The Bills dominated the Cowboys Sunday afternoon in the rain, but unlike other games Buffalo has played well in this season, it required QB Josh Allen to do very little in the passing game. Allen was able to hand the ball off 39 times against Dallas, which ultimately led to very dismal production from the Bills’ top pass-catching weapons. Stefon Diggs caught four of five targets for just 48 yards on the afternoon, but perhaps the biggest hole in fantasy rosters in Week 16 came from Dalton Kincaid, who laid his first egg of the season while being held without a catch on just two targets on the afternoon.
Of course, the game script bears most of the blame for Kincaid’s quiet outing. When James Cook is averaging seven yards a carry on the ground like he was against the Cowboys, it doesn’t make sense to force the ball into the air. But Kincaid ran a route on just 68% of snaps in Week 15 – a far cry from the 84% he had been seeing since Dawson Knox originally went down with the injury. Knox also outsnapped Kincaid in this game 41-33, which has prompted concern for some fantasy managers heading into Week 16 with Dalton Kincaid.
While it’s not ideal to see Knox out-snapping Kincaid in any situation, this is far from a real reason for concern at the present moment in time. The ultra-positive game script the Bills were in called for more blocking than route running, and that’s exactly the capacity Buffalo used Knox in to drive his snap share higher than Kincaid’s. In reality, Kincaid ran a route on 13 of 19 dropbacks to just nine for Knox, indicating that in a more competitive game, Kincaid is still the primary tight end. While it’s also possible that the Bills were ramping Knox up in Week 14 and the split on snaps could hover closer to 50:50 moving forward than it did in Week 14, Kincaid has largely earned the benefit of the doubt as a TE1 start and should be inserted into lineups with confidence. We’ll have a much better idea of what to expect moving forward after Week 16 with the Bills TE room.