Dalton Kincaid named “X-factor” for Buffalo Bills offense in 2024

The 2024 NFL season has officially begun and it will be an important season for the Buffalo Bills.

In order to remain competitive without a loss of performance despite many squad changes in key positions and the addition of new and younger talent, a comprehensive team effort is required in all three phases.

However, an impact player can have a special influence on his respective unit, and ESPN has identified these players for each team with their NFL X-Factors for the 2024 season: Key players for all 32 teams List.

The provider selected tight end Dalton Kincaid for Buffalo.

Here’s what ESPN’s Ben Solak had to say about Kincaid being an X-factor:

Two hundred and forty-one targets: That’s how many open opportunities remain after both Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis left Buffalo this offseason. The Bills have taken a committee approach at wide receiver, which I like, but who does Josh Allen use on third-and-6 among his many options? Who does offensive coordinator Joe Brady draft the “gotta have it” play for?

That player could be Kincaid, whom the Bills drafted with the intention of building an offense that can run a top-notch tight end who catches passes. Last season, he was an efficient, high-usage target — his 73 catches were the third-highest by a rookie tight end since 1970 — but that cushy underdog job only worked when Diggs and Davis pushed the defense forward. If the Buffalo offense is going to work with this new look, Kincaid will need to be used up front more often — or develop a profile like George Kittle after the catch.

The former is much more likely, and the good news is Kincaid catches everything. A 77.7 catch percentage is astonishing, even for the easy targets he’s been offered. As his trust in Allen grows, expect him to be the Bills’ most targeted in more games than he isn’t, and look for Brady to take advantage of Kincaid’s versatility in alignment and running routes to make room for other players as well. He’s the master key to this passing attack.

Kincaid, the Bills’ first-round pick in 2023, shone in his first year in Buffalo, setting records as a rookie and contributing consistently to the offense.

The Bills will certainly hope he can build on his strong rookie season and help take on some of the workload vacated by the departures of Diggs and Davis.

They will need him to continue to play the versatile and in-demand target player role he increasingly took on last season, including the plays and performances Diggs has gradually taken over over the course of the 2023 season.

At 24, Kincaid has already sampled the offensive line in Buffalo successfully in his first season with the Bills. With his excellent hands and positional versatility, he will likely get even more opportunities to improve in this impressive rookie season as the Diggs/Davis workload needs to be spread out among reliable targets.