My Buffalo Blues – Evaluating the Bills’ Performance, with Love, on a Weekly Basis

There’s a unique and distinctly special kind of pride that comes with cheering for a team that’s perenially bad. You begin to appreciate incremental improvements and value some aspects of the game you may otherwise overlook when your squad is winning all the time. There’s also a particularly sweet sense of joy when that team finally turns the corner towards success. 

I love a good underdog story and anyone that knows me knows I have a powerful affinity for my hard-luck Buffalo Bills. Over the years, I’ve come to cheer for some other teams as well but the Bills have been and will always be my main squeeze. The franchise has recently turned things around after a 17-year playoff drought and made two of the past three postseasons, but finally bringing a Super Bowl Championship to Western New York is the ultimate goal. I’ve been wanting to write more focused weekly pieces about their journey and now seems like a good time.

Like the rest of Bills Mafia, I had been waiting for the team to find their franchise quarterback since Jim Kelly retired in 1996. Over the course of 22-years, the likes of Todd Collins, Alex Van Pelt, Rob Johnson, Doug Flutie, Drew Bledsoe, Trent Edwards, Ryan Fitzpatrick, J.P. Losman, E.J. Manuel, Kyle Orton (fresh off the retirement couch), Kelly Holcomb, Nathan Peterman, Brian Brohm, Jeff Tuel, Thad Lewis, Matt Cassel, and Tyrod Taylor started for the Bills at some point with varying degrees of success. If you’re not keeping track (and why would you?), that’s 17 different starting QBs over 22-years with an 0-3 combined playoff record, including ZERO postseason games from 2000-2016. At the time, the longest active streak in pro sports.

That is a staggering level of inconsistency at the game’s most important position and the team’s performance is a direct result. If that wasn’t bad enough (and it totally is but you’ll love this part), Buffalo traded the #10 overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft to the Kansas City Chiefs who used that pick on none other than Patrick Mahomes!

Thankfully, the Bills ended up taking Pro Bowl cornerback Tre’Davious White at #27 so it wasn’t a total bust of a trade, but seeing Mahomes’ nearly immediate success at the highest level is extra salt in the wound. I’m happy for him, that franchise, and Andy Reid but, given context, I understand why Bills fans get shit-faced and suplex one another through tables outside the stadium on gamedays. 

In 2017, Brandon Beane took over as Buffalo’s general manager and oversaw that now-historic trade and undoubtedly had to eat a ton of shit as a result. However, his rebuilding effort didn’t end there and the team actually snapped a long playoff drought that same season. In 2018, they kicked Tyrod Taylor to the curb and traded with Tampa Bay to move up in the draft and select unheralded Wyoming QB Josh Allen at #7 overall. It was a rough year for the rookie as the team went 6-10 but he and the rest of the Bills rebounded to go 10-6 the following season, earning a Wild Card playoff spot. They even came within a field goal of beating the Houston Texans in overtime and advancing to the Divisional Round, after blowing a 16-0 lead. Learning how to win in the playoffs is a process, but they had found their franchise QB and looked to have a bright future. 

That brings us to now. The Bills kicked off their 2020 season with a 27-17 win at home against the New York Jets, who are basically where Buffalo was a decade ago. While there are a number of positive takeaways, the leap from being a playoff team to a legitimate contender is a substantial one and it’s the negatives that need to be addressed. 

Allen’s ability to run the football (and fearlessness while doing so) define him as a player and it’s what makes him such a dynamic threat to opposing defenses, but he continues to fumble like it’s going out of style. Including the two from Sunday, he’s now fumbled 24 times in only 29 games, giving up possession on eight of those. So, only one out of every three results in the Bills losing the ball but it’s a bad habit that the 24-year-old hasn’t been able to shake. Ball security is paramount in the NFL and, if you combine fumbles and interceptions, his touchdown-to-turnover ratio is basically a push at 32/29. Fortunately, the Bills have a fantastic defense and can still beat teams like the Jets even when those kinds of fumbles effectively take points off the board. That simply won’t cut it against the elite teams. Buffalo has six games against playoff teams from last year and even though Tom Brady no longer resides in the AFC East, the Cam Newton led Patriots aren’t just going to roll over and let Buffalo take the division. If the Bills are truly looking to go deeper than last season, Allen is going to have to clean up those mistakes. 

On the bright side, he did throw for over 300-yards for the first time in his pro career and did it while playing with the lead. Lots of QBs pad their passing numbers while playing from behind in mostly losing efforts but that wasn’t the case for Allen on Sunday. The addition of wide receiver Stefon Diggs largely contributed to the passing yardage total. Diggs had a smooth 8-catches for 86-yards but his presence opened up the route lanes for John Brown (6/70/1TD) and Cole Beasley (4/58). Beyond forcing the defense to pick and choose their coverages better, Diggs provides an invaluable lifeboat as an elite receiver with a big catch radius, superb route running, and impeccable hands who allows Allen to throw some more 1-on-1 balls. When in doubt, throw it to Diggs and let him go make a play and we saw it result in a big defensive pass interference call. He’s a great fit for this team and provides the Bills with one of the best Wr trios in the league.

As good as the passing game looked, Buffalo’s running attack looked equally as bad…at least from the running backs. The rumor surrounding Devin Singletary losing his starting job due to ball security issues is not what fans wanted to hear entering the first game of the season. His nine carries for 30-yards wasn’t promising either but at least he didn’t fumble. Rookie back-up Zack Mos didn’t fare any better with nine carries for 11-yards, but he did catch three passes for 16-yards and a score. While they did rank 8th in team rushing last season with 2,054-yards, 510 of that belonged to Allen. If the Bills can’t run block for their backs, he is going to have to run a lot more than you’d ultimately like to see and that opens him up more to those aforementioned fumbles and the potential for injury. 

I liked what I saw from the defense but it’s tough to tell how much of that can be attributed to a subpar Jets offense. Unfortunately, once linebackers Matt Milano and Tremaine Edmunds went down to injury, the NY managed to put some points on the board. Thankfully the injuries don’t appear to be long term for two of the best coverage linebackers in the game. Not that long ago, CB Josh Norman was an elite defender and I was looking forward to watching him play opposite Tre White as part of an already strong secondary group, but he was placed on IR before the game so we’ll have to wait and see how that goes.

Performance Grade: B – They are supposed to beat the Jets with relative ease and there were still some areas of concern. They head to Miami and that’s another game the team should win. The Dolphins didn’t look very good in their loss to New England and gave up a fair amount of rushing yards to Cam Newton in the process, so that bodes well for Buffalo. I look for them to try and establish a run game outside of the QB position but wouldn’t be surprised to see Allen pull it down and do it himself if things don’t line up well at running back.