How often do we think Josh Allen is going to throw the ball to DJ Moore in 2026?
Let’s formulate a projection to answer that question — and then provide a full-target target projection for the entire Bills pass-catching contingent.
First, we need to pan out and project how many pass attempts Allen will make during the 2026 regular season.
A year ago, he passed the football 460 times across 17 games, which equates to an even 27 pass attempts per contest. That amounted to one fewer attempt than 2019,
making it the second-fewest passes Allen had attempted in a regular season in his NFL career (fewest game in his rookie season of 2018).
In 2024, Brady’s first full season as Buffalo’s offensive coordinator, Allen averaged 28.4 pass attempts per game. For further evidence in this investigation as it pertains to Brady’s tendency to call pass plays, Teddy Bridgewater attempted 492 passes in 15 games in 2020 with Brady as he OC, which equals 32.8 per game.
The following season, Sam Darnold was averaging exactly at 27 passes per outing before getting injured and Brady was fired by the Panthers.
There’s no right way to nail this down because game script absolutely will be a weekly factor in Allen’s pass-attempt total. But with the knowledge we have about Brady’s past, an acknowledgement of Allen’s brilliance, and the presence of James Cook, it feels reasonable landing on 30 passes per game as a nice, round average for Allen in 2026. Across 17 games, that’s 510 pass attempts we have to work with.
From the 2025 season, the Bills have 59 “available targets.” That simply means there are 59 targets from last year that went to players no longer on the team — Gabe Davis (18) + Elijah Moore (17) + Brandin Cooks (11) + Curtis Samuel (9!) + Reggie Gilliam (4).
I’m actually going to extend the available-targets figure for Buffalo to 82 because I can’t imagine Tyrell Shavers (23 targets in 2025) will be back on the field before November at the earliest.
So, even if we were expecting Allen to throw the same amount of passes (460) as 2025, the Bills would have to “replace” 82 targets in theory. With a projected 510 attempts considered, tack on another 50 attempts that need to materialize in the 2026 Bills offense.
Altogether, 82 available targets + 50 “new” targets = 132 targets, and if you want to keep things cut and dry, you can assume those will all be for D.J. Moore. Even with a steep downturn in targets last year in Chicago, Moore averages 127 targets per season in his NFL career to date.
I want to dig slightly deeper, and morph this into a full skill-position target projection, and I’ll explain why.
Keon Coleman was second on the team in regular-season targets in 2025 (!) with 59. I can’t see that happening again. Dawson Knox and Dalton Kincaid tied for third in Bills targets a season ago at 49. While there is some credence to pegging Kincaid with the “injury prone” label, I’m not a staunch believer in that label, and trust more in regression to the mean.
I expect Kincaid to be thrown the football more than 49 times in 2026, so his target total needs to be adjusted. And what do we do with Josh Palmer? It feels like the Bills want him as a distinct part of the offense, yet there’s suddenly not much space in the receiver room. And he only saw 37 targets in 2025.
Plus, newcomer Skyler Bell was one of the more NFL-ready wideouts in the 2026 class — he’s likely to get his looks too.
Below, you’ll see my target dispersion projection for the Bills in 2026, which some justification next to each player:
20 – Miscellaneous targets to Ray Davis and Jackson Hawes – (mostly to the latter — I was keen on a Hawes mini breakout as a receiver, then Reggie Gilliam left in free agency.)
20 – Ty Johnson – (he had the second-most targets (33) of his career in 2025, and 25 the season before yet I don’t think he’s someone the Bills necessarily want to feature more prominently in the pass game ideally.)
35 – Josh Palmer – (he’s averaged 4.55 targets per game in his NFL career to date, which features a season in which he went over 100 as like the lone healthy Chargers receiver and 2025, when he was injured for the vast majority of his debut campaign with the Bills. It’s not that I’m basing this projection on him getting injured again, yet more than the Bills will want the ball to go elsewhere — 2.5 targets per game in 14 contests is 37.5 targets.)
40 – Keon Coleman – (he’s seen 4.6 targets per game thus far in his NFL career — maybe he totally proves me wrong in Year 3, yet he’s done nothing to indicate a breakout his imminent, thereby I’m shrinking his target total. I used half of his 4.6 target average across 17 games, and it expecting a full-season of Coleman being a gameday active is even a stretch at this juncture.)
40 – Dawson Knox – (felt like the Bills found a sweet spot for Knox inclusion a season ago, didn’t it? And he saw 49 targets, a figure likely helped by the long absences of Kincaid. If he sees 40 targets, catches, 30 passes, scores three touchdowns, and blocks like hell, Knox will be once again a low-key valuable piece to Brady’s offense.)
45 – Skyler Bell – (over the past five seasons, fourth-round rookie receivers average seeing roughly 30 targets per season. Based on my pre-draft evaluation, and not like three or four solidified veterans in front of him, I’m projecting a higher total than that average for Bell.)
45 – James Cook – (his career target-per-game average is 2.48, and while there’s always an offseason push from fans/media to get the backs involved in the pass game more, we haven’t seen a large uptick in that philosophy as part of Buffalo’s offense the past 2.5 seasons. He saw 40 targets a season ago, and I’m projecting slightly higher as an exchange for five carries on the ground. I think the Bills will want to keep Cook as fresh as possible in the regular season.)
75 – Dalton Kincaid – (his target/game average is 5.2, and if he plays 14 games, that gives him an even 70, and I increased slightly from there.)
90 – Khalil Shakir – (he’s averaged 97.5 targets over the past two seasons when the Bills realized how darn good he was. I’m projecting a slight dip due to the new additions and maybe more work downfield. He’s simply too good to see his targets dip drastically.)
100 – D.J. Moore – (he saw 85 targets in 2025 from a young, at times haphazardly inaccurate quarterback with a coach who clearly wanted to feature younger players. I don’t foresee Moore returning to 125+ target tier at this stage of his career, but across 17 games a 100-target total is just shy of six targets per game. Feels reasonable.)
All those targets add up to the 510 we projected for Allen earlier. Of course, these are all pretty clean figures, and would probably more accurately project an “ideal” target projection for Buffalo’s offensive skill-position group. There’ll likely be some fluctuation from all of the educated guesses for each player based on a variety of factors.
But that’s how I see it.
How do you think Allen will disperse targets in 2026?
