No one in Dalton Kincaid‘s inner circle saw the Buffalo Bills coming.
The Packers? The Chargers? The Cowboys? They all seemed to be in play during the 2023 NFL Draft — at least that’s what Kincaid’s agent and college coach thought.
“I think that was completely unexpected that he would go to Buffalo,” said Freddie Whittingham, the Utah tight ends coach.
But there are few destinations that suit Dalton Kincaid better than the Bills. The Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles would have been good spots for him, of course. Still, the Bills had to be a pleasant surprise.
His hobbies certainly line up with his new teammates. He’s a big golfer — just like quarterback Josh Allen — and Kincaid loves Settlers of Catan, a board game that he spotted in his quarterback’s locker. “That excited me,” Kincaid said. “So hopefully we’ll get some games in some time in the coming months.”
Surely, they’ll settle.
But, more importantly, the Bills-Kincaid match is about his championship mentality. Kincaid is, after all, the same guy who announced his ambitious career goals at the NFL Combine. He was asked where he saw himself in five years.
“Five rings would be ideal,” he said.
How does he feel about that goal since joining the Bills?
“That’s the goal each year,” Kincaid told FOX Sports. “You got to make the playoffs first. That’s the goal, leading up to that point. But then I mean, if you’re really not playing for that trophy each year, you’re in it for the wrong reasons. It’s a team goal. It’s what everyone kind of wants to accomplish.”
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If there’s one thing that’s clear about Kincaid, it’s his ability to merge his personal goals with the team’s goals. So long as he’s not on the golf course, he’s not going to talk trash. (But on the golf course, you’ll hear all about his 350-yard drive. He won’t talk as much about his otherwise suspect game, per Whittingham.) Kincaid is not going to complain, and he’s not going to ask for more targets or more snaps.
He just wants more wins.
“Ultimately, I wouldn’t really care if I play a game and I don’t catch a ball and we win. Or I play a game and I catch five balls and we win,” Kincaid said. “So for me, it’s not as much those personal accolades and the statistics but more so what the win-loss column says during the year.”
Don’t roll your eyes. I get that players spout these clichés. But according to the Utah coaching staff, Kincaid really lives this way.
When Utah was recruiting him as a transfer out of the University of San Diego — where he had 44 receptions, 835 yards and eight touchdowns in 2019 — the coaching staff grew concerned he might ditch the Utes due to their deep group of tight ends. Cole Fotheringham and Brant Kuithe would start the 2020 season atop their depth chart — over Kincaid. That didn’t bother him.
“Hey, let’s just go 13-personnel, coach,” Kincaid joked with Whittingham. (Thirteen personnel is a rarely used formation in which three tight ends are on the field.)
With the transfer portal growing in prominence and players looking for ways to elevate their production and improve their draft standing, most prospects want promises. They want to know they’ll play. They want a path to production. Kincaid was different.
“I was really impressed at his confidence and his willingness to compete and to not worry about if, ‘Hey, am I going to be the guy if I transfer there?'” Whittingham said. “I’m not going to guarantee anything.”
It wasn’t easy going in 2020, when COVID-19 shortened his season. His stats climbed in 2021: 36 catches, 510 yards and eight touchdowns in 13 games. Then in 2022, he put up the numbers and film that drew NFL scouts’ attention. Kincaid had 70 catches for 890 yards and eight touchdowns. And most notably, he put up 16 receptions for 234 yards and a touchdown against USC in a 43-42 overtime win.
“I gotta think if we had lined up on that two-point conversion and had not scored and lost the game, he wouldn’t have been talking about however many receptions he had for 250 yards or whatever it was. He would have been devastated,” Whittingham said.
That USC game isn’t actually Kincaid’s favorite performance from his college career. Just five games after his breakout game, the Utes beat USC again in the Pac-12 championship. Kincaid had just four catches for 40 yards, but he won his second Pac-12 championship in as many years.
And he did it while fighting through compression plate fractures in his back.
He suffered the injury in the Colorado game the previous week, but X-rays came back negative. The team didn’t discover the fractures until it took an MRI after the Pac-12 championship. The injury ended his season early and kept him out of the Rose Bowl. But it’s clear he was proud of his year. He stepped up in a way the team hadn’t originally anticipated.
At the outset of the season, the Utes had built their offense around Kuithe and Kincaid. But Kuithe suffered a torn ACL midseason. At that point, Whittingham knew the team’s solution. He put a Pro Football Focus stat sheet on offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig’s desk. It showed Kincaid’s target ratio, receptions per target and yards per reception after target — among other things.
“I think we’ve got the guy,” Whittingham told his OC. “The number one in the progression guy.”
That might be what the Bills have someday. When Buffalo drafted him, an AFC position coach texted me to say: “He can be their version of [Travis] Kelce.”
It won’t happen overnight. Kincaid will — much like he did in the beginning at Utah — share snaps with position mates, mostly notably with tight end Dawson Knox. And then there are the other Bills playmakers like Stefon Diggs, Gabriel Davis and James Cook.
But down the line? You can see where Kincaid’s career is headed.
“He was our Kelce,” Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham said. “Yeah, that’s exactly what it was. Kelce is so good at just maneuvering and just being crafty with his routes. Dalton’s the same way. He’s got that same ability to set up defenders and get them off-balance and just has a knack for getting open.”
The Bills certainly need help for Diggs and Allen in the passing game. They need someone who can open up the quick game and the middle of the field. It’s fun to watch Allen throw bombs, but it’s not always efficient. Kincaid can help there, potentially unlocking a new element for Buffalo’s already potent offense.
Kincaid refuses to get ahead of himself. He doesn’t seem to want to discuss how he might improve the Bills offense. He just emphasizes his intent to build a rapport with Allen.
“He came up and introduced himself to me the first day,” Kincaid said of his QB. “Obviously, I already knew who he was. It’s pretty cool now that that guy’s one of my teammates. So I think a lot of it’s really just kind of building chemistry. One of most important things you can do is just being on the same page with the quarterback, and that comes with really getting to know him and creating a relationship.”
Kincaid added: “It’s very important, with a quarterback, kind of how they demand and control that offense, and you definitely feel that presence [from Allen].”
The tight end’s biggest contributions in Buffalo will come in the passing game, with Kincaid serving as the type of playmaker who can play all over the offense — in-line, from the slot and from the perimeter. But both the Whittinghams wanted to make one thing clear: He is a willing blocker. And that’s a part of his game that Kincaid has improved and will continue to improve.
The Bills drafted him, however, for his hands, athleticism and rare understanding of how to get open against both man and zone coverages.
“He’s just one of those rare players that comes through your program and makes such a big impact,” Kyle Whittingham said. “It’s just a complete player. It’s hard to find anything at all negative to say.
“He’s the whole package.”
Prior to joining FOX Sports as the AFC East reporter, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.
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