Smash the Window, Part II: The Super Bowl Plan
Josh Allen is still in his prime. How do the 2024 Buffalo Bills maximize their greatest gift and finally reach the Super Bowl? There are encouraging signs at One Bills Drive.
Miss Part I? Catch up here.
Two minutes to go. Ball at the 26-yard line.
Empty set. Five wide. Second and 9.
27-24.
This is the play that should’ve served as the Buffalo Bills’ knife through the Kansas City Chiefs’ chest.
The home crowd dims to a hush. “Ty, get on! Ty, get on!” the quarterback orders before the snap. Ty Johnson steps up to the line. “We’re good! We’re good!” Josh Allen waves Stefon Diggs in for a short motion, the wideout trots 4 ½ steps, mouthguard bobbing in the winter chill, the ball’s snapped and then? Naturally, the quarterback goes for the kill.
Diggs is wide open underneath on the crosser for a first down.
But Khalil Shakir, streaking down the middle, is open for a touchdown. Allen doesn’t hesitate. The QB who appeared unsure of himself for stretches earlier in the season squats into his stance — a trophy buck in his scope for a clear shot — cocks his right arm back, lets it fly, and… one problem. He’s bumped. Barely. While you’ve probably experienced worse collisions in the basement playing with your 4-year-old, this slight ding to the left hip affects Allen’s release just enough for his pass to sail incomplete.
After one more incomplete pass, kicker Tyler Bass is summoned for a game-tying 44-yard kick from the right hash, misses wide right and the Bills officially plunge back into the soul-searching offseason abyss.
No play was scrutinized more than Allen’s misfire. That play represented the razor-thin margin between these two AFC powers while also serving as the perfect microcosm for the team’s best player.
Nitpick Allen if you must. Blather on… and on… during the daytime television segments.
The reason the Bills are a relevant football team capable of leveraging locals for a new stadium, charging $15,000 to $50,000 PSL fees and competing for championships today is the fact that they’re in possession of a YOLO’ing quarterback who thinks touchdown, not first down, when the stakes are raised to hair-raising extremes. Those still clamoring for the checkdown can promptly turn to Page 2,007 and 2,008 of your textbook, rip those Trent Edwards pages out, frame them for the living room and take two more pills for this wretched Drought Brain condition.
As for the franchise? The only reaction to this defining play should be to demand more throws directly to the end zone. All personnel and coaching decisions should be made through the prism of maximizing a quarterback who also planted his back foot at his own 11-yard and launched a perfect bomb 63 yards through the air, in-strike, through Diggs’ arms on the same exact drive. No wonder another former general manager — one who never had a QB in Allen’s galaxy of talent — is mystified by the public discourse surrounding this quarterback.
Mark Dominik will gladly accept the 18 regular-season interceptions, the KC decision, all collateral damage.
As the takes get drunker this offseason, he kindly directs our attention to another number: “15.” As in fifteen rushing touchdowns.
There’s everything Allen brings as a passer. He’s also a human bulldozer.
“I don’t think people even realize that,” said Dominik, who worked in NFL front offices 20+ years, including 2019- ‘23 as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ GM. “Everybody just looks at his stats and goes, ‘Ugh. Josh Allen took a step back.’ He had 15 touchdowns on the ground. That’s incredible. If there’s a concern about it, that’s a problem I wish I had when I was the GM. A quarterback who had that issue.”
The Bills’ insistence on equipping their quarterback with six N95 masks and full bubble-wrapping never made much sense considering he’s the No. 1 reason for this team’s ascent. Any attempt to dilute his play style — however innocent, however subtle the comment — was illogical. Why inject an inkling of doubt inside his head? Artists must create with a free mind. Peyton Manning, the man who eventually shattered the Indianapolis Colts’ window, was more philharmonic conductor. Allen is AC/DC lead guitarist Angus Young rocking the same power chords.
Turning down the volume and asking him to play the occasional acoustic number never made a lick of sense.
Brandon Beane chose Allen over UCLA’s Josh Rosen and the GM’s career is correctly defined by this unpopular decision. This was his Manning > Leaf moment. He had extremely strong conviction. This spring, Bills are dropping hints that they know damn well they must maximize Allen — in full — while they still can.
If 2024 is the year the Buffalo Bills finally break through, they must permit Allen to shatter the window himself. He certainly can.
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Everything tells the Bills to load up.
The AFC remains a quarterback gauntlet with Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, C.J. Stroud and Justin Herbert. Miami’s offense is always liable to detonate. Aaron Rodgers returns. And perhaps another quarterback — Trevor Lawrence? Deshaun Watson? Anthony Richardson? — even crashes the party.
This week, the NFL (again) made it abundantly clear it does not want defense polluting its product. Under the perverted guise of “player safety,” owners voted unanimously to ban the “hip-drop tackle,” a term invented and leaked into the public lexicon 17 minutes ago. Pulling down a ball-carrier from behind is now illegal but — yes, yes — let’s ask guys to play three NFL games in an 11-day span because there’s money to be made on Christmas Day. Even Tony Dungy, who’s been around the NFL as a player and coach since 1977, stated on X that he never heard of a “hip drop.” Dungy pointed out that the Laws of Physics tell us the only way to tackle a defender from behind is to drop your weight.
The NFL’s intent is obvious: Sow hesitation into defensive players.
More gray area and more bang-bang-play subjectivity further zaps natural instincts, thus feeding more shootouts. More points. More fun on the gambling apps for consumers. Exactly as we should all view a bipartisan bill with suspicion, the fact that 32 teams so enthusiastically greenlit this ban reeks of power shifting from the players to the shield.
All of this, of course, follows another season full of asinine unnecessary roughness penalties.
Owners know they cannot go full flag football — people would tune out — so they’ll sell a utopian middle ground that does not exist.
So if you’re the Bills, for the purposes of this discussion, why in the bleep would you obsess over defense? McDermott is on the competition committee himself. Don’t fight gravity. If the NFL insists on guiding the sport this insane direction, roll with it. Win shootouts.
Allen isn’t Manning. Or Tom Brady. Or Aaron Rodgers. You’ll never see him cuss out teammates or engage in a shouting match with his head coach. He has grown into an intellectual pre-snap QB capable of audibling into the right play, but Allen isn’t flummoxing coordinators with his brain like this trio. As one former teammate said in our December series: “No. 17 is just a different bird. He’s wired different. He’s not like most of these quarterbacks. He wants to make dick jokes and run into people.”
And then: “This is a freaking 10-year old kid who just wants to have fun. And by the way, that's pretty cool for the Buffalo Bills quarterback. The guy freaking makes ‘em happy. Just let him be him! It’s bananas.”
He treats the field as his personal backyard… which is very convenient considering that’s where the NFL is headed.
Again, there are lessons to glean from the team that best resembles these Bills at this moment in time. Dungy cut his teeth as a defensive mastermind. The fact that he guided a Shaun King-quarterbacked offense within one bad call of a Super Bowl is an all-time accomplishment. And yet, with Manning, he was OK winning 38-35 shootouts. He didn’t overthink this philosophy shift, didn’t panic over an up-tempo offense gassing his defense. Offensive coordinator Tom Moore also gave Manning autonomy. Egos were suppressed. Records, broken.
A select few general managers, like Bill Polian, have the luxury of constructing a Super Bowl roster around such a supernatural quarterback. Most, like Dominik, do not. That’s why he cannot fathom anyone freaking out over Allen’s mistakes.
Dominik fully expects Allen to throw north of 30 touchdowns this season.
“Now, he’s always going to have a little bit higher interception rate because he is so aggressive,” Dominik says, “which I appreciate. That’s part of what makes him the quarterback he is. But I don’t sit there and look at that and go, ‘Boy, this is just going to be a real problem for our football team going forward.’ I think that's not an issue at all that I worry about. I think it’s a good thing.
“I mean the guy has scored over 50 touchdowns on the ground. Forget the fact that he’s throwing 160, 170. Score 50 touchdowns on the ground as a quarterback? There are running backs that would dream to have that as their entire career. He’s elite.”
Manning was able to catch Brady twice in his career. Once as a Colt, once with Denver.
Much like Polian 18 years ago, Beane is taking the right steps to give his own archfoe — the Kansas City Chiefs — his best punch. It’s a different game. Players then made a third of what they do today, but as ex-Colts QB Jim Sorgi accurately states, building a roster is still a game of Tetris. You need the strong foundation, the quarterback, and then you need to find blocks that fit into that foundation. In that sense, Beane’s job is no different than Polian. Once that playoff “bile,” as Polian described, left everyone’s system in Buffalo, Beane faced the worst salary-cap situation in the NFL. This roster was 41.3 million in the red.
However, the timing for this overhaul was ideal.
A third loss to the Chiefs demanded change, and the defense will be counting on a new nucleus of playmakers. Linebacker Terrel Bernard (2022, third round) and cornerback Christian Benford (2022, sixth round) may be on the cusp. First-round pick Kaiir Elam, has struggled but at least Beane covered his bases here in acquiring Rasul Douglas, a one-man turnover factory, for a third-round pick. The Bills will be counting on someone in the draft this spring breaking into the lineup and making the critical play that flips a playoff game. This unit has forced all of two turnovers in its five playoff defeats.
Straight-up shutting down offenses isn’t realistic vs. Mahomes, vs. Burrow in this new NFL.
The Bills need their own Marlin Jackson swipe, their own Kelvin Hayden pick-six.
“And I think that's where their draft is going to be really important to them in terms of being able to find one more player — maybe two more players — that can step in and find ways to create that extra turnover in the game,” says Dominik. “Which is what I think they’ve got to do. And I know that moving around the cornerback room and letting some guys go is certainly going to create some opportunities. Christian Benford obviously took a huge step last year and Taron Johnson deserves the pay raise that he just got.
“You’ll see them still focus on the secondary a lot in the draft.”
Music to the ears of no one demanding wide receivers, but the Bills should have enough draft ammo to find another playmaker on defense and draft a receiver or two. With two fours, three fives and three sixes, he can see Beane packaging picks together to get another selection in the top 100. And to him, Curtis Samuel was one of the best signings in free agency. The Bills haven’t featured a true weapon in the slot since Cole Beasley’s peak. Isaiah McKenzie suffered a concussion, dropped passes and wasn’t utilized as a true slot in Ken Dorsey’s offense. Last year, the Bills deployed a high volume of two-TE sets before gradually ramping up Shakir’s workload. He delivered.
At his best, under Brian Daboll, this was a quarterback feasting on seven-, nine-, 13-yard chunks.
This is Samuel’s game. This should also organically limit Allen’s interception number. He’ll be less tempted to Favre a throw deeper in tight coverage. With the bumbling Washington Commanders, Samuel still managed to catch 60+ balls in each of his last two seasons. He lined up in the slot 74.6 percent of the time, per PFF, while also lining up in the backfield 63 snaps. Samuel eclipsed 1,000 total yards from scrimmage in 2020 with Carolina and current Bills OC, Joe Brady.
Shedding salary on defense to fit in Samuel’s $8 million per year on offense was a smart trade-off.
“You’re getting a guy that runs really good routes,” Dominik says. “He knows where he is supposed to be. He settles down. He’s got good awareness against zones. He’s quick twitch enough to be able to beat man-to-man and he’s a guy that can come in there and catch you 60-70 balls in that offense. He may not be the vertical push guy that they still might be looking for. And this draft is interesting because of the fact that there’s a lot of big bodies. But I think that Curtis is the guy that’s going to do the underneath stuff. He’s a guy that’s going to help you move the chains and get the first downs when it’s third and 3 and Josh can pivot back over and go, ‘There’s Curtis right there. Dump it to him. I trust him.’ That really brings a comfort of trust.”
All dollars, cents and common sense — cryptic tweets aside — point toward Diggs playing under his Bills contract. Cool heads should prevail. (Ed’s note: Cool heads did not prevail. We examined the Diggs Fallout here.) In Utah’s Dalton Kincaid, Beane might’ve found his own version of Dallas Clark. His own matchup problem capable of warping the geometry of the field. Dominik is also quick to cite a healthy Dawson Knox as a key because those two-TE sets do create maddening unpredictability for a defense. However the X’s and O’s fuse in Brady’s playbook, the Bills must remember Josh Allen is the player who’s always at his best in the playoffs. Feeding him more receiving options in the draft is Priority No. 1.
Especially in what’s being hailed as a historically special receiving draft class. Even though it’s an “X” the Bills need most, they shouldn’t have blinders on. Talent is bound to trickle to their No. 28 overall pick. After the Chiefs jumped up to snag McDuffie in ’22, Beane may even consider sliding up the board.
The wideouts themselves stated their case at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.
Xavier Worthy, from Texas, claimed he is faster than a cheetah and then ran the 40-yard dash in 4.22 seconds, a new Combine record. He believes he’d fit into the Bills’ pro-style offense. (“Being a speed guy is cool but nobody looks at the route running element of my game. I run really good routes, if not the best in the class.”)
Adonai Mitchell, also from Texas, explained how he deftly changes the “pace” of his routes to waste defenders. The 6-foot-2, 205-pounder caught 55 passes for 845 yards and 11 touchdowns last fall. He met with the Bills. (“There’s a lot of guys out there doing really great things. Just trying to take every little nugget that I can out of one person’s game and try to add it to my game. If you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.”)
Brian Thomas, from LSU, may require a trade up. He cited a play-to-play ability to decipher coverages as his greatest strength. His favorite route? The slot fade. Brady was NFL-bound by the time Thomas arrived on campus, but said he loved the OC’s offense. Thomas comp’d his size and route running to Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins. Last season, he caught 68 balls for 1,177 yards with 17 scores.
Ladd McConkey, from Georgia, insists he can play inside and outside and it’s no agent-driven talking point. The tape backs up this claim. (“I can get the job done. Whatever you need, I can be the one to do it.”)
The Bills have gone too long ignoring wide receivers early in the draft. In the five drafts since selecting Allen in 2018, they’ve taken one wide receiver and two tight ends in Rounds 1 through 4. Conversely, the Green Bay Packers have drafted four wideouts and three tight ends since drafting Jordan Love in 2020. That’s how a first-year starter threw the second-most touchdowns in the NFL. He grew up with his receivers.
Mostly, it’s simply smart business to add such high-impact players… in a league rigged toward the offense… on cost-controlled contracts for four years.
Jim Nagy, the director of the Senior Bowl, doesn’t hesitate. He views the Buffalo Bills’ window as wide, wide open as long as Allen is the quarterback. Nagy also cautions against getting too cute in thinking someone may slide to their second-round pick. Thomas could be available at 26 and Nagy was on-site for LSU’s pro day the day before this conversation. The wideout reeled in a deep ball over his shoulder with his fingertips right in front of a stunned Nagy.
Speaking to his sources at LSU, he’s convinced Thomas’ best football is still in front of him.
McConkey was voted the top receiver during Senior Bowl week in Mobile by the DBs who guarded him. Anyone pigeonholing the Georgia receiver as a slot-only receiver should check their Caucasian bias at the door. Nagy assures his 4.3 speed is legit on the field and that McConkey can play outside. Each summer, the longtime NFL scout conducts a scouting school with former NFL players. They couldn’t believe what they saw in McConkey.
“A few DBs were like, ‘Holy shit!’” says Nagy, an NFL scout for 18 years who won four Super Bowls with the Packers, Patriots and Seahawks. “He can run. He can run run. His big thing was last year was he dropped some of those deep balls but he can get behind people. He’s not just a slot guy.”
That being said, he’s high on Shakir. (“He’s a guy you can depend on. He gets open. He’s tough as shit.”) A larger body does make the most sense in Buffalo. If Thomas isn’t available, maybe the perfect fit is South Carolina’s Xavier Legette. Listed at 6 foot 1, 221 pounds, Nagy believes he plays like he’s 6-4 because he’s “thick-muscled” and runs sharp routes. This is no straight-line threat. After four nondescript seasons, Legette erupted for 71 catches, 1,255 yards and seven touchdowns in 2023. That may be a red flag to some but — after speaking to people in the Gamecocks program — Nagy discovered the receiver elevated his work ethic to a totally different level.
Legette took his exit interview after the 2022 season with Shane Beamer to heart.
“Nobody in that program worked harder,” Nagy says. “He was there all the time. Relentless. Had a goal, knew it was his last time, got really serious about it and he just worked his balls off.”
Maybe Manning and Allen are vastly different in style. But not substance. The Hall of Famer Polian views both as “mentally and physically tough” and “critically efficient in the biggest moments.” Of course, Manning was known as a Regular Season Quarterback up to his 2006 breakthrough — a label Sorgi loathed. The No. 2 QB was around Manning more than anybody and believes his preparation was second to none. At the facility. At home. All offseason. All camp. Obsessed with finding the slightest edge, Manning earned the right to command an offense play-to-play, drive-to-drive.
He changed the position with his brilliance at the line of scrimmage, retiring with more yards (71,940) and more touchdowns (539) than anyone ever.
Any GOAT debate, to Sorgi, must include Manning.
But then he makes a smart point. Sorgi wishes he could’ve seen how others like Mahomes and Brady work up close because, “there’s a heck of a lot of ways to be great.”
Allen is the big kid, juking and leaping and chucking footballs 60+ yards.
“I love the way he plays the game,” says Sorgi. “He’s going to be a guy that finally breaks through that ceiling at some point and gets his Super Bowl ring.”
He pauses and offers a soft chuckle. It hits him that Mahomes — the Texas Tech QB Bills owner Terry Pegula once coveted — is not going anywhere. Sorgi laments the fact that those Colts teams didn’t win more Super Bowls.
“It’s tough. It reminds you so much back in the day of the Brady-Manning days.”
The window only shatters if this version of the quarterback — the 10-year-old — is permitted to shine.
Which brings us to the head coach.
Calm saved the ’06 Colts. When the team was blasted by the Jaguars for 375 rushing yards, when the Patriots raced to a 21-3 lead in the AFC title game, Tony Dungy refused to panic.
This isn’t how former Bills assistants and players described Sean McDermott in the biggest moments, no. They cited the head coach’s tendency to take over playcalling in key spots, call “Kodak” timeouts that disrupt flow and an ultra-tight demeanor ahead of those playoff losses. “It’s like you make a good batch,” one player said, “but then he just adds a drop of poison in there and it makes the whole thing bad.”
The Bills’ defense collapsed again in the playoffs vs. KC.
But it’s also true that the team’s backs were against the wall. At 6-6, they needed to win out to make the playoffs. And in tight moments, the Bills played loose. After Kadarius Toney’s offside in KC, the defense clamped down to force back-to-back incompletions. When the division was on the line in Miami — fourth and 1, at his own 35, with 4:05 left — McDermott went for it. Then, he rolled the dice again on fourth and 1 the same drive. Welcomed developments.
For too long, the Bills have become an overly tight team waiting for something to go terribly wrong. Tightness was obvious as this Bills defense allowed TDs and field goals on 75 percent of non-kneeldown possessions the last four playoff exits. Panic was a problem in “13 Seconds.” Whatever worked through the six-game winning streak a year ago must be adopted for 2024, and beyond.
The best coaches know an entire locker room takes on their persona — and stay cool in the chaos.
McDermott’s public tone shifted. He started praising Allen more than ever before.
McDermott’s game management took a positive turn, too. Asked at halftime of that KC playoff loss what his message to the players was, he simply said: “Go for it.” He then called for the infamous fake punt to Damar Hamlin. The attempt failed, but this fully represented the playoff guts the Bills have been lacking. If anything, this moment proved a coach cannot flip a switch on the fly. It takes months for true belief to weave into the fabric of a team.
After the season, asked about his philosophy, McDermott sounded like a coach who gets it. “Mentally, go for it,” he said. “Coach to win. Play to win. That, to me is a winner’s mentality. That’s a winner’s approach.”
At the owners meeting, he told NFL Network that it’s “narrow-minded” to suggest the Bills haven’t had success.
Considering the Bills have reached only one conference championship with arguably the second-best player in the sport, this comment was swiftly picked apart. Maybe it should be. But maybe McDermott’s larger goal is to alleviate stress and get players thinking positively through these offseason doldrums. Such an approach is a stark contrast to hoisting a Lombardi Trophy banner in the fieldhouse. Looking back, Colts players realized the belief was inside of them all along. It took specific moments like Dungy’s halftime prophecy for that belief to manifest in ‘06.
Thinking about this all, I’m reminded of what Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings said about quarterback Aaron Rodgers for my Bleacher Report story on the Gren Bay Packers five years ago: “As much as he is a part of the problem, he’s a big part of the solution.”
Rodgers decided to lambast and ostracize Jennings for expressing his opinion and his eventual divorce from the Packers was ugly. Much of what the wide receiver said played out in the public sphere. The quarterback never changed.
The same logic is true here.
If McDermott realizes he has been a problem, he absolutely can also become part of the solution.
They first met each other at the 1977 Hula Bowl. Tony Dungy was the quarterback for the University of Minnesota, Herm Edwards a cornerback for San Diego State and the two really hit it off after then spending two weeks together ahead of the “Japan Bowl.”
Neither was drafted. Both played in the NFL. And when Dungy was hired as the Kansas City Chiefs’ defensive backs coach in 1990, he hired Edwards as a scout. When Dungy took over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1996, he brought Edwards with him as a defensive backs and assistant head coach. Dungy was the mild-mannered good cop, Edwards the fiery bad cop. The friends would go on to face each other in playoffs twice when Edwards took over his own team.
Edwards’ New York Jets whacked Dungy’s Colts, 41-0, in ’02.
In ’06, the Colts took down Edwards’ Chiefs, 23-8, en route to their title triumph.
Nobody knows the Hall-of-Famer who banged away at that Super Bowl window better than the vivacious Edwards. His perspective is instructive here in Western New York. Through four playoff appearances and two firings himself, Edwards learned plenty.
He begins with one simple truth: The outside world has “no clue” what’s on the plate of an NFL head coach.
With the Bucs, he’d sit in on every important meeting between Dungy and GM Rich McKay. Every coaches’ meeting. If a big decision needed to be made with these Bucs? Edwards was there and he always made a point to ask his boss why he made certain decisions. Dungy explained. They agreed. They disagreed. And it became clear that one of Dungy’s greatest strengths was his ability to concisely explain to assistant coaches how he wanted anything taught.
Then, there was no need to micromanage, to meddle.
Too many head coaches forget they need to coach the coaches before taking a gigantic step back to examine the bigger picture.
“You can’t be in all the meetings,” Edwards says. “You’ve got to hire guys you can trust that will deliver your message. And you’ve got to constantly coach the coaches: ‘This is my program. This is what I believe in. Say it any way you want, but at the end of the day, these are the building blocks of it and we got to build off these blocks.’ And as long as those guys believe that and preach it, you’re good. And I always told coaches, ‘The worst thing you could do as a coach is never tell a player why you’re doing this.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to tell ‘em why, man. It’s not, ‘This is what we do.’ … They’re searching for knowledge.”
Coaches leaving One Bills Drive for lateral jobs — in the midst of Allen’s prime years — was a damning red flag. A handful obviously spoke their minds to Go Long. But the influx of fresh faces the last two years gives McDermott an opportunity to reset his work-place environment. If Joe Brady and Bobby Babich are genuinely empowered to run their own show, both could bring fresh ideas to this team maxing out each January.
Healthy debate was encouraged under Dungy.
Dungy wanted assistants to argue their case before then making a final call.
And like McDermott, he cut his teeth as a defensive assistant. His Tampa 2 scheme changed the sport with Tampa Bay’s Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Derrick Brooks and Ronde Barber all earning gold jackets. Indy’s Dwight Freeney gets in this summer. Still, Dungy refused to get tangled in the minutiae. Needless wars were not waged from within because he trusted his assistants and maintained a panoramic view of the team. Witnessing this steady leadership, one piece of advice Edwards can give head coaches everywhere is to focus on handling “three or four” players.
Rather than trying to cultivate deep relationships with all 53 on the roster — “impossible,” Edwards says — diagnose a select few that need the attention.
The NFL is a star-driven enterprise. Now, more than ever.
Forging a bond with his quarterback should be McDermott’s No. 1 place to start. Allen isn’t one to make a stink. Nor could these two ever strike up the sort of rapport Allen had with Daboll. But the more these two talk, the more the head coach will view the game through the quarterback’s lens. The more he’ll be tempted to put the ball in Allen’s hands with a season on the line. Diggs is a different animal. As McKenzie said on a Happy Hour last offseason, players know to simply let Diggs vent when he must vent. (News flash: Wide receivers can be moody.) Diggs is also a talent the Bills will absolutely need to reach the Super Bowl. Anything McDermott can do to mend this relationship is smart. In Part II of our series, one player said: “Diggs wants to be great for Diggs. And when you question that, Diggs gets pissed off. Because that’s testing his integrity and what he wants to be.”
If there’s bad blood, neither coach or receiver has allowed that bad blood to hemorrhage into the public eye since last year’s minicamp drama.
Pick any team, any era. This is common. Ex-Broncos coach Mike Shanahan detailed the times he clashed with star tight end Shannon Sharpe in “Blood and Guts.” Their relationship wasn’t pretty but a peace treaty was reached when Shanahan allowed Sharpe to train on his own in Atlanta. Shanahan learned to appreciate that arguably nobody on the roster lifted more weights than the shredded tight end. Those Denver Broncos won two Super Bowls and Sharpe, a Hall of Famer, was the best tight end of the ‘90s.
As a young assistant in KC, Edwards remembers nine-time Pro Bowl linebacker Derrick Thomas waltzing in as the absolute last player for meetings. He was on time, but goshdangit. This drove coaches nuts. Just once they wanted Thomas to show up a few minutes early. But they also knew this: Thomas was the team’s best player. As the head man, Edwards learned to tell his own assistants: “Let me get him to the game. You guys coach him and I’ll get him to the game.”
Adds Edwards: “I always say there’s always a special player. We all know who they are and everybody’s got ‘em on their team. It’s like, ‘How do you handle that guy?’ The head coach has to step in and say, ‘Look, these are my guys.’”
It’s no coincidence that Andy Reid is the closest the NFL has to Phil Jackson when it comes to knowing exactly which buttons to push with his constellation of personalities.
Small tweaks like this, Edwards believes, could help the Bills get over the hump. Something’s missing.
Above all, they somehow need to solve the greatest player in the sport.
After 19 years of Brady, they’re six years into the Mahomes vortex.
“If you can’t beat them,” Edwards says, “you ain’t going nowhere.”
He also isn’t so sure it’ll get any better than Buffalo’s opportunity last season. Injuries? You can virtually see Edwards’ snarling scowl as his adrenaline picks up. He doesn’t want to hear excuses. Not when you get Mahomes in Orchard Park, NY, during his worst statistical season to date.
“You’ve got to win that game, man,” Edwards says. “You have to win that game. You’re at home. It’s no one’s fault. It is just how great they are. But you can’t let Kelce and Mahomes beat you. You can’t! Anybody else can beat you. Can’t let those two dudes beat you. And they were up and down all year. But you knew when this dude got in the playoffs, hey man, you better stop them two guys. If you can't stop them two guys, it’s over.
“You can’t let ‘em hang around. Because they’re going to get you.”
Edwards isn’t so sure McDermott’s Bills will get such a clean knockout shot again.
Right now, owner Terry Pegula is betting that continuity trumps complacency, that year…to year… to agonizing year, McDermott, Beane and Allen grow together. Polian of course sees the virtues in such patience. Former Bills offensive coordinator Ted Marchibroda used to repeat one line around the building: “We want believers.” As GM, Polian tried to build a team of players who think this way, from Peyton Manning with the No. 1 overall pick in ’98 to the 17 undrafted players on his ’06 Super Bowl roster.
“And this present Bills team is full of them,” Polian says. “You’ve got to have the believers first. That’s where it starts.”
There’s work to do. Beane faces his most important draft since 2018. McDermott’s set to lead a new coaching staff and new young core on defense. We’ll see if his “winners mentality” sticks through an entire season. The Bills will ultimately be judged in the postseason. The GM and head coach aren’t always synced up in this league. Often, it’s an arranged marriage doomed for spontaneous combustion. Here, Polian sees a GM who knows exactly what McDermott wants on the field. To him, it doesn’t matter who technically has final say when the relationship is this strong.
Last year’s playoff loss followed the same script. One the Bills have followed religiously for five years. Polian understands why legions of fans are upset.
Yet, he lived this. His perspective is different.
“Most people — outsiders and fans and media actually view what happened this year as a terrible thing,” Polian says. “To win six straight essentially playoff games, play-in games, and come through all that injury, that is a phenomenal job. And they will be so much stronger for that experience that this is not a bad thing. It’s almost a good thing. Losing is never good. But when you make the kind of run that they made under the kind of duress that they faced, that builds character. Builds belief. Builds strength.”
Polian would know.
Another do-or-die date with the Chiefs seems inevitable.
OK, now, where’s that Simulate to Playoffs button…
ICYMI:
Outstanding Tyler! As usual, your opinions and theories are spot on!
Good historical perspective on what it takes to win in the NFL. A lot of positive signs that this year can be different for the Bills.