touchdowns—becoming one of Josh Allen's best breakaway targets.
Davis also starred in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs, catching four balls for 85 yards against the Indianapolis Colts. He suffered an ankle injury the next week against the Ravens and did not catch a pass on four targets. He was targeted three times but came up empty in the AFC title game.
Davis had five games of at least 65 receiving yards and averaged a team-high 17.1 yards per catch during his rookie season.
2. How the Bills offseason will look like on the scouting front
After the Bills finish evaluating this season, all focus turns to 2021. Buffalo's scouting department will continue to scout players as the 2021 NFL Draft inches closer. Much like last year, this offseason won't look anything close to normal for the scouts.
The NFL recently announced the NFL Scouting Combine will not happen in Indianapolis like it normally does. Instead, there will be an emphasis on attending Pro Days hosted by colleges. A lot of information is still in the works, but Bills general manager Brandon Beane feels like his team can manage in another weird offseason due to being virtual throughout this season.
"We'll have to spread out on Pro Days," Beane said on how his staff will approach the offseason. "That'll be our one time to see these guys move around again, weigh, do the bench, any of those so-called underwear Olympics that'll be coming up. Everything with the player will have to be virtual. There's no in-person workouts. The only in-person thing that you can see is if you go to their Pro Day and they're working them out. So a lot of it is going to go back to the tape in the fall if they played.
"Obviously some guys didn't play, they opted out. We'll have to look at the previous year's film. So right now, there's probably more guys on most teams' draft boards just because there's still a date of March 1 that some seniors can go back. If they want to, they have that option to have another year due to the Covid-free year. It's fluid as we go along, but at least we did a lot of things virtually last year close to the draft so our scouts are kind of used to it. We'll manage."
3. PFF thinks the best is yet to come for Josh Allen
As the NFL season comes to an end, PFF looked back at several storylines from the teams in the playoffs. In an article that highlights 20 takeaways from the postseason, Bills quarterback Josh Allen and wide receiver Stefon Diggs were mentioned. PFF thinks Allen hasn't played his best yet in the playoffs.
We didn't see the best version of Allen over the past two weeks, as the third-year QB failed to average even 6.0 yards per attempt against both the Ravens (5.57) and Chiefs (5.98). Allen was more of a boom-or-bust QB in 2018-2019 before mostly just experiencing the former throughout his MVP-worthy 2020 campaign. The playoffs showed both sides of Allen, as his nine big-time throws trailed only Tom Brady (10), but nobody had more turnover-worthy plays (6).
Allen had the greatest third-year breakout in modern NFL history. There is no reason for #BillsMafia to feel anything except great about their franchise QB moving forward; just realize that to be the best you've got to beat the best, and we'll need to see even more out of Allen in the future in order for the Bills to take down Patrick Mahomes and company.
Diggs led the league in receptions and receiving yards during the regular season, and PFF believes he proved he's top-three caliber.
Josh Allen deserves plenty of credit for his own improvement as a passer, but adding Diggs to the equation undoubtedly helped speed up the young QB's progression. The duo was as formidable as any QB-WR tandem in the league — particularly on comeback and hitch routes. Overall, Diggs set league-high marks in receptions (52), yards (533) and yards per route run (4.59) on these two routes, regularly providing a safe and efficient avenue for his QB to go with the ball.
Based on 2020-21 production alone: it's impossible to call Diggs anything other than a top-three wide receiver on planet Earth.
