3 Buffalo Bills who face massive pressure in training camp

All members of the Buffalo Bills report to training camp this week and we could not be more excited to have football back. There is a great amount of familiarity, but also a great deal of new additions that will be closely watched. Throughout training camp, fans will be getting updates or even potentially doing their own scouting if they head up to St. John Fisher University. These practices will give us all an understanding as to who has the chance to earn starting roles, who will be quality backups, and who could find themselves on a new team.

There are three players that face the most amount of pressure heading into training camp. Two of them have pressure to succeed based on how the offseason played out and one arguably has pressure to just make the roster after a rough start to his career.

With that, we take a look at the three Buffalo Bills who face the most pressure throughout training camp.

CB Kaiir Elam

The third year corner has a massive uphill battle to earn a starting role, let alone make the roster. The good news for Kaiir Elam is that this regime of Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott typically do not move off of guys that they brought to Buffalo. At the same time, Elam has been a bust for the Bills to the point where he can’t get a starting job when he was brought to Buffalo to do so in 2022. 

The Bills have been through a lot of adversity in the secondary the last two seasons due to injury. It would be safe to say that unless Elam has the worst training camp out of everyone on the roster, he will be on the roster. However, if he has not shown any progression and fails to make a serious impact, Brandon Beane will need to strongly consider making the move to admit that Elam was the wrong pick in 2022 and move on from him.

WR Khalil Shakir

Ever since Stefon Diggs was traded to the Houston Texans and Gabe Davis joined the Jacksonville Jaguars in free agency, Khalil Shakir has been labeled as the Bills “number one” receiver for the Bills. If Shakir had not been more involved in the offense once Joe Brady took over the offense in the middle of last season, it would be a major problem with Shakir being the number one option in the pass game.

Shakir has the highest ceiling to grab the most targets in this offense (only Dalton Kincaid could lead the way). If Shakir is not able to live up to the hype that has been placed on him this offseason, it is going to be difficult for the Bills to move the ball through the air.

QB Josh Allen

That’s right, Josh Allen makes it onto this list. Allen is obviously a top three quarterback in the league but this is the first pending season where the roster does not look as strong around him as it has the last four seasons. This is the year that Allen gets to display his talents in terms of elevating his teammates around him. There are no big star players around him. Instead, he is finally the big star with Diggs out of town.

Allen has a new offensive coordinator in Joe Brady and new weapons at wide receiver. We will get to truly see what Allen can do with limited talent on the offense. His pressure will be seeing how much he can carry this offense without any true star power outside of him.