New England Patriots

His Name is Chris Hogan Not Hulk Hogan

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 12:20 p.m. ET

Fansided, Dennis Moody/FanSided via BuffaLowDown

Former Buffalo Bills wide receiver Chris Hogan had big performances the last two games in the playoffs but Bills fans who think that letting him go was a mistake are overreacting. Buffalo let go Chris Hogan, not Hulk Hogan.

Being a Buffalo Bills fan can be difficult at times. Watching former players go on to other teams and having success is hard to swallow no matter how happy we are for them as individuals. Seeing Chris Hogan be successful for the New England Patriots in the playoffs hurts but that doesn’t mean the Bills should have kept Hogan.

The fact remains that the Bills couldn’t afford to sign Hogan this past offseason. They had limited cap space and they did a good job of retaining the most important players on the roster including Cordy Glenn and Richie Incognito.

When the Patriots offered Hogan $12 million dollars over three years with the biggest cap hit in year one Buffalo couldn’t match. The offer was designed in a way that the Bills couldn’t afford it similar to what Buffalo did to Miami when they signed Charles Clay. Not only did Buffalo not have enough cap room but it was way above Hogan’s value.

For the Bills, he never had over 500 yards receiving in a season. The Bills weren’t going to pay him $4 million per year to be their third or fourth receiver on a team that wants the running game to be the focus of their offense.

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While Hogan has had a tremendous run in the playoffs so far with 275 yards in two games it’s also a bit overblown. In the first game of the playoffs if you remove his 45-yard catch he would have had three receptions for 50 yards. Not exactly a breakout performance.

We are really only talking about one game in which Hogan dominated and that has more to do with the fact that Tom Brady is throwing him the ball and Bill Belichick is his coach.

Over the Patriots long run of domination in the AFC East, they have had many players put up performances such as the one Hogan did but who shortly after would be forgotten in their offense. Hogan’s stats for the Patriots this season weren’t even that much better than his for Buffalo except in two categories.

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He had 38 catches for the Patriots this season meanwhile in his two seasons for the Bills he averaged 38.5 catches per year. He had four touchdowns during the regular season for the Patriots and he averaged three per year for Buffalo. Where he did improve was on his yards where he had 680 yards receiving. In his best year for the Bills, he had just 450 yards.

The reason Hogan has so many more yards this year can be attributed to the fact that he averaged 17.9 yards per catch which was over five yards higher than his previous career high. The difference for Hogan is that he had Tom Brady delivering the ball to him in a manner that allowed him to catch the ball in space and make a play while in Buffalo he had subpar quarterback performance and fewer yards after the catch.

Hogan’s 680 yards on the season was only third best on the Patriots and had Rob Gronkowski not gotten injured it would been fourth on their team. At four million dollars per season that is expensive for the fourth most productive receiving target.

While Chris Hogan has played more like he’s Hulk Hogan the past two weeks he’s still just Chris. He’s hard working, athletic, tough as nails and fantastic on special teams but he just couldn’t fit in Buffalo’s budget and the Patriots used that to their advantage to pluck him away.

It’s just not accurate to blame Doug Whaley for not keeping Hogan and saying letting him go was a mistake. It would be fairer to blame Whaley for the cap position that they were in that didn’t allow them to match the Patriots offer but even then as pointed out before Hogan is just not worth $4 million per year in Buffalo when they want to focus on the run. Buffalo fans who are upset that they let him go should remember that his name is Chris Hogan, not Hulk Hogan.