Bills Season Autopsy 23/24 & Reviving for 24/25

[corta765]

Welp that didn't go as planned. Just going to dive in:

 

Season strengths

 

Offense: Josh Allen, emergence of James Cook, offensive line cohesive, Shakir & Kincaid coming to life, the offense with Joe Brady

Defense: the entire defensive line minus Von, Terrel Bernard emerging, aggressive style as the season progressed, Rasual Douglas, Taron Johnson

 

Weaknesses:

Offense: Lack of consistent pass catchers, Stefon Diggs seemingly aging weekly, any time Gabe Davis is near the football field, inability to hit deep passes

Defense: Injuries, LB depth, Von Miller, communication at times in the secondary

Other: Special teams in general was bad and got worse, coaching staff ability to maximize the teams best players on offense, outside distractions from McD's 9/11 reference to Von being accused of awful things

 

Weeks 1-4 Bounce & Go:

Bills come into the season with increased competition across the conference but Rodgers is gone and the Bills look to have an easy win. Instead Josh truly implodes and the Jets steal a win. No matter the Bills rattle off 3 in a row and at 3-1 after beating divisional rival Miami look like the best team in the AFC. Diggs is off to his best start, Allen looks god like, and the defense looks solid although Tre White going out takes some luster off the start.

 

Weeks 5-12 Destruction, Diving Down, & Bottoming Out

Buffalo may just forfeit rather then ever go to England again as the Bills not only lose the game but the heart of their defense Matt Milano and stud DT DaQuan Jones both suffer what amounts to season ending injuries. The team itself looks scrambled as the offense reverts back to out of whack and out of sorts. Subsequent weeks show a team without an identity, offense that can't figure itself out, and stunning losses to the Patriots and Broncos. Ken Dorsey is fired after the Broncos game which seems to snap the offense out of its funk, but a soul crushing loss in PHI makes even the most ardent believers question the season as the Bills sink to 6-6 at the bye.

 

Weeks 14-18 Revival

The Bills win in Kansas City starting a run where they win out knocking out Dallas at home and winning a thrilling week 18 matchup in Miami for the division crown and an unexpected 2 seed for the playoffs. The offense is clicking as kids like Shakir and Kincaid emerge, the defensive line is a force, and the team itself gets some players back from injury. They are not the prettiest wins, but maybe this time it is different as the team seems to have an answer when it matters.

 

Playoffs Losing Close Forever Hurts More Then Losing Big

The Bills after a wild week in Buffalo with snow take on Pittsburgh and take care of business as the offense and Allen answers the bell and the defense makes needed plays when it matters. Every embattled CB Kair Elam has a wonderful INT as the team keeps finding answers and the moment seems there as a rematch with KC is on the horizon.

 

Time of Death Sunday January 21st 9:35

Causes:

-Defensive line unable to impact Mahomes despite being the most important and healthy area of the defense. In the biggest moment the entire defensive line couldn't do anything and Von Miller of all people had the most tackles of that group... yikes

-Three separate deep passes all being dropped including Stefon Diggs which hit him in the hands and felt like a game changer at that point

-LB corp basically starting a guy who two weeks earlier was on the couch and the other is a special teamer. Tough assignment for anyone

-The offense having some yips in the 4th quarter and truly bad luck. Bills were about one foot away from a TD and the lead with 2 mins left if Dawkins isn't pushed into Allen by Chris Jones

-Aging defense shows a bit as they do what they can but in general are chasing a lot

-Coaching staff who again in a huge moment can't answer the bell

 

Reviving for 2024-25:

Much was made heading into 2023-24 of the future of the Bills as you could see this was the last go for a lot of veteran guys and were there any answers to positions that saw attrition in FA or age. Much has been made about the salary cap but realistically Beane can open 14-19 million in space with a few restructures like Josh, contract extensions like Douglas, and a few cuts to veterans like Tre White & Morse. Attrition is hard but you also want to catch a guy before the floor falls out from them like what happened to Von this year. The good news heading into 2024-25 is many young players emerged as players like Cook, Kincaid, Shakir, Torrence, Bernard, and Groot all seemed to either find a new level and truly step into their own. The holes on the defense are not awful as it looks something like this:

 

Groot - Oliver - need player - Von/Kingsley

Milano - Bernard

Douglas - need player - Poyer - Johnson -Benford

 

Guys like DaQuan Jones, Floyd, Settle, & AJ all are free agents and I would expect half to come back and the other half walks. Safety & DT both need to be addressed in the draft, but the defense has more solutions then not to be solid. The LB corp healthy feels a lot nicer knowing Dodson and Williams are off the bench instead. Additionally Beane excels at finding cheap vets to sprinkle in so come week 1 the defense will look decent to most. Not seeing names like Hyde & White (Possibly Poyer although I think they keep him) will be weird, but generally the defense will have impact guys at all three levels.

 

The offense though is a different story. Josh Allen's two best passing years came in 2020 & 2021 which coincided with the Bills in 2019/2020 adding Beasley, Brown, Diggs, & Davis. The erosion in the WR corp showed up last year and became far more evident this year. Shakir emerged as a great slot WR & Kincaid certainly found his footing at TE to leave a lot to be excited about. But you cannot escape Diggs fall in production + his age, Davis doing nothing a lot, and Sheffield/Harty being virtually non existent at points. Buffalo desperately needs to draft two WRs high to truly add some juice and possibly consider using what cap they have for established vet like they did in Emmanuel Sanders in 2021 for a year. The offensive line really came together as young pieces like Torrence and Brown stepped up while Dawkins had probably his best year and McGovern did what they paid him for. Morse is good but old, they can save cap switching to Bates who has done fine at center or even draft a player. The true future with the offense should be though continuing to get younger at the skill spots so hopefully by the end of next year you have an emerging WR1 to pair with Diggs for another year as Cook/Kincaid/Shakir keep getting better and hopefully another WR3/4 waiting to also jump in.

[flmike]

I've noticed all year that Josh is not a "Plays" QB. While other QBs hit their receivers in stride on designed plays, Josh holds the ball longer than anyone else and misses out on receivers at the best point of their routes. When he does connect, notice that the receiver is always facing the wrong goal line and is usually hit right away. That needs to change. I keep thinking our receivers can't be that bad. Josh is not helping them. 

Edited January 22 by flmike

[corta765]

15 hours ago, flmike said:

I've noticed all year that Josh is not a "Plays" QB. While other QBs hit their receivers in stride on designed plays, Josh holds the ball longer than anyone else and misses out on receivers at the best point of their routes. When he does connect, notice that the receiver is always facing the wrong goal line and is usually hit right away. That needs to change. I keep thinking our receivers can't be that bad. Josh is not helping them. 

 

Few things:

 

1. Our WR corp is not great and they are not great at separation either. WR in stride requires having the edge on the CB and Shakir is really the only WR who does that. Kincaid also has this ability and I expect it to grow
2. The offense was designed by Dorsey and it was incredibly vanilla. Most of the time one or two deep with the other WR/TEs running curl type routes. They just put out the EPA for the three offensive coordinators Josh has had in the playoffs (EPA is expected points added, basically if you have a good player or OC the number is positive) . Daboll was 18.24, Brady was 9.96... Dorsey was -4.68. Brady I think did what he could as you couldn't scrap the entire play book to bring motion, screens, disguises, etc.. into the fold. I 100% agree that the offense lacked those type of plays but much of this was design and what the operation was.

3. Josh is boom and bust a bit and he does take the big shot over the easy. It obviously works and is good vast majority of the time, but it causes you to miss players open when that is the case with an easy slant or crossing route.