Bills’ flaws on painful display as Josh Allen takes more blame than he should – The Athletic

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Josh Allen stepped up to his postgame news conference, completely red-faced from the South Florida humidity, with a slight hitch in his gait. Allen, shoeless and drenched in sweat, stood there expressionless, battling through some awkward silence for 22 seconds, gently tapping his thumbs and fingers a few times on the podium.

In losses, the words are usually hard to come by for the Buffalo Bills quarterback and reigning NFL Most Valuable Player. In a 30-13 blowout loss to a previously 2-7 Miami Dolphins team, who had one of the worst defenses in the league and were down two of their top defenders due to injury, those minimal words had a theme to them.

In the way he’s talked after games, particularly tough losses like this one, Allen always has believed that when you point a finger, four are pointing back at you, so instead, he points all 10 of his fingers at himself. If he could point his toes at himself at the same time, he’d do that, too.

“I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to be better in the protection game, and the pass game, and the run game. All of it,” he said.

“It starts with me, so I’ve gotta be better.”

“It starts with me. But we didn’t execute. I didn’t execute.”

Those were parts of three different answers from Allen, mind you.

Allen can point at himself all he wants, and while he wasn’t perfect by any stretch, the uncomfortable truth is that the environment around him is not giving him a good enough chance to consistently succeed.

At a certain point of the season, it goes from being something a team works through and learns from early in the year to being something completely different. The more information we get through results on the field, the more the Bills are screaming to us who they truly are in 2025.

And who they are is an entirely flawed, one-dimensional offense that shatters when that lone dimension is taken from them.

The Bills have gone from a team that, in a different life a few years back, couldn’t run the ball if they wanted to, to a team that can’t properly deploy their superhuman quarterback. The very one they gave not one, but two of the richest contracts in NFL history to keep him in Orchard Park to chase the Lombardi Trophy, which has eluded Buffalo throughout the entire franchise’s history.

When the running game isn’t working, just as it didn’t against the Patriots, Falcons and now the Dolphins, the Bills’ offense isn’t going. It’s a stunning sight given how good they’ve been in the past, but this is their reality.

The Bills have a receiver problem. They put all their stock in second-year receiver Keon Coleman to take a big step forward, and it hasn’t happened. Without Coleman consistently challenging teams vertically, Allen has had no other choice but to make things happen short and just hope for the best with yards after catch.

Through the first three quarters, the Dolphins rarely backpedaled. They were unconcerned with anything going past the first level, constantly marching their defenders downhill. They knew what the Bills were going to do through the air because the Bills have done the same things for weeks on end. Miami knew that if it limited the run, the Bills could wilt. And wilt they did.

Up until the third quarter, when the Bills remained scoreless, the Bills wide receiver room on completions had an average depth of target of 5.14 yards. That number rose to 7.25 yards up to when De’Von Achane put the game away with a touchdown run to make it 23-6. A reminder, those were the average air yards per completion as the Bills were trailing the entire game.

As crazy as it is, that’s actually an increase of air yards on completions to wide receivers compared to their last two games, when they averaged 0.75 air yards against the Panthers and 2.17 air yards per completion versus the Chiefs. The Bills were quick to point out during those two games that the running game was going so well that they didn’t need the pass game. But the troubling part is that when they need the passing game, they can’t access it properly.

“I’ve got to give guys chances,” Allen said when asked why the downfield passing game had so much trouble this season, attempting to shoulder the blame again.

“Well, it is (frustrating) because it’s an important part of our offense,” Bills head coach Sean McDermott said of the lack of downfield passing this year. “We’ve got a great quarterback, and you want to be able to move the ball two-dimensionally. We should be able to move the ball with Josh through the air.”

Sean McDermott expressed frustration with the offense’s inability to move the ball. (Jeff Romance / Imagn Images)

That brings us back to Coleman. Of all the targets to receivers, Coleman accounted for a whopping 186 total air yards on his targets — 71.3 percent of the wide receiver total air yards in the game. Coleman converted on only 37 of those air yards, or more glaringly stated, 19.9 percent of them. The more information we get on Coleman, the more it looks like he’s more of a bit player than an answer to their issues. A perfect example of why it hasn’t worked well enough came late in the game, on a fourth-and-16, when Coleman stumbled through his route on a post corner, raised his hand as open, only for Allen to be sacked before Coleman even made his break.

But it isn’t just a receiver problem. The offense lacks the very dynamic vibrance that made people believe in the Bills as Super Bowl contenders in the first place. The only time they truly felt alive on Sunday was when Allen was extending plays as long as he could, begging someone to get open down the field with all his bought time.

Offensive coordinator Joe Brady deserves to shoulder much of the blame, too. Rather than trying new things, putting players in different spots and trying some new concepts to get the passing game off of life support before games get dire, Brady exists within his comfortable go-to calls.

Between wide receiver screens, quick hitters and short crossing routes, there really hasn’t been a tangible verticality to his offense in weeks. The offense, at least as it exists currently, lacks imagination and creativity and relies on the what-got-us-here rather than the what-could-take-us-there.

But just as it isn’t just a receiver problem, it’s not just a Brady problem, either, because he and Allen can only do as much with what they’re given, and that’s where the lack of deadline activity comes into play.

Bills general manager Brandon Beane sat during his post-trade deadline news conference, extremely disappointed that he couldn’t get a deal done. And as time has passed with more information coming out, it shows the Bills tried to take the big swing. NFL Network reported on Sunday that the Bills had tried to pry Miami’s Jaylen Waddle and dangled a first-round pick plus to do it, only to be rebuffed by their division rival.

To watch Waddle burn past first-round rookie cornerback Maxwell Hairston in one-on-one coverage, fight through a defensive pass interference call, and still come down with a touchdown catch is a particularly cruel twist of the knife.

If there’s a glimmer of hope for Bills fans, it’s that the team’s general manager, through his deadline day interest, is admitting how great a need receiver is and was prepared to dish out a premium draft asset to try to fix it — a glaring acknowledgment that how he constructed this offense isn’t good enough as it stands today.

But even though he tried, that isn’t deserving of full credit. That’s submitting an assignment after the due date and the teacher knocking off part of the grade.

Sure, the other team could have said, “let’s wait until closer to the deadline” to try to maximize the return. As Beane said, he can’t force another team to trade with him, and that point is well taken. However, as the Bills and the rest of the NFL are quick to say, the only thing that matters is results. The results of completing the trade, of adding the necessary pieces to capitalize on their once-in-a-lifetime quarterback in a clear Super Bowl year versus a wide-open AFC, of having that piece be the thing to put the team over the top.

So the solace comes in the fact that Beane will likely be even more aggressive in the offseason to get that receiver they have so sorely lacked for two years running. However, that’s a long way off, and the Bills still have eight games remaining to try to maximize one of Allen’s remaining prime years.

The closer Allen gets to his 30th birthday in May, the more the anxiety among the fan base increases — and it’s completely understandable why. While they sat through decades of terrible football, he is the one they hoped would one day find his way to Buffalo. Though there is no defined date of expiration on Allen’s prime, and his prime could extend well into his third decade of life, things get a little nervy for fans the moment a player turns 30.

All of it is fair to bring up in a season that has gone off the rails more than they would have liked it to. Regardless, the Bills remain 6-3 and firmly in the playoff picture. A good team is still in there somewhere, as evidenced by their win over the Chiefs only seven days prior. Their loss to the Dolphins was a bad one, and possibly one of their worst in recent memory, but it isn’t one that will define their season — unless they let it.

What will define their year is where they take things from this point, a humbling moment in trying to reassert themselves as a contender. But with losses like this one, they are making it harder on themselves to accomplish that ultimate goal. What is clear is that something needs to change within their offense. Answers are needed, and answers are needed quickly. Urgency is of the utmost importance.

Otherwise, that bubbling anxiety over another year of Allen’s prime potentially not ending in a Super Bowl appearance will only grow, and rightfully so.