Joe Brady replacing Sean McDermott as the head coach of the Bills is the best thing that could have happened to Keon Coleman. The wide receiver has been a disappointment since the Bills used a second-round pick on him in 2024.
However, the Bills continue to have faith that Coleman will grow up and live up to expectations.
“The thing with Keon is from a football standpoint, man, his work ethic, his approach, how he’s going through it, if Keon just takes care of himself off the field and he just shows up, he’s going to be good to go,” Brady said at the owners meetings this week, via Sal Maiorana of the Democrat & Chronicle. “Keon is on our football team. I’ve never said anything negative. I was the first to tell everybody I want Keon Coleman. Keon’s not going to just be pushed aside. He’s going to continue to develop and [receivers coach] Drew Terrell has a great plan of what we’re going to do to be able to get him to be the receiver that we ultimately drafted him to be.”
Coleman’s struggles perhaps trace to his off-the-field problems, including tardiness.
“It’s just about now, just making sure I’m there doing what I have to do so that I can go out on the football field and do my thing,” Brady said. “I think the reality of it is we can’t just coach the players. We have to coach the person. And it’s important that you know, and that’s part of the meetings that I’ve had as a head coach right now is making sure that as the head coach I’m understanding that.”
In two seasons, Coleman has played 26 games, totaling 67 receptions for 960 yards and eight touchdowns.
Bills Clips
Free agent cornerback Stephon Gilmore announced his retirement on Thursday.
He posted the news on social media.
Gilmore, 35, has not played since 2024 and did not sign with a team last season.
The Bills made him the 10th overall pick in 2012, and he played five seasons with Buffalo, four with New England and one each with Carolina, Indianapolis, Dallas and Minnesota.
He was Defensive Player of the Year in 2019 with the Patriots when he led the league with six interceptions and 20 pass breakups.
In his career, the five-time Pro Bowler totaled 617 tackles, 32 interceptions, 149 pass breakups, eight forced fumbles and a sack.
The Chiefs are adding a former first-round pick to their defense.
Kansas City has agreed to sign cornerback Kaiir Elam, Mike Garafolo of NFL Network reports.
Elam, 24, split last season between the Cowboys and Titans. Buffalo traded him to Dallas at the beginning of the league year in March after his first three seasons with the club. Elam appeared in 10 games with seven starts for Dallas before the Cowboys waived him in November.
He signed with the Titans shortly thereafter and appeared in four games with the club over the rest of the season.
The No. 23 overall pick of the 2022 draft, Elam has appeared in 43 career games with 19 starts. He’s recorded eight passes defensed with two interceptions.
The Chiefs have voids to fill in their secondary after trading Trent McDuffie and losing Jaylen Watson in free agency.
The Bills went into the offseason hoping to upgrade their receiving corps and they made a move to do that when they acquired DJ Moore in a trade with the Bears.
Moore’s production was not the only thing that made him an appealing option in Buffalo. He also played for new Bills head coach Joe Brady when Brady was the offensive coordinator of the Panthers and Brady said this week that “having that opportunity to [coach Moore] again excites me.”
Brady also said that he thinks Moore’s presence is going to enhance the output of players like wide receiver Khalil Shakir and tight end Dalton Kincaid.
“Having a guy like DJ it’s going to help both of them,” Brady said, via the team’s website. "[Defenses] can’t just focus on one particular person. It gives us another layer of somebody on the outside. Khalil and Dalton have attacked a lot of the middle of the field, a lot of the inside zones . . . It was important to get a skill set like DJ, a guy that can stretch it, can win one-on-one, can get the ball in his hands, and he can win on a slant.”
The Bills’ inability to break through in the AFC playoffs with Josh Allen at quarterback was the lead reason why they made a coaching change this offseason. Moore won’t be able to get them over the hump by himself, but his presence is clearly a big part of the plan to make the Brady era more fruitful than the Sean McDermott one.
Tight end Dalton Kincaid is set for at least two more seasons in Buffalo.
Bills General Manager Brandon Beane said on Monday that the team has exercised its option on Kincaid’s contract for the 2027 season. Kincaid is now set to make $8.162 million for his fifth NFL season.
Kincaid was the 25th overall pick in 2023. He had 73 catches as a rookie and has added 83 catches over the last two seasons. He has 1,692 yards and nine touchdowns over all 41 regular season games he’s played for the AFC East club.
The Bills also have Dawson Knox under contract at tight end through the 2028 season.
Earlier this month, the Browns agreed to terms with defensive end A.J. Epenesa on a one-year deal worth up to $5 million. The contract will not be signed.
Via Daniel Oyefusi of ESPN, the Browns decided not to proceed. Specifically, they weren’t “comfortable finalizing the deal after his physical.”
It’s a somewhat tame way of saying Epenesa failed the physical, and it’s no different than the decision the Ravens made regarding defensive end Maxx Crosby. Other teams have, on plenty of occasions, made the same decision.
The development comes 11 days after word of the deal first emerged. During that time, Epenesa could have agreed to terms with another team, one that may have been comfortable with whatever caused the Browns not to proceed.
Now, the 2020 second-round pick of the Bills will revert to the open market.
In six NFL seasons, all in Buffalo, Epenesa has appeared in 91 regular-season games, with 19 starts. He has 24 career sacks.
The 49ers hope to have Nick Bosa back in action during training camp, but it doesn’t sound like anyone should bank on him sharing a locker room with his brother.
Joey Bosa remains a free agent and the mother of both pass rushers recently posted a fabricated image of the two brothers next to each other in 49ers uniforms on social media. On Sunday, General Manager John Lynch said he was aware of the post but isn’t sure there’s a way to work out a family reunion.
“I know Mama Bosa would love that, but I don’t know if we can afford him,” Lynch said, via Matt Barrows of TheAthletic.com.
Joey Bosa is one of the top remaining unsigned players on PFT’s list of this year’s top free agents. He had 29 tackles, five sacks and five forced fumbles for the Bills in 2025.
Bills quarterback Josh Allen has no lingering effects from the foot surgery he had two months ago.
Allen needed the procedure to repair a broken bone in his right foot, but Bills head coach Joe Brady says Allen is ready to do everything asked of him when the Bills start their offseason program on April 6.
“He’s good to go,” Brady told Tom Pelissero of NFL Network. “The thing about Josh Allen, he got surgery after the season, but he’s playing as if you think there’s nothing wrong with him. The guy could barely walk, and then he’s playing games and it’s not impacting [his play]. He’s built different. And let’s hope it continues that way, but he’ll be good to go in the offseason. I talk with him regularly. He’s just excited to get going with guys like DJ Moore, kind of figure out what it’s going to look like, just this new kind of era.”
Allen has been one of the best players in the NFL for years, and he’s the betting favorite to win league MVP this year. But the inability to get to the Super Bowl with Allen ultimately cost former Bills head coach Sean McDermott his job, and resulted in Brady getting promoted from offensive coordinator to head coach.
Brady knows he was hired to win a championship with Allen. And he’s starting his first head-coaching job with a healthy Allen leading the team.
Safety Damar Hamlin is staying in Buffalo.
The Bills announced on Friday that they have re-signed Hamlin to a one-year deal. It’s the second straight offseason that has seen Hamlin opt for a new one-year deal with the team that drafted him in the sixth round in 2021.
Hamlin’s 2025 season was cut short by a pectoral injury that landed him on injured reserve after five games. Hamlin was a reserve in those appearances after serving as a starter in the secondary during the 2024 season.
Hamlin was also a starter in December 2022 when he went into cardiac arrest during a game against the Bengals. Hamlin’s heartbeat was restored by medical personnel on the field and he was later determined to have suffered commotio cardis, a condition that occurs when the cardiac rhythm is interrupted by a severe blow to the chest.
Hamlin was able to return to play five games during the 2023 season and will now begin preparations for his sixth season on the Buffalo defense.
The Bills made three additions to their 2026 roster on Thursday.
The team announced it signed center Lloyd Cushenberry III, wide receiver Trent Sherfield Sr. and center/guard Austin Corbett to one-year contracts.
Cushenberry’s last stop was a two-year stint with the Titans, where he started every game he appeared in (23) at center.
He began his career with the Broncos as a third-round draft pick in 2020, and he spent four seasons in Denver. He started 57 games for the Broncos.
Sherfield previously played for Buffalo in 2023.
In his first stint with the Bills, Sherfield made 11 catches for 86 yards and one touchdown.
Sherfield spent the 2025 season with the Broncos and on the practice squads of the Cardinals and Patriots. In 10 games and three starts with the Broncos, he caught three passes for 21 yards.
He started his career with the Cardinals in 2018, signing as an undrafted free agent.
Sherfield has also spent time with the 49ers, Dolphins and Vikings.
Corbett, who visited the Bills on Monday, spent the past four seasons with the Panthers.
He played all 17 games in 2022, his first season in Carolina, but missed 29 of a possible 51 games over the past three seasons.
The Browns made him a second-round pick in 2018, and he played 14 games before Cleveland traded him to the Rams during the 2019 season.
In his career, Corbett has appeared in 94 games with 78 starts.
