ORCHARD PARK - The moment the Buffalo Bills used their first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft to select tight end Dalton Kincaid, the role of the team’s resident starter at that position, Dawson Knox, immediately came into question.

Were the Bills really going to scrap their preferred three-wide receiver base offense and use more two-tight end sets to get both Kincaid and Knox on the field? After all, a first-round pick is a hefty investment, and they had just given Knox a big raise via a contract extension.

We are now one season and five games into the Kincaid-Knox pairing, and no one really knows what the Bills are doing, though one thing is perfectly clear: Knox is the forgotten man in the passing game.

Sign up for the Bills Blast newsletter Delivered straight to your inbox, additional Bills analysis, insight, stats, quotes and team history from Sal Maiorana

He has been on the field for 149 snaps and he has only been in the pattern 65 times, targeted on a mere five Josh Allen passes, three of which he has caught for 30 yards. He has stayed in to pass protect on 11, and he’s been used as a blocker in the run game on 73 plays. Not much from a guy with the fifth-highest 2024 salary cap hit at $7.728 million.

“I think this team is full of guys that are me second,” Knox said, seemingly fine with the role he has played during the Bills’ 3-2 start. “Of course, everyone wants a bunch of catches, but that’s not what’s important. There might be games where I get 10-plus targets, there might be games when I get zero. I’ll make plays when the ball comes to me, but I think it’s all about just putting the team above yourself and for now, it’s been a lot of work in the run game. I’ve been able to work on the blocking stuff. But you never know. It changes week to week so we’ll see.”

The Knox contract is looking like one of Brandon Beane’s most questionable decisions. The 2019 third-round pick had flashed during his first three seasons, catching 101 passes for 1,263 yards and 14 TDs in 42 games, plus made another 18 catches for 177 yards and four TDs in six playoff games.

Dawson Knox contract

Going into the final year of his rookie contract, Beane decided to hand Knox a four-year extension worth up to $52 million with $31 million guaranteed. It was a huge leap, but Knox played well in 2022 with 56 catches for 602 yards and seven TDs combined regular and postseason.

However, Beane then made the move to draft Kincaid, and given the Knox contract, it seemed a little odd. Last year, offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey made it a point to get both on the field and in the first five games the Bills were in two-tight end sets on 44.8% of the offensive snaps which was higher than their three-wide usage at a time when they had Stefon Diggs, Gabe Davis, Khalil Shakir, Deonte Harty and Trent Sherfield.

Things changed when Knox suffered a midseason wrist injury and Dorsey was forced to go away from the two-tight end looks, and then Dorsey was fired and Joe Brady never really found a way to get Knox involved. While Kincaid went on to set a Bills’ record for most catches by a tight end (73), Knox caught only nine passes counting the playoffs after he returned from his injury.

Nothing has changed in the early going in 2024, though Kincaid hasn’t exactly been a revelation either, and this has dragged the entire Bills’ passing game down, particularly in the last two games.

“If we’re not producing, I always got to look myself in the mirror and point the thumb, right?” Brady said. “When our guys play well and guys are producing, I’m going to praise them, and when they’re not, it’s on me. You can’t get everybody the ball, but I got to do a better job of us being able to move the football.

“A guy like Dawson Knox helps us. And so whether it’s 12 personnel, whether it’s 11, whoever it is, we got to do what we got to do to be able to stay on the field, stay in manageable first and second downs and not be in these long third downs. I think that’s been a big difference these past two weeks.”

Josh Allen says the Bills need to find a way to get Dawson Knox going

Allen, who has a close relationship with Knox on and off the field, knows he and Brady have to find ways to utilize Knox to help get the offense back on track.

“I know him as a player, as a person, and that pays dividends on the field, and I got the utmost trust in him as a player and as a person,” Allen said. “We’re going to find ways to get him in good positions, to have opportunities to make some plays for us. And when the opportunities are there, he’s going to make the plays.

“We talk about everyone eats, and it’s fine and dandy when everybody is, but sometimes there’s people that are left out and you want to continue to incorporate them in your offense. And he’s one guy that we’ve got to get going. We know that, Joe knows that, I think the whole team knows that. We’re better when (Knox) is playing well. Again, just find ways to get guys the ball in open space and it starts with me.”

But how can Brady and Allen do that?

“I think that’s a good question, but maybe getting back to our base stuff that we ran in training camp and just trusting what we call and not trying to be so much in the perfect position,” Allen said. “Just trusting what our guys can do. It’s kind of as simple as we want to make it. We have a lot of guys with a lot of different skill sets on this team and we want to utilize everybody’s talents. And he’s definitely a talented player that we got to utilize.”

Knox knows Kincaid is the preferred tight end in the passing game because he has the ability - though it has been underused to this point - to get downfield and make chunk plays. He’s a great athlete who can catch the ball and run after the catch.

So Knox will continue to do what he’s asked, especially in the run game, and then hope that when Allen needs to look his way, he can get open.

“I think storylines shift almost every week, that’s just the nature of this business,” Knox said. “As soon as teams start overreacting and trying to find too much that’s wrong or change too much in any given week, we get distracted from what makes us us.

“If we started 0-2 and then won three straight, we’d be sitting with the same record but feeling a lot different. So we’re not going to overreact. We’re not in crisis mode or anything like that. We’ve got supreme trust in Joe and our play callers and Josh and we’re going to do whatever it takes on any given Sunday to win the game.”

Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, and he has written numerous books about the history of the team. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Dawson Knox stats: 3 catches in 6 games for high-priced Bills TE