When the Buffalo Bills brought in Kelvin Benjamin ahead of the trade deadline last year, it appeared to be an upgrade to a receiving corps lacking depth. After all, Benjamin averaged 975 yards and eight touchdown catches during the two seasons he played for the Carolina Panthers in which he was healthy.
His time with the team last year wasn’t exactly eye-popping. Benjamin managed just 16 catches for 217 yards and a touchdown which indicates his contribution to the Bills ending their long playoff drought was minimal at best. But there’s always a process associated with a player familiarizing himself with the nuances and intricacies of a new offense which tempered concern. With 2018 a contract year, optimism abounded regarding his ability to morph into a legitimate feature receiver.
Fast forward to the present and there are certainly few if any restraints on the concern Bills fans have regarding Benjamin. He’s the poster child of a severely underperforming receiving corps at or near the bottom of the NFL in myriad important statistical categories. It’s one of a few mitigating factors inhibiting Josh Allen‘s development during his rookie season.
Kelvin Benjamin the Face of an Underperforming Buffalo Bills Receiving Corps
Part of an Offense That Could Make History and Not in a Good Way
There’s plenty of blame to go around for the hot mess that is the Bills offense. It’s an unfortunate combination of Allen’s inexperience, a leaky offensive line, and skill position players, Benjamin included, not stepping up. All of it is condemning the Bills to historical ineptitude on the offensive side of the football. A perusal of some advanced metrics paints an ominous picture in that regard.
The website FootballOutsiders.com provides a variety of deep statistics that measure NFL teams’ efficiency on both offense and defense. Perhaps the most well-known among them is defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA). Put simply, it looks at a team’s performance on a situational basis and grades them accordingly. For example, a five-yard gain on third and four is valued more than a 10-yard gain on third and 15. Similarly, a running back scampering for a touchdown that gives his team the lead will score higher in DVOA than a garbage time score when his team’s facing an unassailable lead.
Teams get ranked relative to a baseline average. Those performing above it receive a positive percentage whereas those below get a negative one. And at the quarter pole of the 2018 season, things aren’t looking good for Buffalo’s offense. Their offensive DVOA currently stands at -57.8 percent. To put that in perspective, Football Outsiders’ statistics cover every NFL season since 1986. The lowest ever offensive DVOA in that time period was -43.3 percent, set by the Houston Texans during their expansion campaign of 2002.
Benjamin’s Culpability for the Situation
The two most high profile skill position players on the Bills are Benjamin and veteran running back LeSean McCoy. And though this article wants to primarily highlight the Bills problems at wide receiver, Shady hasn’t exactly set the world on fire with his play either. After all, Allen is the team’s leading rusher through four games with 29 more yards on the ground than McCoy. But given the growing importance of running backs contributing to a team’s pass game, McCoy’s minuscule 41 yards receiving is a concern in and of itself.
But so is Benjamin’s ineffectiveness. His paltry 92 receiving yards thus far ranks him third on the team behind Chris Ivory and Zay Jones. Even more disconcerting is the fact that mark puts him in a tie for 128th in the NFL. His only touchdown pass of the year was the epitome of a garbage time score. It came with 38 seconds left in Buffalo’s Week Two loss to the Los Angeles Chargers and it only served to make the score more respectable.
Part of the problem is that Benjamin is doing a piss poor job getting open. One could make the argument that’s a major factor in Allen’s average snap to throw time of 3.21 seconds which is the longest such mark among NFL quarterbacks. Said argument gets reinforced when looking at the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. Of particular note is Benjamin’s average separation per target of 1.6 yards. Of the 118 receivers/tight ends who’ve seen at least 13 targets in 2018, that number ranks 117th.
Speaking of targets, Benjamin has 21 of them up to this point. Of those, only seven have resulted in catches. That means his catch rate is currently a preposterous 33 percent. Want to know how bad that is? If his current pace of catches remains and that percentage number doesn’t improve, he’ll become just the second player in NFL history who caught 25 or more passes in a season and finished with a catch rate under 35 percent (Devin Aromashodu, 2011).
Time to Put Up or Shut Up
Benjamin made headlines during training camp with his comments about his former quarterback Cam Newton. When Newton confronted him ahead of the Bills’ preseason opener against the Carolina Panthers, Benjamin appeared unwilling to engage. He came across as petty and immature. That notion becomes even more magnified when looking at the stats, whether they’re of the traditional or advanced variety.
All of it highlights the fact that Benjamin needs to take a good look in the mirror. He needs to reaffirm his commitment to this team and the culture that Sean McDermott is trying to build. The Bills salary cap situation is precarious this year but that’ll be far from the case in 2019. It’ll give them the opportunity to add plenty of key pieces at various positions including wide receiver. And given Benjamin’s looming free agency, they have every reason to move on if he doesn’t get his act together.
