Why Bills jumped Cowboys to snag Utah TE Dalton Kincaid in first round

Henry McKenna

AFC East Reporter

Heading into the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft, the Buffalo Bills needed a receiver. They needed a linebacker. And they sort of needed a running back. You might even argue they needed a cornerback. But when a team is as solidly built as Buffalo’s unit, it has the opportunity to make luxury picks. It has the opportunity to get creative.

When general manager Brandon Beane saw Utah tight end Dalton Kincaid sliding down the board, the Bills traded up from No. 27 to No. 25 to get ahead of the Dallas Cowboys. Buffalo believed two things: 1) Kincaid was, by far, the best player on its board and 2) the Cowboys likely felt the exact same way and would, therefore, pick him at No. 26.

“Us trading up tells you how we valued him,” Beane said Thursday night after the team’s first-round selection. “We had a good feeling that Dallas would take him, and we just really liked him and just felt he would be a great fit in our offense.”

Maybe Kincaid isn’t exactly what this roster needed, but then again, this draft doesn’t really offer exactly what the Bills need. The inside linebacker spot lacks players with prototypical size and elite talent. The same is true at the receiver position.

So Beane sought an atypical solution for one of the team’s biggest problems. The team solved its pass-catching and slot shortcomings with a tight end.

“He is a tight end, but he is a receiving tight end,” Beane said. “We think he’ll pair well with Dawson [Knox] and give us another target in the middle of the field. When him and Dawson are on the field, you’re in 12 [personnel] but it’s quasi-11 [personnel].”

So if the 12-personnel formation includes one running back and two tight ends and 11-personnel fields one back and one end, then a Kincaid-Knox formation is like 11.5 personnel, Beane said.

The first-round investment in the tight-end spot came as something of a surprise. It wasn’t just that the Bills didn’t really need a tight end. It was that they just paid their tight end, Knox, to the tune of $52 million over four years. That’s why Beane impressed upon reporters that the Bills were not creating a redundancy at the position. To the contrary, Knox is a strong in-line blocker and will continue to operate close to the line of scrimmage. Kincaid is an elite pass-catcher with a feel for route-running and defeating zone defense.

Kincaid has the ability to do some things that slot receivers do in the Buffalo offense.

“Elite hands. Really good route-runner,” Beane said of Kincaid. “Really good at setting guys up inside. There’s always the [playbook] telling you as a player what to do: ‘Eight yards here, there.’ But sometimes the defense changes, and he’s got great feel, great instinct. You guys saw it from a different position — Cole Beasley, great feel. This guy [Kincaid], in a different body type, does that.”

In 2022, Kincaid looked like Utah’s version of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Even in a season when he was obviously the top target, Kincaid found ways to sneak into empty patches of grass, particularly against a zone defense. Kincaid moved the chains — sometimes with spectacular grabs and sometimes with a sense of where defenders wouldn’t account for him.

That’s an asset to this Bills offense that desperately needs someone aside from Stefon Diggs to get open. The rotation of Knox, Gabe Davis and running back James Cook worked OK. It seemed the team’s supporting cast took turns stepping up. But it made for discomfort in the weeks when defenses limited Diggs.

Sometimes no one stepped up. And Josh Allen felt like he had to put the whole team on his shoulders, which resulted in too many scrambles and too many hits to the franchise QB.

If Kincaid can develop quickly, he will relieve those offensive issues. He can be a high-volume pass-catcher. The question with any tight end, however, is how quickly he can develop. It’s rare to see a tight end step onto the field and make an instant impact. But something tells me that Kincaid will rapidly make an impact. Why?

“Josh Allen is one hell of a quarterback,” Kincaid said.

That should accelerate the development of a young pass-catcher like Kincaid.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as the AFC East reporter, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @McKennAnalysis.

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