Bills Worries Rise Over Josh Allen Ability to Fix Chemistry With Dalton Kincaid

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Josh Allen needs to establish better chemistry with his top tight end.

No one in the NFL has thrown more touchdown passes since 2022 than Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen. The 29-year old 2018 first-round draft pick may not have taken his team to the Super Bowl last season, though he may have if not for a controversial officiating decision, but he did win the NFL MVP award.

But, other than missing out on a Super Bowl trip, there was one drawback to Allen’s performance in 2024. He simply could not get on the same page as his No. 1 tight end, the Bills’ 2023 first round draft pick, Dalton Kincaid. According to advanced stats, Kincaid received only 50 catchable passes from Allen.

Allen Failed to Throw Kincaid Enough Catchable Passes

That ranked as the 23rd most catchable passes of any tight end in the NFL, though Kincaid ranked 15th in total targets with 75. As a percentage of total team receiver targets, 15.2 percent, Kincaid ranked 13th.

By comparison, on the team that defeated the Bills in the AFC championship game — the Kansas City Chiefs — Future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce ranked third in the NFL with 133 targets, 23.3 percent of all targets thrown to Chiefs receivers. Kelce also ranked third, receiving 103 catchable passes.

Looked at another way, of the passes target for Kelce on the Chiefs, 77.4 percent were deemed catchable. But on the Bills, Kincaid was thrown only 66.7 percent catchable passes.

But according to Joe Marino, host of the Locked on Bills podcast, the chemistry between Allen and Kincaid got even worse, a lot worse, when Allen wanted the second-year pass catcher to run more than 10 yards down the field.

“When targeted 10 or more yards down the field Concaid’s catchable target rate was 37 percent, again the lowest in the league,” Marino reported on his Friday program.

Bills Face Decision on Kincaid’s Future

But Marino also said that the poor chemistry between quarterback and tight end was “explainable.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to improve and it doesn’t all have to come together this year but you should be able to understand it,” Marino said. “Year three has been a great year for a lot of Bills players.”

Fixing the coordination with his quarterback is becoming an urgent issue for Kincaid beyond the obvious goal of catching more passes, as he enters the third season of his four-year, $13.4 million rookie contract.

“The guys have got to get on the same page and we need more consistency when Allen targets Kincaid for whatever reason it is,” Marino said. “I’m sure it’s a little bit of everything.”

The Bills after this year will need to make a decision on whether they will pick up the fifth-year option on Kincaid’s contract or let him go into the final year of his deal in 2026 with uncertainty over where he’ll be playing the following season — another issue that Marino said is becoming a real concern for Buffalo.

“That is a choice the Bills will have to make after the season. I think the deadline is early May, like a little bit after the the 2026 draft,” Marino said on the Locked On podcast. “So this is a key year for the Bills to gain the information that they need on Kincaid that will tell them if they want to go ahead and commit to him for 2027 or not.”