Will 2023 be the breakout year for Gabe Davis?
A four-touchdown performance in the 2021 divisional round create a very real expectation that Bills receiver Gabe Davis would have a huge year in 2022. The bar, however, might have been set too high.
Could this year be the year for Davis?
Teammate Stefon Diggs thinks it will be. Via David De Cristofaro of USA Today, Diggs recently gushed about Gabe.
“I feel like Gabe Davis will have a breakout year,” Diggs told reporters. “I feel like he had got nicked up a little early last year, but I think this year he’s gonna have an amazing year. He’s damn near wide receiver one in my eyes. I feel like if I wasn’t here, Gabe Davis would be a WR1 and it’s something that I can hang my hat on when I say that. He’s an extremely hard worker.”
Davis's effort to step up might have been hampered by an ankle injury in 2022.
“Hurting my ankle the way I did . . . I just felt like I lost a step," Davis told reporters, via De Cristofaro. “Really couldn’t do the things that I wanted to do that I was doing early that [in 2022 training] camp. So it definitely was something that I was struggling with mentally, just having that pain on my ankle, trying to figure out ways to get my head out of it and kind of just play my game.”
In 15 regular-season games last year, Davis had 48 catches for 836 yards and seven touchdowns, an average of 17.4 yards per reception. He had six catches for 113 yards and a touchdown in the wild-card win over the Dolphins, but only two catches for 34 yards in the divisional-round loss to the Bengals.
Davis has every reason to find his groove this year. He's due to be a free agent in 2024. A big performance now will set up him for a big contract, from the Bills or someone else.
