The Bills have a wide receiver problem; is the answer already on their roster?

After starting the year 4-0, the Bills had a humbling loss in which an up-and-coming Patriots team, with a young quarterback, upset them at home. Now they’re in self-scouting mode to figure out where to go from here.

The Bills have one more game before their Week 7 bye — a road game against the Falcons. But before they get there, they’ll need to figure out some answers to prevent a two-game losing streak heading into a week off.

After studying the All-22 from the Bills’ first loss of 2025, let’s take a hard look at the team’s offensive environment and the why behind the Patriots’ ability to frustrate them for most of the game.

The WR conundrum has returned

Exactly one year after losing to the Texans in a prime-time Week 5 matchup, the Bills lost to the Patriots in a prime-time Week 5 matchup. In a somewhat unusual parallel, the Bills dropped both of those games by the matching score of 23-20. And while it’s just an early loss as it was in 2024, the Bills have to take a hard look at what went right, and most importantly, what went wrong. Just as the Texans game showed during that loss last year, the Bills may have a slightly deeper problem on offense. And it might just be the same problem as last time.

Here we are again. One year removed from the Bills having to deal with the issue of opponents daring them to beat them outside the numbers with their passing game, and the Bills feeling so compelled to fix it that they traded for Amari Cooper well ahead of the trade deadline, those concerns have returned. It’s not to say the Patriots exposed the Bills, because there were still some signs of life throughout the contest. However, upon reviewing the film, two very clear central themes became apparent.

The first was that the Patriots made limiting the Bills’ running game a significant priority, many times by overwhelming the Bills with one more body than they could usually block. It was a smart approach, given that their rushing attack — armed with one of the best offensive lines in the NFL — was the very engine of the team’s offense for much of their four victories. The second theme is that the Patriots were not afraid to play man coverage at a high rate, by NFL standards, to help limit the run, and based on the challenges the Bills have had this season at times in the passing game, much of that likely has to do with the talent profiles of the boundary receivers.

And not only did they run a high rate of man coverage — 37.7 percent, which is the highest rate the Bills have faced this season, according to TruMedia and Pro Football Focus — but they also didn’t blitz Josh Allen often. They trusted their cornerbacks to win those matchups, and they usually had a spy waiting for Allen if he decided to tuck the ball and make something happen. The result was a completely disjointed first half and a failure to stack enough drives in key moments. The Bills tried to generate yards through the scheme and work after the catch, rather than challenging the defense in an unexpected way.

That unexpected way is by threatening the defense with verticality — a piece of their game that was non-existent against the Patriots. Through all 31 of the Bills’ passing attempts in Week 5, Allen surpassed 20 air yards on only three separate occasions. One was on a gimmicky flea flicker play that went exactly 20 air yards to Curtis Samuel. Another was on Allen’s cross-body desperation heave through the back of the end zone near the end of the fourth quarter, which was a freelancing broken play and barely counts as an attempt to force a defense to change its approach. Their most successful 20-plus-yard throw was to Joshua Palmer in the first half against, you guessed it, man coverage. That play was when the passing game to receivers seemed the most impressive and alive.

Too often, the Bills had to, and have had to during the season, rely on the short stuff. We’ve seen quite a bit of quick screens to receivers out wide, which is essentially another function of the run game aimed at spreading the defense horizontally rather than vertically. It’s worked against lesser defenses, and we’ve seen offensive coordinator Joe Brady revert to it quite often. However, the problem the Bills encountered with the Patriots was that their defense was so condensed closer to the line of scrimmage, making yards after catch creation plays far less impactful. The Bills not pushing the ball down the field isn’t a new piece of the puzzle in 2025. Through the first five games, Allen and the Bills have only attempted a throw of 20 or more yards through the air 16 times. For all of Allen’s attempts this season, that puts him at a deep throw rate of 9.5 percent. Among 33 qualifying quarterbacks this season, that ranks 25th in the NFL — a shocking statistic given that Allen is one of the most naturally gifted passers in the league and has one of the strongest arms at his position.

(Josh Allen 2025 passing through Week 5)

So why didn’t they challenge the Patriots in Week 5, and really, why have they had such a low rate of challenging defenses down the field all season? Yet again, just as it was the case last season, it’s because of the level of talent at receiver. The term “separation” is generating a lot of buzz among Bills observers, although it’s somewhat of an imperfect lens through which to view an offense in all cases. It’s a more nuanced conversation than, “Did the receiver beat the defender in coverage?” Sometimes, that’s very much the case. Other times, receivers are designed to clear out a defender with their route, and they’re not putting all their moves on display to generate that separation. Other times, teams are playing a heavy amount of zone, and it’s more about finding the area between defenders than it is picking up a defender and then beating him in one-on-one coverage, because often, the ball is already out of the quarterback’s hand. It is certainly important to remember all of that context.

With that in mind, the Bills are still lacking in two defined areas of their receiver room. They have seen man coverage at one of the highest rates in the NFL this season, with defenses using that approach against them at the fourth-highest rate in 2025. And when presented with those one-on-one coverage opportunities to exploit, the receivers have been generally unable to uncover at a high enough rate to dissuade the opponents from changing their approach. The reason the Palmer winner in the first half is such a good example is that it’s one of the rare times that the receivers have successfully gained the required separation they needed down the field for an explosive play. On the season, Allen has completed only 36 percent of his passes when targeting wide receivers 20 or more yards down the field, and has an interception on top of it.

Keon Coleman was supposed to be at the center of the Bills’ receiver room this season. (Gregory Fisher / Imagn Images)

The other reason teams like the Patriots have been challenging the Bills to try and beat their man coverage is that the receiver room lacks a true vertical threat. It was the case last year in 2024, and they tried to work around it with players like Mack Hollins and Keon Coleman, and to a certain extent, they became more successful with it as the year progressed. But it remained an issue heading into the offseason — and one that went surprisingly unaddressed in both free agency and the draft. Not having a vertical piece prevents the Bills from accessing consistent explosive plays outside of the out-of-structure moments when Allen gets outside the pocket and makes things happen. The tendencies through the first five games clearly show that the Bills have been unable to access their shot plays down the sideline, despite seeing a heavy rate of man coverage.

It appears to be a personnel issue rather than a flaw in Allen’s game, considering Allen can make any throw on the field. They signed Palmer to a substantial deal, hoping he could help their boundary receivers create more separation than they had in 2024. It hasn’t gone to plan thus far, as Palmer’s snaps (47.8 percent) have declined and indicate more of a bit player on the offense than a full-fledged starter. They signed Elijah Moore to a one-year prove-it deal, though his best fit is inside as a slot receiver, and when active, they’ve used him more as a quick-hitting yards after catch piece rather than a downfield target. Khalil Shakir is a good player, but a low-yardage target earner, and that’s where he’s at his best.

However, the bigger conversation is about Coleman, whom the Bills have invested a lot of their receiver hopes in this offseason. We can’t judge his second season just yet, but through their offseason actions, his development was the key to the receiver room taking the step forward they were hoping for in 2025. They needed his drop rate to improve, to cast aside the inconsistencies of his game, to become a threat deep down the field to win a ball that most other receivers cannot. He is their best means of generating explosive plays, despite having a lack of separation ability on those attempts, because he can win a jump ball.

Though outside of a pass-heavy second half in Week 1 against the Ravens, because they trailed by multiple scores, Coleman’s inconsistencies have followed him into his second season, on top of having to miss game time for disciplinary reasons for the second time in two seasons. Overall, the Bills’ offensive environment needs more from Coleman, because unless something changes through their personnel, he will remain the key to unlocking the passing game from the low depth of target realm it currently presides. If it doesn’t turn around before the trade deadline, it does make you wonder if the Bills will look to trade for a receiver for a second year in a row, though I don’t think general manager Brandon Beane is at that point yet.

To be clear, just because an identified problem was defended incredibly well throughout the game does not mean that the Bills’ offense is completely flawed and they are destined for more struggles in future weeks. We have seen them, under the direction of both head coach Sean McDermott and Brady, scheme their way out of it before, as recently as the 2024 season, when they found something that worked and really hit their stride as an offense. They’ll look to regain some of their success through the ground game to help open up things for the passing attack. But this is now a moment in the Bills’ season — an opportunity — where an opposing team had a good approach for what the Bills have loved to do on offense through the first month of the season. Are the answers to their questions what they have inside the building, or do they need to add a jolt to their passing attack to add the separation and verticality they have lacked so far? They have until the Nov. 4 deadline to figure that out.

Players with 15 or fewer snaps:

RB Ty Johnson (12), LB Joe Andreessen (9), FB Reggie Gilliam (8), RB Ray Davis (6), NCB Cam Lewis (5), DE Javon Solomon (3), QB Mitchell Trubisky (0), IOL Alec Anderson (0), OT Ryan Van Demark (0), IOL Sedrick Van Pran-Granger (0), LB Jimmy Ciarlo (0), CB Ja’Marcus Ingram (0), S Damar Hamlin (0), S Sam Franklin Jr. (0)

*Minimum 75 snaps — WR Elijah Moore, NCB Cam Lewis, DE Javon Solomon and OT Ryan Van Demark were removed for falling below snap threshold.

How the standards work

When the All-22 film becomes available, we’ll go through and watch every player on every play as many times as necessary to assess letter grades. It is a subjective analysis, and it’s important to note we do not know the play calls and full responsibilities. The grades stem from technique, effort and presumed liability.

The study accounts only for players who take a snap on offense or defense. Players with fewer than 15 snaps — unless they significantly impact the game — will not factor into weekly rankings. The grades range from an ‘A’ (a perfect 4.00 GPA) to ‘F’ (0.00 GPA). There is no such thing as an ‘A+’ in this grading system. Season-long grades will be tallied and documented, with a single game’s grade weighted based on how much the player was on the field in a given week.