Josh Allen on Khalil Shakir: ‘I’m very, very excited about his season coming up’

At this point, it’s no secret that third-year wide receiver Khalil Shakir is in store for more usage within the Bills’ offense. The Boise State product has performed well in limited action over his first two years, and with the departures of Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis, he has a big opportunity in front of him. In a recent interview on Chris Long’s podcast, quarterback Josh Allen had the following to say when asked about Shakir:

“We haven’t asked him to do a whole lot over the last couple years… the second half of the year we incorporated him more into our offense and you saw what we did so I’m very, very excited about his season coming up.”

Sean McDermott’s Bills teams have been big on culture, process, and developing guys in-house. In the past couple of years, players like Davis and Isaiah McKenzie were both trusted to develop and expected to take a big step when it was their turn to start. Those two proved to be flash-in-the-pan players, having had ups and downs throughout their starting tenure in Buffalo. Shakir seems like a different case. Allen is excited about Shakir and I think he very well should be.

Shakir has shown consistency and reliability throughout his first two years in the league, which is major for a fifth-round pick. He’s been impressing people in the organization since his first pro training camp in 2022. In his first real opportunity in the league, he put up an impressive stat line with just five targets:

Even with Shakir’s stellar performance in Week 5 of his rookie year, he returned to a depth role when McKenzie became healthy, and the team also re-signed veteran Cole Beasley towards the end of that season to push him further down the totem pole. As a rookie, he didn’t see enough action to make an impact.

In 2023, Shakir finally got his opportunity to play consistent snaps for the Bills, but it took until Week 8 vs the Buccaneers for him to get his fair share of playing time. In Weeks 1 through 7 last year, he never saw more than 40% of snaps in a game. And then in Weeks 8 through 18, he saw more than 60% of snaps in eight out of the final ten games. It was during this stretch that the Bills saw a more-than-sample size of what he could bring to the offense.

In totality, his 2023 was wildly successful albeit he didn’t play much for the first half of the regular season. He caught 39 passes on 45 targets, which was the best catch percentage (86.7) in the entire NFL. According to PFF, Shakir was one of just six NFL receivers in 2023 ranking above the 60th percentile in three important categories: yards after the catch, contested catch rate, and separation rate. Among the group of six wide receivers, Shakir was the only qualifying player to surpass the 94th percentile in each category. No other player exceeded the 75th percentile in all three. To put things into perspective, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Puka Nacua (day three draft picks like Shakir) were on this short list of six “triple-threat” receivers.

In 2023, he racked up 611 receiving yards on the season but averaged 53.6 yards per game in the final ten games. That would equate to over 900 yards for a full season. If you expect him to be trusted even more this year than the second half of last year like I do, then he has a good shot of surpassing 1,000 receiving yards for the first time in his young career.

Despite Shakir’s limited action so far, we have seen quarterback Josh Allen trust him dating back to 2022. While having most of his rookie season production come from the Steelers game in Week 5 that year, come playoff time Allen showed trust in his young wideout. In the Wildcard Round, Shakir went up and snagged the ball to secure a difficult catch in a one-score game in the fourth quarter:

We also saw Allen’s trust in Shakir grow in the second half of 2023, especially in the postseason. Shakir had a receiving touchdown in each of the Bills’ playoff games. And now, Allen and Shakir are hoping to build on their trust and their product on the field.

Up until recently, Shakir has been a grain of sand in the desert that is the Bills offense, but now he has his chance to stand out after the departures of Diggs and Davis. It’s easy to fall in love with the new weapons in Keon Coleman and Curtis Samuel, but don’t overlook Shakir’s ability and the trust Allen has in him.

I’d like to see his targets double from last year which I think is realistic since he only saw action in 10 games. He’s done everything right to this point and deserves to see around 90-100 targets for the young Bills offense. If Shakir can continue to be quarterback-friendly for Allen (league leader in catch %) with added targets, that would be a huge boost for the team considering the types of zone looks Allen faces and the glaring fact that they are missing a ton of production from last year.