Don’t Be Fooled: This Version of the Bills is Cooked

Don’t Be Fooled: This Version of the Bills is Cooked

GuyWhoLikesSport

In the NFL, sustained success is usually built around a coach or a quarterback, and often both.

If you look at the sustained success of the Chiefs since Patrick Mahomes took over the starting quarterback job in 2018, the one constant has been out changing Mahomes and coach Andy Reid.

They started off as a high-flying built offence around the speed of Tyreek Hill and were successful in that mould.

However, as teams started to employ drop 8 and two-high safety looks, leading to some playoff losses, so the Chiefs traded Hill and switched their identity up.

They started to matriculate the ball down the field and use their draft capital on defence.

What does it mean in 2023?

The Chiefs are now a death by a thousand cuts offence with Mahomes having the lowest average depth of target (aDot) of his career to this point while still piloting a top-10 offence.

The Chiefs also have one of the best defences in the NFL that is also the youngest in the NFL on a snap-weighted basis.

They win differently, but they still win often.

The Bills, on the other hand, currently sit 6-5 after a shock loss to the Broncos and then a dominant win over the Jets.

The victory over the Jets does not change the fact that 2023 has been and looks likely to continue to be, another year of diminishing returns since their heartbreaking loss to the Chiefs in the 2021 playoffs in one of the best games in living memory.

The only changes made by the Bills since that game have been out of sheer desperation.

Head Coach Sean McDermott has been like Logan Roy, refusing to take accountability and largely telling various high-level assistants to fuck off, just like Logan would have.

After a challenging 2022 season, McDermott abruptly sacked his defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier in order to take over defensive playcalling duties.

He did this after a season where the Bills were by most metrics, a top 10 defence in the league while also ranking third in scores allowed per drive, fifth in turnovers and tenth in total yardage allowed.

Frazier was the first Bill from Cruises.

So how are the Bills, under McDermott, going this year on defence?

Not well.

Per Robert Mays, over the 5 weeks prior to the Jets game, the Bills’ defence has been 18th in success rate, 30th in scores allowed per drive and 31st in total turnovers created.

But McDermott, like Logan, needed a skull for the Bills’ failures in 2023.

Offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey was that skull.

In hindsight it’s kind of a shame Dorsey didn’t do a Ken Roy and call McDermott a malignant presence like Kendall did at the end of season 2 of Succession.

I bet Dorsey wasn’t even on a yacht when he got sacked. What a stitch up.

Anyway, also per Robert Mays, over the same 5 weeks, the period where the Bills have allegedly been troubled on offence, they have been first in offensive success rate, eighth in plays per drive, ninth in EPA drive and tenth in points per drive.

This is a top 10 offence that is closer to the top five in most season-long offensive metrics.

Their EPA and points per drive numbers especially would be even better if they hadn’t turned the ball over so prolifically over the past five weeks.

Turnovers are often streaky and fluky, especially the ones that the Bills have had recently.

There was the James Cook fumble on the first play of the game against Denver, the Dalton Kincaid cartwheel fumble and the Gabe Davis drop turning into a pick, to name a few off the top of my head.

Above all else, they have been unlucky with the way the ball has bounced.

That fact is rammed home by the fact that they are fourth in the NFL in point differential.

In fact, through week 10 Buffalo has been the second unluckiest team in the NFL overall.

Well, they’re about to get unluckier. After dismantling the Jets in week 11, the Bills play a gauntlet over the rest of the regular season, coming up against the Eagles, Chiefs, Cowboys, Chargers, Patriots and Dolphins.

Four of their final six games are against championship contenders.

For this season, that schedule is their biggest issue.

Obviously, Allen will give them a chance in every game but it’s hard to see better than 3-3 across that run.

More broadly, however, their biggest is that they have clung to their identity since that 2021 playoff loss to the Chiefs.

They have tried and failed to recreate the magic of that team, instead of changing as the league has changed.

Brian Daboll was the offensive co-ordinator of that team and, when he left to be the coach of the Giants, they hired (then randomly fired) his right-hand man Dorsey to appoint Dorsey’s right-hand man and former wunderkind Joe Brady.

Frazier was the defensive coordinator working under McDermott and now there’s no middleman on defence.

Essentially all their key players then are the same as their key players now.

Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, Dawson Knox, Gabe Davis, Tre White, Matt Milano, Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde were on the team then and are still key figures on the team.

Even their drafts and free agencies since 2021 have been seeking to fill the holes that the 2021 roster had.

They couldn’t generate a pass rush, so they signed the ageing Von Miller, they couldn’t run the ball, so they drafted James Cook in the second round and they struggled for secondary depth, so they drafted Kair Elam.

None of those moves have worked, and the roster has failed to regenerate.

It’ll never be the same as that first time.

As married men, McDermott and GM Brandon Beane should surely know that.

Ask your wife to wear a costume.

Like the killer from The Killer said, anticipate, don’t improvise.

Now they have to improvise.

Over the next two years, the roster will necessarily turn over with Stefon Diggs appearing to be grumpy and much of the rest of the roster ageing and out of contract after 2024.

This will not be the Chiefs or the Patriots adapting to the league, it’s the Bills adapting out of necessity, but holding onto their superstar quarterback.

It’s a big difference.

Like what you read from our hard-hitting columnist?
Follow @Guywholikessport on Twitter or check out his FULL BLOG HERE