Can WR Keon Coleman rebuild his career with Bills?

When the Buffalo Bills played the Houston Texans on Thursday night they did so without the services of second-year wide receiver Keon Coleman. Coleman was a healthy scratch for the second consecutive game, and he seems to be in a very deep doghouse with the coaching staff and the team as a whole.

You know it is bad given how desperately the Bills need playmakers from their wide receiver position, and the fact Coleman is a talented player that was a second-round pick just a year ago. They expected him to be a major contributor, and now do not even trust him enough to dress him for big games late in the season.

It now leaves the Bills and their young wide receiver at an early career crossroads.

Can Keon Coleman rebuild his career with the Bills?

While it might be premature to start writing Coleman off as ever being a major contributor with the Bills, it is a question that at least needs to be asked at this point. When he has been on the field he hasn't always given them big production.

Entering Week 12 he has just 61 catches and 886 yards and seven touchdowns in his first year-and-a-half in the league. It's fine, but not exactly anything that makes a major difference. Now he has put himself in the team's doghouse, and was pretty strongly called out by one of the team's leaders following their Week 11 game (his first healthy scratch of the season).

Those are not exactly encouraging signs this far into a player's career.

On one hand, the Bills are probably not in a position to give up on a talented wide receiver. They need more of them. Not loss. There would also be no real benefit to trying to trade him this offseason because his value is probably as low as it could possibly get.

But it is also true that sometimes players need a wake-up call, and perhaps even a change of scenery to fully figure things out and reach their full potential.

George Pickens needed a trade from the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Dallas Cowboys after wildly frustrating his former team.

Is Coleman in a similar situation?

The Bills have to hope that he gets the wake-up call before it comes to that. Because if he is going to figure it all out, put everything together and reach his potential they are going to want it to be for him and not somebody else.