The Buffalo Bills season — at 7-4 and holding the seventh and final playoff spot in the AFC heading into Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, has obviously not gone as expected so far. Coming into the season, the Bills — who have never won a Super Bowl in the 66-year history of the franchise — were widely seen as a “Super Bowl or bust” team. In other words, anything short of a championship would mark the season as a failure.
In that case, the Bills’ season is looking more and more like a failure, and one primary reason is the limited passing game Buffalo has displayed through 11 games.
On Tuesday, the Bills took a step toward improving their aerial attack, signing veteran wide receiver Brandin Cooks, who has previously caught passes from two certain Hall of Famers in Tom Brady and Drew Brees. Cooks, playing for his sixth team in 12 years, will now catch passes from another future Hall candidate in Josh Allen.
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One day after they signed Cooks, the Bills made a second move in their passing attack overhaul, this one seen by analysts as addition by subtraction. Buffalo released five-year veteran wide receiver Elijah Moore, according to a statement by the team’s communications department on Wednesday morning.
The Bills had high hopes for the 2021 New York Jets second-round draft pick when they signed him to a one-year, $2.5 million free-agent contract in May. But things just didn’t work out. Moore was targeted by Allen only 17 times in nine games, catching nine of those passes for 112 yards without a touchdown.
Moore did manage a touchdown on the ground, however, as he compiled 24 yards in six rushing attempts.
“He was no help to the offense at all,” wrote Bills commentator Brandon Ray of Buffalo Low Down. “He had no more than two receptions in a game. Whether you want to blame it on the offensive scheme or Moore just not being the player fans were hoping he would be, this was a bad match in the end.”
‘Pretty Poor Production’ From Moore
Moore ended his Bills career with “pretty poor production for a player who signed a guaranteed $2.5 million contract, a move that is part of a season-long failure by the Bills in building a competent wide receiver room,” wrote columnist Sal Maiorana of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. “Moore was signed late in the spring and was thought to be someone who could really benefit from quarterback Josh Allen after spending the first four years of his NFL career with the quarterback-challenged Browns and Jets. Instead, Moore never found his niche.”
Unlike Moore, who has previously played only for “quarterback-challenged” teams, Cooks began his career as a 2014 first-round draft pick of the New Orleans Saints, where the former Oregon State Beavers star was coupled with Brees for three seasons.
Prior to the 2017 draft, the Saints traded Cooks to the New England Patriots for a first-round and third-round pick. In New England, he played with Brady for 1,082 yards and seven touchdowns on 65 catches. But after that single season, the Patriots traded Cooks to the Los Angeles Rams.
Though the Bills have never won an NFL championship, in the pre-Super Bowl era, Buffalo won two American Football League titles, in 1964 and 1965.
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