Buffalo Bills Training Camp Spotlight: Dawson Knox

He's doing everything he can to prove his worth after two shaky seasons.

When quarterback Josh Allen signed a six-year, $258 million contract extension with the Buffalo Bills on Friday, it made it less likely his salary cap-challenged employers will trade for high-priced tight end Zach Ertz, as has been rumored for months.

That could bode well for Dawson Knox, who tentatively occupies the top of the depth chart at that position for the relatively paltry base salary of $850,000 for 2021.

No matter what he makes, Knox is driven to earn every dollar and on a mission to prove he should be a regular contributor to an offense that didn't get a lot from him last year or in 2019, when they drafted him out of Mississippi in the third round.

Through the first two weeks of training camp, he's sprinkled in some highlight-reel catches among a pattern of drops that unfortunately for him have carried over into this summer. Perhaps none of his catches were as memorable as the one he made in heavy traffic in the back of the end zone of a perfectly placed missile by Josh Allen on August 1.

Thread the needle.@JoshAllenQB ➡️ @Dawson_Knox pic.twitter.com/2PvgaLY95E

— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) August 1, 2021

A better understanding of the offense, he believes, will help. And so will the work he did on his own in the offseason, which included a trip to "Tight End University," a free clinic run by former Carolina Panthers star Greg Olsen and current players Travis Kelce of Kansas City and George Kittle of San Francisco.

"It was awesome," Knox raved. "I mean it was tight ends from every team in the league. ... There were some awesome sponsors, we didn't pay for anything, we got in the film room for a couple hours every day, got on the whiteboards, worked some field work for about an hour-and-a-half, two hours every day.

"But it was awesome just seeing what each different guy is good at and just taking little pieces of everybody's game and trying to apply that to myself, whether it's a release, whether it's a top-of-a-route or something in the pass protection world. But I'd say I learned the most from Greg Olsen. I mean, he's like a professor of football."

The techniques learned, he claimed, were invaluable and have helped him in training camp.

Nice sliding catch from Dawson Knox here. #Bills #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/vlpE7YXxIO

— alex brasky (@alexbrasky) August 7, 2021

"I learned a lot, like a whole lot of release techniques. That's the one thing that kind of stuck with me like, you know, whether it's press man, I got inside leverage on an in-breaking route, or ... if I got a man off and a second-level safety, how to break on certain cuts. I mean, there were a lot of different intricate things that I'd never really learned.

"There's some drills that I do to warm up, whether it's catching the ball or you know run speed cuts or anything like that. I mean there's, there was a whole lot. I got a notebook probably with three or four full pages of notes that we learned from each guy there. Darren Waller [of the Raiders] spent like an hour on a 5-yard choice route."

Knox also worked with renowned sports vision performance trainer Ryan Harrison on improving his hand-eye coordination.

Yet these revelations bring to light a potential red flag: That those lessons either are not being taught by the Bills' coaching staff or weren't absorbed by Knox until listening to different voices.

Either way, Knox wants and expects to be more involved in 2021 than he was in his first two seasons, which have produced just 52 catches on 94 targets for 676 yards and five touchdowns. He has dropped 14 passes.

"I've always said I want to be a good, well-rounded tight end," Knox said. "I don't ever want to come off the field, whether I've got to pass protect or whether I've got to go run around against a corner. I want to be that three-down tight end, so it's just kind of, work on every single aspect of that game, just keep stacking those days on top of each other and definitely get better."

Nick Fierro is the publisher of Bills Central. Check out the latest Bills news at www.si.com/nfl/bills and follow Fierro on Twitter at @NickFierro. Email to Nicky300@aol.com.