Keon Coleman comfortable in Bills’ position-less WR corps: ‘I’m pretty confident’

Buffalo Bills rookie wideout Keon Coleman thinks he already has a pretty strong understanding of the team's offense.

Bills rookie wide receiver Keon Coleman pulls in a pass during the opening day of Buffalo Bills training camp. / Shawn Dowd/Rochester Democrat and

Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady alluded to the concept of 'positionless football' while talking about the team’s receiving corps Thursday morning; the play-caller isn’t asking his weapons to learn one particular spot, instead expecting them to learn concepts and the intricacies within them. This will, in turn, allow Buffalo to deploy any pass-catcher from any spot on the field, something that will create a varied, difficult-to-plan-against offense that takes frequent advantage of mismatches.

The philosophy has been on display throughout the first three days of training camp, with players like Khalil Shakir, Curtis Samuel, and rookie Keon Coleman seeing time at several receiver positions. Shakir has seen time both in the slot and outside and Samuel has gotten the ball from literally everywhere on the field, including the backfield. While the bulk of Coleman’s snaps have come from the outside as an X wideout, he, too, has gotten some slot work, displaying good instincts and an ability to identify the soft spot in zone coverage from the area.

Asking a rookie to learn every receiver spot is, on paper, a tall task, but it’s not too tall a task for Coleman. The 21-year-old spoke to reporters about his acclimation to the team’s playbook on Friday, stating that he’s long been asked to wear many hats within an offense.

Related: Bills rookie Cole Bishop gets first-team reps as safety battle continues

“I’m used to playing everything,” Coleman said. “There’s no such thing as an X or Y, you’ve got to get open. You’re called a receiver, not a whatever receiver. You just need to be able to get open. It’s hard to learn the playbook if you’re just trying to learn one position because you can easily be on the other side of the field, in the slot, outside, inside, you can be motioning to it. Different things like that, so I learn the playbook conceptually. I learn concept by concept, I learn every single spot so I can be anywhere.”

Coleman later told reporters that he’s been learning the playbook by concept as opposed to by position since he was in college, so Brady’s ask isn’t foreign. He went on to speak about his comfort with the playbook, feeling as though he already has a pretty good handle on the team’s offense.

“I’m pretty confident,” Coleman said. “When I’m in the huddle, hearing the calls, I can execute my job and do what I need to do.”

Coleman likely projects as the team’s primary X receiver, but his ability to line up in—and succeed from—the slot on occasion is a valuable wrinkle for Buffalo’s offense to have, especially given the (literally) moving parts it figures to deploy around him in Samuel, Shakir, and second-year tight end Dalton Kincaid. The team is likely expecting significant production out of Coleman in his rookie year, as he figures to play a prominent role in a Bills receiving corps that lost Stefon Diggs and Gabriel Davis in the offseason; given the fact that he’s already developed a “great” rapport with quarterback Josh Allen and has demonstrated a strong understanding of the team’s offense, there’s reason to believe he’ll meet expectations.

— Enjoy free coverage of the Bills from Buffalo Bills on SI —

More Buffalo Bills News:

• 6 takeaways from second day of Bills' 2024 training camp

• Bills OC reiterates ‘everyone eats’ offensive approach: ‘You have to respect everybody’

• Bills' DE Von Miller no longer mentally hampered nearly two years later

• Bills OC impressed by WR Keon Coleman’s training camp debut: It ‘shows who he is’

• Bills OC says star RB James Cook ‘looks different,’ isn’t worried about workload