Keon Coleman has heard every criticism thrown his way over the past year — the jabs about his effort, his speed, even the way he dances after a good rep in practice. None of it rattles him.
“None of them going to come lace them up and try to stand in front of me,” Coleman said this spring, according to ESPN. “People are going to say what they want to say. At the end of the day, my job is to come out here, put my cleats on, strap them up and prove my worth here.”
That defiance is about to be tested. Coleman enters 2026 in what he’s called a make-or-break season, and the Buffalo Bills receiver is doing something about it — leaning on veteran wisdom from a man who’s been exactly where he’s standing now.
A Rocky Start to Coleman’s Career
The Bills took Coleman with the No. 33 pick in 2024, and his first two seasons haven’t gone the way anyone in Orchard Park hoped. A right wrist injury and tardiness issues disrupted his rookie year. Then in 2025, Coleman opened with a bang — eight catches, 112 yards and a touchdown against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 1 — and never got close to that number again. He finished with 38 catches for 404 yards and four touchdowns across 13 games, a season interrupted when he was late for a November team meeting and benched as punishment. Between that discipline and his spot on the depth chart, he sat out four total games.
The noise around Coleman’s future only grew louder in January, when Bills owner Terry Pegula said the coaching staff had pushed hard for Buffalo to draft him — a comment that fed months of trade speculation this offseason. The Bills have stuck by him anyway. General manager Brandon Beane said in April on Buffalo radio station WGR550 that he believes Coleman’s “best year is yet to come here in 2026,” according to ESPN’s Alaina Getzenberg.
Enter Stevie Johnson
As part of his reset, Coleman connected with former Bills receiver Stevie Johnson, who authored three straight 1,000-yard seasons in Buffalo from 2010 through 2012 after breaking out in his own third year. Johnson reached out through Coleman’s agent, Paul DeRousselle, and the two met up at the University of San Diego in May, before organized team activities began.
Johnson posted about the workout on X in late April, sharing a video with his followers —
7:16 pic.twitter.com/kYZs7RqZXE
— 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕖 Styles (@StevieJohnson13) April 26, 2026
What surprised Johnson wasn’t Coleman’s talent. It was his attitude.
“I thought he was going to be immature. I thought he was going to be, not a student of the game, just a very talented player with God-given skills,” Johnson told ESPN. “But just right off the bat … he was locked in, wanting to learn things, open to the constructive criticism. He was asking questions.”
Coleman saw the fit immediately, too. At 6-foot-3 and 213 pounds, he’s built almost identically to the 6-foot-2, 210-pound Johnson, and the two clicked over more than just body type.
“Similar build players, similar backgrounds when it come[s] to sports we play, how we move, how we see the game,” Coleman said of Johnson. “So, it’s like two knuckleheads going at it. A lot of IQ guys that love the game and we could talk ball for hours.”
The Game Within the Game
Johnson isn’t just talking film study in the abstract. He’s teaching Coleman how to read a cornerback’s leverage in real time and adjust routes on the fly — breaking off a route early if a defensive back is playing soft, for example, so the receiver is where quarterback Josh Allen expects him to be a beat sooner than the play call dictates.
“But this is the game within the game that you have to play,” Johnson said. “So, it’s a thin line between how I was teaching him and it allows me to have to go more in depth.”
That’s a subtle but real distinction for a young receiver. Route trees are drawn up in a playbook, but NFL cornerbacks don’t always play them straight — and a receiver who can’t adjust on the move becomes easy to defend no matter how gifted he is physically. Johnson is trying to speed up that internal clock for Coleman before the games start counting.
Setting Realistic Targets
Johnson isn’t promising stardom. He’s promising progress — and he laid out a number that would represent a real step forward for Coleman in 2026.
“His average should be at least 60 yards [a game],” Johnson said. “I believe he should go beyond that, but I’m going to say, but if he can get 600-800 yards [for the season], the next year after that is only going to be better. … The sky’s the limit for him.”
Sixty yards a game over a full season works out to more than 1,000 yards — territory Coleman hasn’t sniffed in either of his first two seasons. Johnson’s actual bar (600-800 yards) is more modest, and more realistic given where Coleman is now: a receiver who topped 50 yards in a game exactly once last year.
| Season | Catches | Yards | TDs | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 (Rookie) | 29 | 556 | 4 | — |
| 2025 | 38 | 404 | 4 | 13 |
A Crowded Receiver Room
None of this happens in a vacuum. Buffalo overhauled its receiver room this offseason, trading for DJ Moore and adding fourth-round pick Skyler Bell. Joshua Palmer and Tyrell Shavers are both working back from injuries. Coleman looks like a starter on paper right now, but new head coach Joe Brady has made clear that special-teams contributions and consistency, not just talent, will decide who’s active on Sundays.
Coleman says he’s stopped thinking about it as a fight for a roster spot at all.
“[My] job is solely up to me,” Coleman said.
Teammates have noticed the shift. Bills cornerback Maxwell Hairston, who lines up against Coleman regularly in practice, said the receiver has handled a difficult year with more maturity than people give him credit for.
“Just getting better, just trending in the right direction,” Hairston said. “That’s my guy. He goes through a lot of stuff he don’t deserve. Just to see him continue to come out here and practice hard and do his thing, it’s good to see, for real. I can’t wait to see him take off this year.”
Training camp opens July 29 in Pittsford, New York. That’s when the mentorship, the workouts and the talk of a “make-or-break” year stop being offseason storylines and start becoming reps that count.
