Why DJ Moore is a Good Fit in Buffalo | 'Reception Perception'

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This is Reception Reception, the show now.

James Cole and Matt Harmon.

So DJ Moore gets traded to Buffalo for a second round pick.

He's 29 years old.

He's going to be making 24.5 million per year for this year and next.

Zero dead cap in 2027.

I would be surprised.

Yeah, I don't know.

They could either keep them at that salary, but they could easily move on.

If this doesn't work out, it is for a second round pick.

Matt, I'm going to be honest with you.

I like the move for Buffalo.

I don't love it.

And I know Buffalo fans were like, oh, this is good.

We got DJ Moore.

He's going to reunite with Joe Brady.

This is good.

This is good.

I just think at this point in his career is DJ Moore that guy is 20.

Again, he's going to be 29 years old.

I don't think he presents a lot of solutions for some of the problems that Buffalo had last year.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Can you talk me off of this?

Yeah.

So I think you actually described it perfectly and that I like it and I don't love it.

I think before it was a second round pick, because remember, this was reported as, oh, you know,

these are going to go to Buffalo for a mid-round pick.

Second round pick and a mid-rounder.

No.

That's the second round pick.

No.

But because let's also be clear.

I've said this was, this has been my prediction that, I mean, my prediction last May,

or last April, when the Bears drafted Luther Burton was, oh, DJ Moore is gone at the end of the year.

Like, I think that Luther Burton was drafted to replace DJ Moore.

And we said that on this show at that time.

And I've been saying on this show, other shows that I think the spot that makes the most sense for DJ Moore is Buffalo,

both because of the need and the familiarity with Joe Brady.

So much so that when I talked to DJ Moore at the Super Bowl, which was obviously in February last month,

I was like, let's make sure to ask him what he thinks about playing in Joe Brady's offense just in case.

Like, we got to make sure we get this question.

And we did.

And DJ gave a really good answer about what he likes about playing in Joe Brady's offense.

You know, he talked about how he, when he got to Carolina, he thought there was a lot of like nuance and newer concepts in the offense as opposed to some of the things he had seen previously.

You know, and he talked about how, and I thought this, again, it's, it's fun now to think about an hindsight.

I, I mentioned to him, I was like, you know, I like Brady's offense.

I think it's more than just this short area attack that they've done recently.

I think that's mostly due to personnel and DJ said, yeah, you never know.

You might really see him open it up this year and just go bombs over Baghdad.

And I was like, okay, well, that's interesting to note considering that now he's going to be playing for the Buffalo Bills.

And I bet it will be a little more open up now that DJ Moore, more of a vertical receiver will be there.

So yeah, I, I think it's a, it makes ton of sense there.

The second round pick was pretty aggressive.

Like that was the thing that you usually look at, look at what happened with Pittman.

I mean, Pittman was a salary dump, which is what this is for the bears.

It's a, it's a salary dump.

The, the, the Steelers and the cold swapped six and seventh rounders.

Come on.

And the Bills gave it a second rounder for DJ Moore.

Maybe that means the market for Moore was just a lot higher.

No.

No.

He's, yeah, right?

Like that's, that's the thing.

Like he had a bad 2025.

Like what do we, and he's 29 years old.

What do we talk?

There's not that much of a market for DJ Moore.

Now, who was, I'd be surprised if someone even offered a third.

Honestly.

Yeah, it's really this salary?

No, no, no, I don't see it.

Yeah, look, I get it.

I'm, I'm, I would be surprised as well in that regard.

But this was my point with Brandon Bean.

I said this is that, well, I said that what's going to happen with Brandon Bean is that because he ignored the position last year and took so much crap for it, he's going to do the classic GM thing where he overcorrects.

And I think this is a part of that overcorrection.

So I'm not going to say I've completely had my pulse on the finger of this entire situation, but I think I've had my finger on the pulse of the entire situation here.

So, yeah, I think moving on to kind of what DJ Moore, like the, okay, the price is the price.

It is what it is.

It's happened, but this is some, let me just say, again, when I say I liked it, I didn't love it.

I go back to the man, uh, success rate versus man coverage scores, right?

Like in 2024, he had a 28th percentile score against man coverage in 2025.

He had a 40th percentile success rate score against man coverage.

I'm sorry, but like, again, when I say I like it, I don't love it.

This is why they need a receiver that can beat man coverage.

They don't have that guy on the roster.

He still, DJ Moore still does not address that concern area of concern and area of need for the Buffalo Bills passing a game.

Yeah, here's why I think he, he might though is because if you go back to DJ Moore's best seasons, like even with the Panthers before that big year with the Bears in his first year arriving there,

for three straight years as final three years with the, with the, with the Panthers, including two years with Joe Brady,

he was over 70% success rate versus man coverage, like somewhere between 70.5 and 72% success rate, which is not elite.

It's not like I'm for sure a number one receiver top 10 guy in the NFL, but it's a guy that you, it's totally good enough.

It's kind of what we talk about with Pittman, like good receiver, maybe not like a top 10 guy, but somebody that can functionally be your number one,

even if they're not like a number one for every single team.

I think that's what the Bills are hoping that they're getting here.

And obviously he had that massive first season with the Bears with Justin Fields.

There's a couple of reasons why I don't, again, I'm like on kind of both sides with the DJ Moore thing in terms of where we go from here.

Because I've always been a fan of DJ's game, but I think we can all admit the last two years have been troubling for a lot of different reasons.

Just 2024 straight up just didn't have a good year, like he was, he was, he just wasn't, he was bad in 2024.

He did not play well.

Last year, it's, I want to find the exact right way to say this, but it's almost like 10 players, not all the time, but a lot of the time,

it felt like 10 players were running the Bears offense.

And then DJ Moore was just kind of doing DJ Moore.

And what I kind of mean by that is that a lot of times he was really used as like the sacrificial guy, the clear out guy.

And that's a part of the reason why I think that the overall success rates don't look very good.

Because if you look at the route chart, only three routes below the NFL average in terms of success rate.

He did run a lot of those like vertical posts and corners and stuff like that to clear space out.

And I think DJ kind of knew this was going to be the case.

You know, I talked to him about this. He said going into the year.

I didn't have any statistical goals because I just didn't quite know what my role was going to be.

That's nice.

I think it's almost I think it's almost kind of like again, this is that's what he told me what I'm speculating off of that is that

well, the Bears kind of knew, hey, we got to keep this guy around. She's making a lot of money.

And we also don't know if we just want to throw like Luther Burton to the wolves as the other starting receiver across from Ramadan say.

Like when they opened up the season, DJ Moore's do especially early in the years doing a lot of the like clear out stuff.

And Roma Dunes is doing all the like number one wide receiver in the progression stuff before he hurts his foot.

And then they kind of have to change the offense around because Rome is not practicing and all of these things.

So it's kind of like, hey, listen, DJ, you're going to come in here, you're going to do your best.

And like we're not going to build a lot out of you.

But we'll throw you like some screens every now and again, it's some designery stuff.

And that is a lot of what it was last year for the Bears.

And then like, hey, every other week, he would make a massive freaking play like he did against the packers and stuff like that.

Because he's still a very talented receiver.

So that's almost like why I kind of think the 2025 season is really hard to judge for DJ Moore.

Because it just felt like he was target on 18% of his routes in the games I charted this year.

16.9% in the full regular postseason combined for the Bears.

Those are the lowest numbers by far of his NFL career.

But I didn't think that his film was so disastrous that like, oh, he just stinks.

He's not getting, he can't get open when he's the number one.

He just so clearly wasn't the primary and the progression for a lot of these plays.

And I think we can also be clear that DJ throughout the course of his career, when he's not been the primary,

hasn't always been like running it out the best, you know, like when the play is not built around him.

And I think that's gotten him into some trouble at times with the Chicago Bears the last two years, especially.

So it's a difficult evaluation in that way.

But there are a lot and we can break this down.

But there are a lot of parts where I really like this fit for the bills.

But that's the part of like the risk that you're taking on here.

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I'll just say this about DJ Moore.

I think when you hit it perfectly that when he is at his peak powers, when he's fully engaged,

he's fully locked in.

Great player.

A true true true true number one.

This is my problem though Matt.

The game of football is an unrelenting beast.

He's going to be 29 years old and we have not seen him play at a high level consistently for two years.

I know players feel like well I could just reach back in time and just grab that and just lock in again.

And as analysts, a lot of analysts do that too.

And I get it.

I totally get it.

I've almost never seen that work in any sport.

I don't care if it's football, basketball, baseball, whatever.

When guys try to, when guys have taken a couple of years off in terms of just locking in and being consistent every single down like that psychotic nature that you have to be to be at your prime,

it is almost impossible to reach back in time and just grab that by the horns and ride that bull again.

I've seen it so often play out, especially with aging players, that that is the reason why again, I think he's a good player.

I don't think he's a great player.

I think it's a good fit and I think it's a good signing, but it's not a great signing for Buffalo.

I don't think that he's going to be able to reach back and pull out those Carolina days.

Or those that first season Chicago days here in Buffalo.

That's just my thought.

I could 100% be wrong, but I've seen it far too often where it just does not happen that way.

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Yeah, I always come back to one of my co-workers,

one of my friends who's Scott Pinawski, he's one of his famous lines.

Once the one to talk about players, once the cheese goes bad, it doesn't suddenly start to get unbad.

Usually when a decline happens, guys can hang on.

I've talked about this a lot with receiver aging, but usually we don't see these like,

and now he's like back to his peak form again or anything like that.

We'll see.

I do think that DJ has a lot of reasons to lock in here in Buffalo for sure.

It's a huge opportunity for him.

After clearly, I think he felt that there wasn't much opportunity for him last year in Chicago.

Also, by the way, the other thing I would say too, if I'm Buffalo,

this is not my only wide receiver move of the offseason.

Oh, God.

I hope not.

My plan, again, I said this.

If I was Brandon Bean, what I'd be doing is I'd be double tapping this position.

I'd be adding a veteran like a DJ more, and then I would still spend a priority pick in the draft.

Now, the fact they send a second round or two Chicago, which by the way,

haven't said this yet, but what a dub for the Bears to get a second round pick here.

Didn't see that coming.

Yeah.

And they don't like, they can say goodbye to DJ more and just hope like a Dune Zayn bird

and get better in year two and year three.

And like, we can go to work.

And I'm fine with that.

So it's a huge win for Chicago to get a second round or out of this.

Lovely too.

That, that, yeah.

I love Lovland, of course, and they signed Khalif Raymond to do all the, like,

love of the game clear out stuff.

Like that's kind of what DJ Moore was basically doing for them last year.

And now they're going to just get a way cheaper player to do that.

It just makes complete sense for Chicago.

It does kind of complicate my double tap theory here for Buffalo that they've,

they've sent the second round pick.

But let's just again, say this is probably not their only wide receiver move.

We'll see what the other resource they spend that it is.

But I do think there's a couple of reasons to think that DJ can at least be a better player for Buffalo

than he was for Chicago.

One, we've seen proof of concept with him in Joe Brady's offense before.

I think the route tree for the extra receiver fits really well for DJ Moore in two ways.

One, we've seen him run a lot of in-breakers with Joe Brady in those two years in Carolina.

I put the route chart out that people can check out there, the alignment data, which makes just a lot of sense for DJ's game.

He's really good with the in-breakers.

He's awesome still with the ball in his hands when he gets those opportunities.

I've always been a really big fan of him in that way.

That's a nice wrinkle there.

The other thing is Brady's extra receiver route tree in Buffalo.

Some of this I think could be because it's key on Coleman.

But it's been pretty curl heavy.

DJ Moore still ran curl routes at an extremely strong success rate last year, 88.2%.

I think if you look back at DJ Moore's first season with the Bears when he was running a more straight line receiver route tree with Justin Fields,

it was a lot of go and stop routes.

Josh Allen loves to throw those go and stop routes.

I think it'll be big for DJ Moore in that regard.

I think that fits really well.

The other part of this, and this is the thing that I think is my favorite aspect of DJ going to Buffalo,

is that straight up he was just never going to be a fit with Ben Johnson because DJ Moore is a little Lucy Goosey with the details in terms of I got to settle down here.

Whatever Ben Johnson is obviously maniacal when it comes to the details.

So I just don't think they were ever going to see eye to eye in that way.

And I think the usage of him on film really bears that out.

But not everybody quarterback likes that.

But you know who's a quarterback who's okay with this?

Josh Allen.

And I can say this because I've asked Josh about this.

I talked to Josh about this years ago.

I put the clip out.

I put link the clip in his RP profile where he told me like,

yeah, Stefan Diggs, when he was here, and this interview was at the time when Diggs was there,

he was like, I don't care if that route's supposed to be seven yards and you're at 12.

Just get open and I'll get you the football.

He's not one of these guys that needs the guy to be at the right spot.

And I think that's going to fit DJ Moore's game really well.

So the capital F word fit I think is the thing that is best in DJ Moore's favorite working out with the bills.

He just fits way better here than he does in Chicago.

And I think if we're going to be you and I, the alignment bros and the context bros and the fit bros at this white or sear position,

we got to at least acknowledge that that's a point in DJ saber here going above 100%.

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And I'm definitely done cleaning melted candy out of my pockets.

So yeah, I traded them both in for fruity rainbow five hour energy shots.

These little guys are as pocket sized as any candy.

But instead of a sugar crash, you get a zero sugar caffeine boost.

Candy can't even compare at this point.

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with a tasty caffeine kick.

That's right, caffeine just got a flavor upgrade.

And it's not just one flavor.

Five hour energy shots bring you tasty caffeine and 17 flavors.

17.

So if you're craving that candy flavored chaos, but actually want energy that works?

Grab fruity rainbow five hour energy shots.

Pocket sized zero sugar big flavor.

Available now at fivehourenergy.com or on Amazon.

I'm Brian, I work at Unite Healthcare.

So Brian, why do you care?

I care because I don't want to leave anybody behinds.

I oversee one of the biggest resource center in Unite Healthcare.

I see people walking in my office every day just like my parents.

They have no idea about the healthcare.

I feel like they're my uncles, aunties.

I treat these people like family.

I'm Brian and I'm committed to care.

Get more out of every mile when you share the ride to work.

With carpooling, you'll have time to relax, save money, and pick up new friends.

Commuter connections can help you find carpool partners who live and work near you.

Even if you're commuting just a few days a week, it's a free service.

Carpooling, every dollar saved, every friend made.

Register for free carpool partner ride matching at commuterconnections.org

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