This is the third in a series of questions facing the Buffalo Bills in the offseason. Does Gabriel Davis have a vise grip on starting job as Bills' No. 2 wide receiver?
Bert Whigham has been touting Gabriel Davis for years.
“Gabe has been undervalued every step of this process,” said Whigham, a longtime personal trainer. “And I’m like a broken record. I repeat it as much as possible because I know him as a person.”
The two have worked together since Davis was a junior at Seminole High School in Sanford, Fla., where the Buffalo Bills’ wide receiver received the key to the city earlier this month in recognition of his historic performance in the divisional-round overtime playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
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Davis had eight catches for 201 yards and an NFL postseason record four touchdowns in the game, including go-ahead scores with 1:54 and 13 seconds remaining in regulation.
The performance, in a sense, mirrored his second season in the league. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound Davis emerged from the Bills’ talent-rich receiving corps late in the year, when Emmanuel Sanders’ knee injury on Dec. 12 in Tampa created more playing time.
The 2020 fourth-round draft pick out of Central Florida seized the opportunity and appears to have put a vise grip on a starting job as the Bills’ No. 2 wide receiver.
“It was definitely a little challenging this year to not be able to play as much as I feel like I should’ve,” Davis said last month as his Bills teammates cleaned out their lockers. “But at the end of the day, it all worked out the way it should’ve and I’m happy I was able to go out there (against the Chiefs) and show that I can do it at a high level.”
Davis, 22, caught four touchdowns in three games in December before missing a week with Covid-19, then returned to form and led the Bills in every major receiving category in the playoffs, catching 10 of 13 targets for 242 yards and five touchdowns.
Sanders, who turns 35 in March, started both playoff games and had three catches for 52 yards and a score. He is an unrestricted free agent after signing a one-year, $6 million contract last March.
Davis is entering the third season of his four-year rookie contract and represents a critical and inexpensive piece of the Bills’ offense, considering his production and the Bills’ tight salary cap situation after signing quarterback Josh Allen to a quarter billion-dollar contract.
“He's a guy that always does the right things,” Allen said about Davis. “Coming in, it doesn't feel real that he's only a second-year guy in the league. It feels like he's been here so much longer than that, but for him to do that (against the Chiefs) was unbelievable. At the start of the season, he was begging for more opportunities. I just told him, 'Stay the course,' and that's exactly what he did. He didn't complain, he didn't pout, he didn't give up. He just put his head down and worked his (butt) off.”
Davis’ first two years in the league were statistically similar.
In 2020, with former Bills wide receiver John Brown missing significant time because of injury, Davis produced the greatest season by a Bills rookie wide receiver since Sammy Watkins, the fourth overall pick in 2014.
Davis finished the regular season with 35 catches for 599 yards and seven touchdowns, the second-most on the team behind only Stefon Diggs’ eight scores. He tied Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson for the second-most touchdowns in the league by a rookie wide receiver.
In 2021, Davis had 35 catches for 549 yards and six touchdowns in 16 games, four of them starts.
Perhaps most impressive – 29 of his 35 catches went for first downs, as have 56 of 70 in his career.
Bills coach Sean McDermott called Davis’ performance “tremendous” after the receiver caught five passes for 85 yards and two touchdowns in a late-season victory against Carolina.
“Another game where he showed up and was productive for us,” McDermott said. “I love his mindset. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s tough. And, again, mentally he was working while he was waiting and (against the Panthers) I think you saw it again where he produced for us and made some big plays.”
Davis was the Bills' highest-graded offensive player this season, just edging Diggs, according to the analytics website Pro Football Focus. He was the second-highest graded for pass routes, just behind Diggs, and the third-highest graded pass blocker, after fullback Reggie Gilliam and left tackle Dion Dawkins.
Davis said learning from Diggs, Brown, Sanders and Cole Beasley throughout his first two years in the league has helped to make him a better receiver.
He’ll stay the course this offseason, working with Whigham in Florida, preparing and hoping to step into a larger role in 2022.
“You just have to keep working,” Davis said. “It was awesome to be able to be a part of NFL history, but now that people are going to know my name and know what I can do, there’s definitely work that has to be done to still be able to compete at a high level against the best.”
