ORCHARD PARK — If it was initially unclear why the Buffalo Bills kept four tight ends on their 53-man roster, it didn’t take long to figure it out.
Keleki Latu only played four offensive snaps, but Buffalo’s entire game plan might have gone down the toilet if it only kept three tight ends and one got hurt. The Bills used three tight ends on 19 of their 53 snaps (not counting plays negated by penalty) and used multiple tight ends on 50% of their plays in a 36-31 win over the Houston Texans.
The Bills gained 137 of their 409 yards in 13 personnel (one running back and three tight ends) and 184 yards when using any sort of heavy personnel.
And when the game was on the line, the Bills didn’t deviate from what was working. With the ball at their own 4-yard line, trailing 31-30 with 3:13 remaining, the Bills came out in 13 personnel and they stayed in it for the first six plays of the drive leading up to Josh Allen’s 34-yard go-ahead touchdown pass to Joshua Palmer.
Buffalo ran 88 plays when trailing by a score in the fourth quarter last year and used 11 personnel (one running back and one tight end) on 64 of them. Only four times did they use 13 personnel in those situations.
“I think it’s always about kind of how the game is being played, and a lot of it is also trying to dictate on our terms,” Bills head coach Joe Brady said. “… You’re always thinking of matchups. … Not saying we did anything out of the ordinary, but just put them in a position of like, ‘Why are in this personnel grouping at this point in the game?’”
The Bills might be playing to their strengths in using one of the NFL’s best tight end trios — Jackson Hawes, Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox — but using multiple tight ends is a league-wide growing trend. Teams used 13 on 9% of snaps Week 1, a jump from 5.4% last and 3.6% in 2024, according to SumerSports.com.
The Texans used heavy personnel on 32 of 73 offensive plays, including 15 plays with three tight ends or two tight ends and a sixth offensive linemen. Teams first started reverting to heavier personnel to force increasingly smaller defenses to counter with an extra linebacker or defensive lineman, creating better matchups for athletic tight ends in the passing game.
But after years of offenses spreading defenses out to run the ball, they are once again using heavy personnel to run the ball. Houston ran the ball 23 times out of heavy personnel, while the Bills ran the ball the first seven times they used 13, not breaking it until Allen uncorked a 38-yard pass from his own 4 to Kincaid, who snagged the jump ball on Houston cornerback Derek Stingley Jr.
Buffalo ran the ball 14 times for 56 yards out of 13, a year after averaging 6.7 yards per carry in that personnel grouping.
“I think that any time we’re putting that personnel group on the field, we’re feeling pretty positive about what’s going to happen,” Bills offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael said. “But that can change week to week, depending on who you’re playing, maybe how much they match it and stuff like that. But that group brings a lot of versatility and a lot of production.”
The Bills had major plans to use their three tight ends last season after drafting Hawes in the fifth round. They used it 27 times over the first five games, but knee and hamstring injuries to Kincaid torpedoed those plans and they only used it 23 times the remainder of the season.
Kincaid’s presence against the Texans showed how effective the group can be throwing the ball, as he racked up five catches for a career-high 130 yards. He also played 73.7% of the snaps, his highest percentage since Week 9 of 2024.
Houston matched Buffalo’s 13 personnel by playing nickel (five defensive backs) on all but four plays — two were short yardage — and the first time the Bills threw out of 13 was when the Texans gave them a five-man front with a safety in the box.
The Bills typically loaded all three tight ends to one side of the formation, but they mixed it up on the final drive. All three were on the left side, but Knox was in the backfield, Hawes was offset on a wing and Kincaid — who was always the third tight end on the end — was split out tight to the formation.
Because the Bills ran the ball so frequently out of 13, Allen’s play-action fake held the second level and Kincaid was behind them before they realized it was a pass. Houston was in man-to-man coverage and Kincaid’s jump and short split put cornerback Kamari Lassiter in trail coverage, making it an easy 35-yard gain.
Allen went 6 of 8 for 120 yards — and a 21-yard touchdown scramble — on play-action passes. Kincaid is the key in throwing the ball out of 13, though. He has become a serviceable blocker, but he’s also like having a second wide receiver on the field in those plays.
“With the amount of nickel they were playing and getting in those small groupings, that’s got to be something that, in that situation, if he can be on the field both in the run game, it’s only going to help him in the pass game situations,” Brady said. “… He was literally matched up on every player in their secondary at one point or another.”