ORCHARD PARK — Going by the results, Joe Brady and his offense had a superb season. Those results put Brady in the mix for head coaching jobs 1 ½ seasons after becoming the Buffalo Bills’ offensive coordinator.
But Brady says he’s not a results guy. Unless he goes by the results.
The Bills were dynamic on offense, finishing second in the NFL with 30.9 points per game. They were the first team in NFL history with 30 rushing touchdowns and 30 passing touchdowns in a season
Buffalo averaged 2.92 points per drive and scored points on 49.7% of their drives. It committed league-lows in turnovers (8) and sacks (14).
Yet for the second consecutive season, the Bills had the ball in opposing territory in the waning moments of the playoffs and came away without any points. And again their season ended at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Those are the results that matter to Brady. They still mattered in Brady’s first public reflection Tuesday since the end of the season.
“I say I’m not a results guy, but when your season ends, the result is the result,” Brady said. “When you’re the offensive coordinator, your job is to … score one more point than the opposing team and we didn’t get that done. … You walk away and you’re like, ‘Hey, you know what? I didn’t do a good enough job.’”
Josh Allen was still clearly haunted by the final drive, specifically getting bamboozled by Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo on the final play. Allen had his way with Spagnuolo’s defenses for most of his career, but the Chiefs have gotten the better of him in critical moments the last two seasons.
In the 2023 AFC divisional round, Allen was solid on the final drive, trailing 27-24. He went 6 of 9 for 42 yards to get the Bills to the Kansas City 26-yard line. But pressure got to Allen, he missed his last two throws and Tyler Bass missed the game-tying field goal with 1:47 remaining.
Last year’s AFC championship game saw Allen not as crisp, going 1 of 4 for 5 yards on the final drive. Allen wasn’t bad in either game, but there were moments when the offense sputtered.
And after throwing for 300 yards in four of his first seven playoff games, Allen hasn’t cracked that mark in his last six, although he has 14 total touchdowns and one interception in those games.
Brady can share the blame, which is what he wants anyways. With a battered defense in 2023, the Bills tried to play ball-control — which has become NFL offense in the playoffs in recent years — and chewed clock.
The Bills ran the ball for 124 yards in the first half in 2023, but just 58 in the second half and Brady ploughed ahead instead of mixing up his calls. And last year James Cook had just four carries for 23 yards in the first half.
More baffling was that Cook only played 33 snaps in the game. And when the Bills finally gave him the ball in the second half, he ran nine times for 62 yards.
Cook didn’t play at all after the two-minute warning, a mystery the Bills still haven’t answered. All the while, the Bills went 2 of 6 on quarterback sneaks after going 27 of 30 the rest of the season.
It’s also not rational to throw away an entire season’s worth of success over 20 games for one play or one series of plays.
“It just wasn’t our play,” Bills right guard O’Cyrus Torrence told GNN Sports after practice Tuesday. “The whole season we did good, we did bad — more good than bad. But just on that one play, we did bad. I don’t let that one play control or hold my feelings for the whole season.”
With only four offensive players gone from the AFC championship game run, common sense says the Bills should be one of the league’s elite offenses once again. But Brady wants to stay ahead of the competition.
And the struggles late against the Chiefs weren’t unique. Despite the overall success, there were some significant lows during the regular season. The Bills had a knack for floundering early and turning it on late and there were some outright clunkers.
They had slow starts against Arizona, Tennessee, Miami and Indianapolis during the first half of the season, some of which can be attributed to Allen’s broken left hand suffered in Week 1. But there was also the Week 16 game against New England in which the offense was uneven, sandwiched between three 40-point games.
Allen’s 3,731 yards and 28 touchdowns were his fewest since 2019, coming after trading Stefon Diggs and going without a dominant receiver. “Everybody Eats” was a catchy slogan that dominated talk all season, but the Bills showed it was more of a slogan than a reality when they traded a third-round pick for Amari Cooper in Week 7.
Khalil Shakir didn’t have Diggs-like numbers, but he emerged as Allen’s favorite target. The Bills need someone like that in got-to-have-it scenarios, whether it’s Shakir, Keon Coleman, Joshua Palmer or tight end Dalton Kincaid.
“It has nothing to do with production,” Brady said of his trademark slogan. “It’s all about a selfless mindset. It’s all about approach. It’s all about, ‘Hey, I’m going to take care of my job and if I do my job, everything else will come to me.’ When guys have success, we want to love each other.”
When the Bills get the chance to put games away in the future, Brady doesn’t want to shy away. He also doesn’t have a reason to worry considering the Bills have scored 101 points and gone 21 of 37 on drives ending in the last two minutes of one-score games, including 4 of 6 last year.
“If we get that opportunity again, that’s what I want. That’s what our guys want,” Brady said. “In that situation, we’re playing on the road in those games, that chance comes along, we’ve got to be as excited as hell to go on that field and be able to go win the football game.”
NOTES: Allen, Cook, DB Cam Lewis and DE Joey Bosa were not seen at voluntary minicamp Tuesday. … OT Spencer Brown, LB Baylon Spector and S Damar Hamlin (foot) attended but didn’t practice. … CB Taron Johnson wore a red non-contact jersey after offseason shoulder surgery.