Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills are the 2022 Super Bowl favorites (+650 on FanDuel). The offense is already one of the best in the league and, if reports from Bills training camp are true, Allen will have another weapon this year to go along with Stefon Diggs, Gabriel Davis, Dawson Knox, and his stable of running backs. Isaiah McKenzie is poised to make the Bills roster as the slot receiver and could be the player to have a massive breakout season for Buffalo.

Isaiah McKenzie is Bills QB Josh Allen’s new secret weapon

Wider receiver/kick returner Isaiah McKenzie is entering his sixth year as a pro. After two seasons of bouncing back and forth between the Denver Broncos practice squad and the main roster, the Buffalo Bills signed him off waivers in 2018.

McKenzie has primarily been a kick and punt returner in Western New York. In 2020, though, he had a career year as a pass-catcher, making 30 receptions for 282 yards and scoring five touchdowns, per Pro Football Reference.

In 2021, the now 27-year-old took a step back for most of the season, buried on the Bills depth chart behind Diggs, Davis, Emmanuel Sanders, and Cole Beasley.

Toward the end of last season, McKenzie started to get more offensive snaps over the soon-to-be-departing Sanders and Beasley. In a must-win Week 16 game vs. the division rival New England Patriots, the shifty wideout had the best game of his career, catching 11 balls for 125 yards and a score.

Heading into 2022, McKenzie is competing for the starting slot receiver spot on the Bills depth chart. Veteran WRs Jamison Crowder and Tavon Austin, and rookie Khalil Shakir are also competing to be Josh Allen’s No. 3 in Week 1 vs. the Los Angeles Rams.

Reports out of Bills training camp are that McKenzie has been one of the most impressive players on the entire Bills roster at St. John Fisher College in Rochester.

Buffalo Bills beat reporter Sal Capaccio of WGR 550 in Buffalo went on the Pat McAfee Show following the first week of team activities, and sang the receiver’s praises.

Capaccio called McKenzie “the star of camp so far,” and shared that head coach Sean McDermott is telling reporters he thinks the wideout will get “potentially a full-time role.”

The Bills insider also said that, as a fantasy football player, he “would keep Isaiah McKenzie on my radar for a lot of targets this year.”

If McKenzie does win the full-time No.3/slot role, he could easily become Allen’s top target in terms of volume. As defenses focused on Diggs last season, his catches dropped from 127 in 2020 to 103 in 2021. Davis has exactly 35 catches in each of the last two seasons, and while that stands to go up significantly in 2022, there are still plenty of balls to go around.

Last year, Allen’s Nos. 3, 4, and 5 WRs caught a total of 144 balls. If McKenzie can take a big chunk of that production himself this year, he should easily eclipse his best year as a pass-catcher.

There are two issues, however, that should give Bills fans and fantasy football players pause.

One is that offensive coordinator Brian Daboll is gone after shepherding Allen through the first four years of his career. Quarterbacks coach Ken Dorsey takes over as the offensive coordinator, so there will be some level of continuity, but without ever seeing the former Miami Hurricanes QB as the primary play caller, it is impossible to know exactly what the offense will look like in 2022.

The other issue is McKenzie’s size. At 5-foot-8 and 173 pounds, he is smaller than even most NFL slot receivers. He’s also never played more than 47% of his team’s offensive snaps in a season. For McKenzie to have a breakout year many are predicting, that number will have to go well over 50%.

If he can do that and stay healthy by avoiding the big hits — like little legends such as Danny Woodhead and Darren Sproles found a way to do — Isaiah McKenzie can be Josh Allen’s secret weapon and maybe even help propel the Bills to the Super Bowl that has eluded the franchise since its inception.