ORCHARD PARK — David Edwards heard the same message from Sean McVay for four years. He just didn’t understand what it meant.
The Los Angeles Rams coach told players the goal was to have the illusion of complexity. Formations, motions and shifts could dress up a play to seem complicated, but when the ball was snapped, the assignments weren’t all that difficult.
It wasn’t until Edwards arrived in Buffalo last year and Joe Brady took over as offensive coordinator 10 games into the season that he started to truly understand McVay’s message. In Buffalo, there was no illusion — the offense was complex.
Former offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey frequently talked about trying to be multiple, while new players, especially rookies, struggled to gain a firm grasp on a deep and difficult playbook. But in the end, the Bills didn’t have a true offensive identity, they tried to morph to the opposing defense each week.
Once Brady took over, the Bills started to utilize a core set of runs and it has blossomed during the second half of this season. There’s no questioning what the Bills like to do, it’s just a matter of whether the defense can stop them.
“Joe just does such a great job of presenting a similar picture to the defense that ends up being very different,” said Edwards, who won a Super Bowl with the Rams in 2021. “So it could be one of multiple things that a defense has to prepare for. And I would even say from the start of this year to now, the run menu has expanded.”
Before Brady, not only did the Bills not have an identity in the running game, but they weren’t committed to running the ball consistently. Part of that was because the Bills used RPOs heavily, which meant Josh Allen had the option of running himself, handing off or throwing on a given play.
From 2020-2023, the Bills ran an average of 90 RPOs per year, with Allen throwing the ball on nearly 80% of them. As a result the Bills didn’t have a running back receive 10 carries 22 times during that span.
This season the Bills ran 50 RPOs and he ran on 39 of them. And the Bills have had a running back get at least 10 carries in all but two of Brady’s 28 games (including the playoffs) as the team’s play-caller.
Throughout McDermott’s tenure, any time he felt the team was relying too heavily on Allen’s arm, he would make a post-game comment and the Bills would be more committed to the run in the following weeks. It’s only happened to Brady once, following a loss to the Rams in Week 14.
In the 44-42 loss to the Rams, James Cook had just six attempts for 20 yards, and since then, Buffalo’s running backs have averaged 127.5 yards on 26.5 attempts. Running backs are also averaging six more carries and 13 more yards per game under Brady than they did under Dorsey and Brian Daboll.
“Your offense is going to have to continue to evolve as the season goes,” Brady said. “… And then once you develop that run game, making sure that you have the auxiliary runs or the other ones that might look like something that you’re really good at, so teams can’t just – you can’t become predictable. And so that’s something that we have to continue to grow with and expand on.”
Early in the season the Bills were too predictable on offense at times, and in a 35-10 loss to the Ravens in Week 4, they abandoned the run quickly. The following week, Allen struggled and the Bills faced a 17-3 halftime deficit to the Houston Texans.
But Brady didn’t panic nor did he get pass-happy in the second half, running the ball more than they threw and clawed back to tie the game. Some feel that was the game where the Bills started to find an identity.
Once guilty of having success with a play and running it with the same personnel and formation to the opposite side on the next play, Brady has learned how to more effectively disguise his plays. But the Bills have also become a strong enough run team that opponents know what’s coming and still can’t stop it.
By Week 8 in Seattle, defenders were calling out plays before they happened and still couldn’t stop it. Ravens All-Pro safety Kyle Hamilton lamented after Sunday’s 27-25 loss that the Bills ran the same duo play 10 times, saying, “I feel like that’s somewhat disrespectful for us to allow them to do that.”
It’s an element of the Bills running game that didn’t exist previously.
“It’s every O-linemen’s dream,” Bills center Connor McGovern said. “We’re just going to keep running until you stop us. And then once you stop that, we’re just going to throw it over your head until you can stop that and we’ll just go back to the run. It’s a lot of fun when you have multiple options.”
The extra bonus in being able to run the ball efficiently is that the Bills control the clock and can end the game the way they desire. Before Brady became offensive coordinator, the Bills lost 11 games with Allen as the starter in which they were tied or leading in the final two minutes or overtime.
The Houston game is the sole blemish for the Bills in that department over the last 28 games, but there are other games they wished had gone differently. Last year’s divisional round loss to the Chiefs is at the top of the list.
Not only did the Bills not score to tie the game in the final two minutes, but even if Tyler Bass had made his field goal attempt, the Chiefs still had plenty of time to win the game in regulation. Against the Ravens, the Bills didn’t score to put the game away, but a field goal ensured they couldn’t lose in regulation.
“We’ve done a better job this year of finishing the game on our terms,” McGovern said. “We split for 16 yards before we took the knees (against the Ravens). We just made it a mindset that we’re putting it on our backs and we’re going to finish the game our way.”
NOTES: CB Christian Benford (concussion) and LB Matt Milano (hamstring soreness) were limited in Wednesday’s walk-through. … S Taylor Rapp (hip) did not participate.