It was less than two weeks ago that the Buffalo Bills were preparing for their divisional round matchup for the Denver Broncos. Since that loss, everything with the team has completely changed.
Sean McDermott is no longer the head coach, Terry Pegula and Brandon Beane had a disaster of a press conference after the firing of McDermott, and Buffalo has been in the middle of their head coaching search.
Instead of getting the chance to digest what happened against the Broncos, fans have just been focused on what the next steps are for the Bills after they let McDermott go. That is obviously the main focus, but it’s still important to also look back on the season and see what went right and what went wrong.
For as great as the Bills were at times, there were also a ton of downs which included underperformances from players. There are five players on the Bills that stand out the most as to who did not live up to expectations from start to finish this past season.
5 Bills players who did not live to expectations this season
WR Keon Coleman
It’s been a rough season for Keon Coleman, and the press conference hosted by Pegula and Beane didn’t make it any better. Starting with the press conference, there were comments about how Coleman was brought to Buffalo and Pegula stated that it was the coaching staff, not Beane, that pushed to draft Coleman in 2024. So, that alone makes you wonder if Coleman even has a future left with the Bills.
On the field, outside of Week 1 against the Ravens, Coleman was not a contributor whatsoever. After his 112 yard game against Baltimore, Coleman never had over 49 yards in a game and he was a healthy scratch in multiple games due to disciplinary decisions. There have been a ton of questions about his maturity and that played a role in him not getting on the field.
Coleman has not been the playmaker that Buffalo drafted him to be, and now with everything that has happened in the organization, all options should be on the table about Coleman's future with the Bills.
DE Joey Bosa
Joey Bosa was Buffalo’s biggest free agent splash last offseason, but there were concerns about his durability. He had developed a big injury history which caused him to miss games. Luckily, he only missed one game this season due to injury.
Bosa got off to a fast start, creating a great amount of pressure and he even recorded 5 forced fumbles along the way. However, as time went on, Bosa started to slowly disappear. He wasn’t creating pressure and he was getting pushed around a little bit from blockers.
The Bills brought him in for situational plays and the playoffs to be the closer that Von Miller wasn’t. It turns out that Bosa wasn’t any better unfortunately.
WR Joshua Palmer
When the Bills decided to give Joshua Palmer a 3 year deal worth $36 million, it was a bit of a head-scratching move considering that Palmer never had more than 769 yards in a season when he was with the Chargers. However, he was known for his separation ability from defenders. That wasn’t shown a whole lot this season.
Palmer went the whole season without scoring a touchdown, having just over 300 yards through the air, and he missed a great amount of time due to injuries and didn’t play one down in the playoffs due to being placed on IR.
It was surely a forgetful first season for Palmer in Buffalo.
DT T.J. Sanders
It’s one thing to be a Day 2 draft pick, it’s another for a team to trade up 15 spots to draft you. That’s what the Buffalo Bills did when they traded up from No. 56 to No. 41 in the 2nd round to draft T.J. Sanders out of South Carolina. Surely, you would think that Sanders would be an immediate contributor since the Bills moved up that many spots for him…wrong.
He was outperformed by his rookie classmate in Deone Walker and wasn’t able to make any kind of serious impact. He had just 7 solo tackles and 1 sack that didn’t come until Week 18 against the Jets. Even with Ed Oliver missing a majority of the season, Sanders wasn’t able to capitalize on his opportunities as much as fans had hoped for.
S Taylor Rapp
In fairness to placing Rapp on this list, he didn’t play much as he suffered a knee injury that put him on the IR in October and he didn’t play another down in the season. Then again, Rapp didn’t perform at a high level in the 6 games that he did play.
While he did have 26 total tackles, there were plenty of times where he messed up badly in coverage and he was not great at stopping the run. Cole Bishop showed that he can lead the back end of the secondary moving forward, putting the Bills in a position where if they wanted to move on from Rapp, they could.