| Projected Record | 11-6 (2-1 in 2023) |
| Weighted DVOA Offense* (2022) | 3rd |
| Weighted DVOA Defense* (2022) | 8th |
| Early Down DVOA* (2022) | 1st Down – 8th, 2nd Down – 3rd |
| Explosive Play Rate* (2022) | Offense – 15th (Run 13th, Pass 17th), Defense – 16th (Run 19th, Pass 12th) |
| Key Additions | Kyle Allen QB, Damien Harris RB, Latavius Murray RB, Deonte Harty WR, Trent Sherfield WR, David Edwards IOL, Connor McGovern IOL, Leonard Floyd EDGE, Poona Ford DI, Taylor Rapp S |
| Key Departures | Case Keenum QB, Devin Singletary RB, Taiwan Jones RB, Jamison Crowder WR, Isaiah McKenzie WR, Jake Kumerow WR, Tommy Sweeney TE, Justin Murray T, Bobby Hart T, Rodger Saffold IOL, Greg Van Roten IOL, Tremaine Edmunds LB, Jaquan Johnson S |
| Rookies to Watch | Dalton Kincaid TE, O’Cyrus Torrence IOL, Dorian Williams LB |
Injury Report
Injured Reserve: Nyheim Hines RB, Tommy Doyle OT, Von Miller EDGE
Quarterback
There isn’t much to say about Josh Allen that isn’t already said: he is a semi-truck with an arm that can function as long-range artillery fire while also feathering in beautiful touch passes in the short/intermediate game. You could start and end an article by saying “Josh Allen, man, what a world?” It is interesting to peel back the layers of Allen’s first year with Ken Dorsey to get an idea of where he is taking his game, but it’s not particularly logical to poke holes and find weaknesses: the few that exist have compensating strengths that are more than enough to render such concerns moot. I do have long-term concerns about Allen that I’ll copy and paste from the 2022 season until it happens, seen here: “Much like Cam Newton, Allen looked like the most dominant force in the league directly around his big contract, and he delivered as promised. Newton (a good comparison for Allen with power of a FB, the balance of a WR/RB, and the precision in his prime of a fighter jet) saw injuries and a deteriorating supporting cast keep him from ever recapturing 2015.” The potential for injury in Josh Allen’s game is always clear: the man is comfortable attempting to run over 300-pound defensive linemen (and, this year, hurdling anyone) and, like Cam before him, has the strength and power to do so! In terms of major stress injuries (Cam had a concussion just before the knees and shoulder went, the combination of the three essentially removing his ability to be an accurate passer and a dynamic runner), he’s broken his collarbone twice (a hazard of his game, but not a recurrent injury), sprained his elbow in 2018 (he missed games, it did not affect him moving forward), had one documented concussion in 2019 (it was Pre-Tua, so Allen played again the next week), a turf toe injury in 2021 (painful, affected his game, can be chronic, but has not proved to be with good rehab and shoes), and now the most significant injury of his career, a partially torn UCL. Allen elected not to do surgery for the UCL last January, a tendon within the elbow that changed up his game majorly last season. This injury, like the others, should not hold him back for the future, but it gives a little sneak preview into what cascading injuries could look like for Allen. For one, Josh Allen’s ability to play in the short game fell off a full cliff, majorly disrupting the plan in Buffalo. Coordinator Ken Dorsey’s big ideas, as opposed to his predecessor Brian Daboll, were all intended to make the game even easier for the star QB. Rather than having the run game be captained by Allen as the way the team could pick up needed first downs, Dorsey reckoned that the team could develop an intricate and modern quick passing game that equally capitalized on teams respecting Allen’s deep/intermediate danger (second perhaps only to Mahomes) and kept his QB safer. Allen executed the game plan well prior to his injury: outside of a poor game against Miami as a passer, he looked sharp through the early part of the year. Prior to the week 9 injury, Allen averaged a PFF passing grade* of 75.7. After that, he dropped marginally to 70.9. Nothing too concerning, to be sure, but some stats indicate real trouble. 11 of his 16 fumbles came after the injury, and his 16 fumbles put him second in the league behind Justin Fields. The Bills kept attempting the quick, safe passing game for a few weeks, but they made a game plan adjustment once it was clear that a change in Allen’s mechanics was causing trouble. In Week 15 against Miami (difficult weather, more fumbles, but bigger plays) Allen finally threw for 4 TDs for the first time since week 5. He also threw at an average depth of target* of 11.8 yards, the longest since his injury in week 9. The Bills believed they had found Allen’s sweet spot again. He never averaged less than ten yards a target again for the rest of the year. In abandoning the quick game, the Bills had neutralized a major weapon against defenses dropping into coverage and baiting their QB into turnover-worthy plays*, and Allen finished 3rd highest (tied with Tua and Geno Smith) on percentage of throws that were turnover-worthy by PFF grading last year. All this is to say that injuries have a cascading effect, effectively removing potential pieces of an offense and forcing less multiplicity, and a cascade of injuries seems to be destiny for Josh Allen with his play style. Even a relatively minor shift to his mechanics can revert him to risk-taking behaviors that could hold him back and, if we’re being honest, have held him back at points in his career.
But Allen is still a fantastic player in the NFL, one of the absolute best. Even with no receiver inspiring confidence outside of Stefon Diggs (they purged the corps over the offseason), Allen produced: he was in the 92nd percentile without play action (Dorsey’s reason for continuing to invest in a quick game), 78th percentile from a clean pocket, 89th on the standard dropback, and 90th at throwing beyond the first down line*. Allen also defies logic and boggles the mind on more unstable metrics*, like performance under pressure. You typically cannot count on a QB to perform consistently under pressure: their offensive lines have turnover in terms of personnel, their bodies age, defenses execute differently from year to year, and life as a QB simply isn’t easy. None of that matters with Allen. He graded in the 98th percentile under pressure, and he will every year until his body gives up. He had the NFL’s best rating under pressure at 96.7, while his clean passer rating was…96.6. Literally the same guy. That’s superhuman. When he’s pressured, he averages 5 yards more per target than when he is not. Allen, like many of the modern scrambling QBs, invites pressure to get more chances to cause defenders to over-commit and take the top off the defense. This style of play can be attributed to Allen and Mahomes, and it is so lethal that it becomes easy to see why pundits and coaches deem these two to be head and shoulders above their peers (though Herbert is not yet in the same rarefied air, he plays with a similar style at his best). He also leads a hell of a hurry-up offense, averaging the 2nd highest yards per attempt last year and beating the Dolphins twice in late game situations. When you add the ferocious running ability (4th best in yards per attempt behind Justin Fields, Lamar Jackson, and Taysom Hill), you have the perfect man to lead the 2-minute drill (outside of Mahomes, of course). Further, Allen’s arm strength always keeps him at the top of the charts in the most lethal route in football: the outside throw 20 yards downfield. One of the great frustrations of my life as a Dolphins fan has been watching Allen feather the perfect ball to a receiver streaking from the other side of the field to catch right on the sideline with a Dolphin in desperate chase. There is still room to elevate the quick game: Allen tied his career best in time to throw* (a still-pretty-long 2.88 seconds) even after the elbow injury caused that element of his game to be abandoned. If he can sink that number even further while regaining some of his accuracy, he can mitigate the health and turnover concerns to an extent. While the long-term outlook on Allen is a somewhat fascinating case study, the short-term is clear as day: this is one of the best QBs in the game today.
This year, Allen is hovering around similar stat lines around the quick game: he has a 2.87 second time to throw and has dropped his aDOT to around where it was before his injury last year (7.6 which, if holds, would be the shortest of his career by a wide margin). His adjusted completion percentage* is much better, as you would expect from a good quick game, at 81.6%. His receivers are dropping far fewer passes, with a drop rate of just 4.8% of attempts; his career best in terms of that luck metric is 5.9% and that likely speaks to better ball placement. He also has 6 turnover-worthy plays, a really bad sign. Projected over 17 games, that amounts to 34, which would top his career-worst of 29 last year. This needs to be cleaned up, but a large part of that number now is based on how truly terrible he was on Monday Night Football against the Jets in Week 1: his last two weeks were far better. He is running far less than ever before, which is a significantly wiser decision for this offense: he has 12 carries which would project to 68 carries on the year. That would be a career-low by 21 attempts: he had 89 carries in his rookie year when he only started 11 games. That version of Josh Allen is one I find hard to buy into, and I wonder if he takes off far more against the 3-0 division rival Dolphins. By his lofty standards, Josh Allen has had a quiet start to the year, and his team is one fluky overtime punt return away from 3-0 with a chance to regain the division lead this week. It’s a best case scenario for Buffalo.
Coaching
With Sean McDermott, the consummate professional, at the head of operations, the Bills have enjoyed consistency and efficiency throughout his tenure. That continuity is now in peril with the departure of defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier. To determine how big a deal this might be in Buffalo, it is first important to separate the two as best as possible. For McDermott, defensive play calling is the hallmark of his own success in the league: he was brought in to coach a Buffalo defense that was falling apart around Mike Pettine, his predecessor at head coach. I chronicled that journey last year: “In 2017, McDermott joined a Bills team that had seen a stout defense (4th in DVOA in 2013, 3rd in 2014) fall apart (24th in 2015, 27th in 2016)…After improving to 18th in DVOA in 2017, McDermott’s Bills would finish 2nd, 7th, 12th, and then 1st in 2021.” Add yet another top 10 DVOA finish to that list, with the Bills finishing 8th in an injury-plagued 2022. Still, as I’ll detail below in the defensive section, personnel departures, player regression, and the natural process of erosion in depth on an NFL roster are now taking their toll. Potentially as a result of a nasty playoff game, McDermott and Frazier split, and McDermott will have to solidify the unit on his own. The last two times he called plays, he finished with the 4th ranked defense by weighted DVOA in 2015 and the 9th in 2016. There, he got elite play out of linebackers and defensive linemen, cushioning a fading secondary with toughness up front. This front 7 is not the 2016 Panthers, but a re-commitment to the run defense should be expected. And then there’s Leslie Frazier. If McDermott is an elite talent developer in the front 7, Frazier is his counterpart in the secondary. Frazier has coached Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer, and Tre’Davious White to huge success in Buffalo, and coached the following at his prior stops: Eric Weddle and Lardarius Webb (huge successes in 2016 Baltimore); a young Harrison Smith, Darren Sharper, and Antoine Winfield (in Minnesota as head coach and defensive coordinator from 2007-2013); Bob Sanders in the Colts Super Bowl run; and Tory James and Deltha O’Neal as far back as 2004 with the Bengals. Frazier-led defenses have coincided with star-caliber safety play and plenty of developed talent up and down the secondary. The Indianapolis secondary is the crown jewel of Frazier’s coaching: without their relentlessness through the playoffs, Peyton Manning never wins a Super Bowl in Indy. Leslie Frazier was the play caller for these top defenses in Buffalo, and his time in Minnesota prior was also fantastic, marked by the league’s best run defense by DVOA in 2009 and the 4th best overall defense in 2008. These styles complement one another well, a key reason the Bills defense managed to stay excellent for the better part of a decade, but there may be subtle differences: McDermott used to blitz much more in Carolina, and he might be more inclined to blitz with less emphasis on the secondary. It’s hard to know. This season will set the two apart for the first time since 2017. Schematically, while we’ve only seen three games, there’s not much difference: the Bills have the 3rd-lowest blitz rate*, a 17% rate even lower than last year’s 19.4%. The Bills have the same problems fitting runs and finishing tackles from 2022, with their coverage scheme among the best in the NFL. After playing the Zach Wilson-led Jets, the Raiders, and the Commanders, it feels we have learned quite little about how this defense may be different than last year’s, and the development of that identity starts this week against a powerful opponent. They’ve benefited thus far from opportunistic turnovers, forcing 9 from some of the NFL’s most troubling offenses while racking up 12 sacks (including 9 last week). Their pressure rate* is 4th in the league with exactly 30%, according to Pro Football Reference, making them the most dangerous unit the Dolphins have played yet in terms of game-shifting defensive plays. They have the 3rd fewest percentage of drives that end in a score* by the offense (22.6%, right behind the Chiefs and the astoundingly good Browns) and with .94 points allowed per drive*, this defense hasn’t allowed much scoring.
Meanwhile, a clear picture emerges from another group of long-lost coaches. Brian Daboll left to build a surprisingly successful Giants team before the 2022 season, leaving Ken Dorsey to coordinate the offense. How does inheriting the 3rd best offense in DVOA sound for your first gig? Dorsey kept the success rolling in Buffalo, where Josh Allen again played like the best of the best. More short passes were built into the offense, and the Bills thrived with the emphasis on efficiency over explosion. Despite a poor offensive line in terms of personnel and injury, Devin Singletary (4.6 yards per attempt), James Cook (5.5), and Josh Allen (5.9 of course) used their gifts to attack defenses in many ways through the run. The passing game was on schedule through most of the year despite a lack of a clear #2 option behind Diggs. Dorsey is clearly a strong schematic coach, but players will need to emerge in his system in a way they did not in 2022. To shore up Dorsey’s unit, the Bills invested high picks in Dalton Kincaid, who reminded many in Draft Media of Travis Kelce in terms of sheer receiving ability and his own ability to create after the catch, and O’Cyrus Torrence, who should immediately step in to boost the interior line. Josh Allen is the driver of the offense, always and forever, but he’ll need help in the form of drafted and developed talent that produces at a high level. In terms of homegrown elite offensive players, Allen and 29-year-old Dion Dawkins are pretty much it, which is a problem that stems back beyond Dorsey’s tenure. Can this unit elevate and find players who can take a featured role? That may be Buffalo’s biggest offensive question this year, and resources were put into solving that question. If indeed some drafted players emerge, Ken Dorsey will be the head coach somewhere else this time next year. As of yet, Kincaid and Torrence seem like they belong in the NFL, but they haven’t flashed much. To be honest, the offense as a whole has not flashed much yet. Allen has been efficient, with the aforementioned highest adjusted completion percentage in his career, but the offense has mostly plodded along. They boast the league’s best 3rd down conversion percentage, with 51.2% (21/41) and the league’s 4th best percentage of drives ending in a score. Their average drive time* of 3:36 on offense is the highest measure in the league, and their 2.8 points per drive is second only to the absurd 3.64 points per drive that Miami has coming into Sunday. The Bills are the polar opposite of the Dolphins, racking up numbers not through explosives, but by staying ahead of the sticks. The Bills have 7 passes this year of more than 20 yards, and 10 plays total that have topped 20. Miami, meanwhile, has 20 plays that topped 20 yards, with 14 such passes. Quite literally twice as explosive. This year, especially against Miami, Buffalo will look to win the old-fashioned time of possession game and hope for an offensive mistake.
Offense
You wouldn’t know the Bills had the 3rd best weighted DVOA offense in the league last year based on how they finished. Discontent has permeated through the locker room, highlighted most notably by Stefon Diggs doing his best LeBron What-Are-You-Doing?! motion to Allen during the playoff game against the Bengals. That game was a disaster: a finesse game by the Bills in the snow that ended their hopes of a Super Bowl appearance, and came on the heels of a week where turnovers nearly delivered the Miami Dolphins the biggest upset in playoffs history (quite literally, the spread in Vegas was outrageous). The Bills also were not what they were supposed to be: an elbow injury affected Allen’s accuracy dramatically (as chronicled above), and the Bills were forced to abandon the timing-based short game that had been excellent for them. Now, Buffalo will attempt to resurrect their plan with a few new pieces, including a scheme shift toward a new dynamic rookie. The offense starts with Stefon Diggs, a mercurial presence who rediscovered his form last year with 119 catches for 1,578 yards and 11 TDs. It was his third straight year with over 10 TDs. Ken Dorsey unlocked plenty of looks by playing him in the slot at the highest rate since his 2016 sophomore season, allowing Diggs better matchups to utilize his quickness. He has slightly increased that percentage this year, from 34.2% to 34.7%. Diggs is still a threat anywhere on the field, with no signs of slowing down, but his boiling anger toward the offensive direction in general led him to leave mandatory minicamps without permission, a move that led Sean McDermott to be “very concerned.” Diggs is a championship-caliber player, but his presence (along with Frazier’s absence) seems to highlight the growing divide within the locker room that grows with each missed Super Bowl. Outside of Diggs, the Bills bring back Gabe Davis, who did not make the leap expected of him after a 4 TD playoff performance in 2021. That year, Davis’s breakout performance was foreshadowed by a 2.01 yards-per-route-run* number and an incredible 10/13 wins on contested catches* during the regular season. In 2022, those numbers dropped to 1.47 and 8/26 respectively. Allen trusted Davis on twice as many contested catch balls and Davis could not even top his catch total from last season. He nearly topped 1000 yards, but that was massively inflated by a game in Pittsburgh where they seemingly forgot to cover him to the tune of 3 catches for 171 (a full 20% of his total yards across 17 games). Davis only delivered Allen an 86.3 QB rating when targeted* a year after delivering in the 130s. It was certainly a year of disappointment there, but with 9 catches for 159 yards and 2 TDs this year, he’s playing well. The other WRs of note will play the third role, mostly out of the slot. Deonte Harty has shown plenty of flashes over his years with the Saints, and the versatile punt returner will be given every chance to prove he has the underneath skill he showed in 2021 when he feasted with a 2.69 yards per route run and 246 yards after catch on just 36 catches. This year, the Bills have struggled to find ways to get Harty the ball, utilizing jet sweeps and schemed touches that haven’t netted much. The star of this year’s Bills offseason, though, is clearly Dalton Kincaid, a player many compared to Travis Kelce during draft season. The Bills traded up for the rookie from Utah after years of struggling with Kelce themselves, and they clearly believe the undersized TE can be folded into their offense. Kincaid moves like a receiver, without the limitation of stiffness that other great receiving TE prospects (like Mike Gesicki) have displayed that make them easier to defend. Kincaid is just as much a threat catching a 5 yard drag as he is running through the seam. If he makes himself QB-friendly, he certainly has 50-catch, 10 TD potential as a rookie. Right now, he is still easing in, with 11 catches and no TDs yet. Dawson Knox rounds out the pass catchers, and he will still get time with his willing participation as a blocker in the run game and some playmaking ability of his own (56 catches in each of the last two years to go with 18 TDs combined).
Last year, as analysts were picking Buffalo to win it all, they conceded that the only real hindrance might be the offensive line. This absolutely bore out last year, as the Bills struggled to field any kind of consistent designed run game. James Cook and Damien Harris will lead the new-look RB room, with longtime dependable (if unspectacular) staple Devin Singletary moving on from Buffalo this offseason. Cook will be the dynamic player charged with handling the passing downs: he was a terrible pass blocker last year, but did just fine catching the ball, even if the team might have hoped for more from the 2nd round pick. As a runner, Cook produced better than expected yards after contact and showed plenty of elusiveness over the year. This year, Cook has been a terror for defenses: with 267 rush yards through 3 games, he has looked like the third-best player on offense behind Diggs and Allen, and a genuinely talented feature back. Cook looks better catching and blocking than last year, allowing him to stay on the field more without tipping the offense’s hand. Harris, in the meanwhile, took a huge step back in 2022 after getting the feature back role in New England in 2020. He was still plenty powerful, but he only broke off 4 runs of more than 15 yards. He also missed 6 games in 2022 with soft tissue injuries. What these RBs need for opportunities in a balanced run game is for the offensive line to do a lot more than they did over the past few years. Left tackle Dion Dawkins is the only even remotely consistent presence on that OL, and even he showed some wear and tear, allowing a career high (but still good) 37 pressures last year. He also had 13 penalties, and will have plenty to clean up in 2023. That number, however, is stellar when compared with the other tackle, Spencer Brown. Brown allowed 50 pressures on less snaps, PFF’s 73rd tackle based on 81 starters. Both tackles were weak in the run game, too, and this team may really struggle against edge rushers unless Allen bails them out. The picture is not better inside: Mitch Morse, the center signed from Kansas City in 2019, is clearly a thought partner for Allen, but not one who is physically talented. He allowed at least 20 pressures through the middle in each of the last three years, and had his contract extended for leadership rather than results. Connor McGovern was signed from Dallas to help with the interior pass rush, but he is also a liability in the run game (a real theme here) while Ryan Bates competed to play the other guard after two years of quintessentially average OL play, but lost his job and is currently the backup center. The wild card is O’Cyrus Torrence, who is an absolute mauler in the run game. Against lesser competition at Louisiana-Lafayette (Robert Hunt’s alma mater), Torrence made run game movement look easy. He’s an old-fashioned Oh-Shit-He’s-Pulling-I’m-Gonna-Die kind of guard, but seems to have the movement skills to do more. Overall, the line has been somewhat stronger at pass blocking in 2023, which allows Allen to sit in the pocket without feeling the need to break and play Hero Ball. They have run the ball more efficiently and, while PFF still doesn’t like them, it must be conceded that the line has taken a step forward as a result. As pass blockers, it seems to be more of the same: Allen has been pressured 39 times in 3 games which, if extrapolated, would equate to 221 pressures, just 3 less than his 2022 season. That number was 5th highest in the league in 2022, and the team would certainly like fewer pressures, which falls on both Allen and his OL unit to achieve.
Defense
The Buffalo Bills, crowned top of the league as soon as the 2022 offseason began, has a problem here. There is something wrong with a defense that spent the last five years at the very top of the league. Last year, I wrote that Sean McDermott’s hiring began a run of defensive excellence that saved a defense that had fallen off a cliff: after steadying the ship to 18th in DVOA in 2017, McDermott’s Bills would finish 2nd, 7th, 12th, and then 1st in 2021. Last year would be seen as another solid entry, an 8th place finish in weighted DVOA, if not for the departures and the sour taste in the mouth of a failed season. In the final playoff game, an utter fiasco on defense led to a smashmouth 27-10 Bengals win, one in which Joe Mixon gained a whopping 66 yards after contact and Joe Burrow showed out with a confident 2.46 seconds on average between snap and pass. The Bengals came in knowing what to do, and they did it. Cincinnati gained 30 first downs. Thirty. First. Downs. To be clear, the Bills allowed the 17th most 1st downs in the league last year (with one less game due to the Damar Hamlin affair, so that rate is even worse), good for 19.5 a game. They spotted the Bengals TEN MORE in that playoff game. From the opening drive, the Bills defense looked listless and unwilling to tackle: Tremaine Edmunds had his worst game of the year (gone, playing for Chicago) and Jordan Poyer missed a quarter of his tackle attempts while providing little support against Burrow’s precision passing before exiting with a concussion. And then, just a few months later, Leslie Frazier steps back from football. What in the world is going on?
What is going on certainly has little to do with a stellar defensive line, one that must transition from underrated to the spine of this team. Buffalo’s edge rush received a monumental upgrade last year when Von Miller was brought in and, until his late season knee injury, Miller looked the part of a major upgrade, elevating the entire unit. Miller tallied 45 pressures on 450 snaps, a rate that would have surpassed the 2021 Super Bowl season that saw him ascend back to elite status. His 8 sacks were the most since 2019, and will provide a new level for the team when he returns (he’s their version of the Jalen Ramsey Prayer). Even more than that, Miller opened the door for Greg Rousseau to take a massive second-year leap: the 6’6”, 260-pound product, who was drafted alongside teammate Jaelen Phillips in 2021, tallied 51 pressures a year after getting 36 pressures on more snaps the year before. His efficiency skyrocketed, and he gave the Phins 12 pressures over the 3 games, including 2 sacks in Week 3 and 6 pressures of Skylar Thompson in the playoff game. Despite being marketed as a guy who could play all over the defensive line, Rousseau has 1117 of his 1145 career snaps as a pure edge. 2023 might be the year to move him around, but there is currently no sign it will happen. The edge position actually runs 5 deep, as A.J. Epenesa (30 pressures in 2022), newly-signed Leonard Floyd (54 in 2022) and Shaq Lawson (23 in 2022) can all provide quality help, though only Lawson is much use against the run. If the Bengals set the blueprint for running and quick passing to gash the Bills, the best hope to eliminate the strategy will be through interior pressure. The Bills invested in this last year, and saw some returns: Ed Olivier regressed as a pass rusher, but turned in a passable season as a run defender and newcomer DaQuan Jones quietly turned in his best season of his 9-year career after the Bills signed him off of a Panthers 1-year “prove-it” deal. Poona Ford is the newcomer, a 310-pound force in the run game who didn’t play to his usual standards in 2022; in the right situation, he should shore up the problems in the interior run game, though he only has 23 snaps in 2023 so far. Jordan Phillips and Tim Settle return after little to be excited about in spot roles. Interestingly, outside of Rousseau and Miller, no defensive lineman is signed through the next two seasons: the Bills are on the brink of real transition, and 2023 will be the year to prove yourself for each member. Right now, Oliver has the most pressures on the team with 10, but Rousseau, Floyd, and Jones are all right there with 8 each.
Outside of the line, precious little has changed in Buffalo outside of one stinging loss: Tremaine Edmonds leaves after finally stepping up as a top-5 off-ball LB in real life (always the best one in Madden!). Edmonds was a force in coverage, causing opposing QBs to throw an abysmal 80.4 passer rating allowed* into his coverage area. In the age of RPOs designed to unsettle LBs specifically, that is unhinged. But there’s still reason to be enthused for Bills fans: His partner, the re-signed Matt Milano, somehow did BETTER with a 73.1 passer rating allowed*, both marks good for top 5 in the league among LBs who took at least half of the snaps. Terrel Bernard has been excellent as the new starter after he tallied one start in his rookie campaign last year: the 3rd-round pick from 2022 had a fine game, tallying 8 tackles in a game Josh Allen pissed away. Bernard has a tiny 7.1% missed tackle rate in 2023, and has looked great in coverage to boot. Buffalo is not missing Edmonds, replacing him with a versatile weapon in Bernard. How do they find these guys? The Bills also drafted Tulane’s Dorian Williams in the 3rd round, and his instincts in coverage were virtually unmatched in this year’s draft class, but it takes time for undersized small school LBs to make an impact, and Buffalo may not have that time. The core of the secondary looks similar to last year: Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer return as the dependable safeties, but with far less shine than last year. Last year, I wrote “Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer…are fantastic deep safeties and in the box, a versatile team who can cover anybody at any time.” Not so last year! Poyer had a very difficult season, getting his worst PFF grade since Sean McDermott arrived in Buffalo and looking a step slow in the playoffs (he had documented elbow, rib, and knee injuries on top of the concussion protocols that ended his final game, we call it The Armstead in the biz). At 32, does he have another elite season in him? Micah Hyde and Damar Hamlin inspire genuine fear within an NFL viewer when they step on a field: Hamlin’s story of cardiac arrest might be the single most salient memory of most viewers from the 2022 season, and he plans to make a return to the field. As a player, Hamlin had a fine year in relief of Hyde, but he got worse as the year went on, missing 14 tackles in the six week stretch up to his injury and tallying just 22 tackles of his own. Hyde, meanwhile, had surgery after a week 2 neck injury revealed a long-term herniated disk. The injury was speculated to be a potential career-ender (especially after Kam Chancellor hung up his cleats early with Seattle), but Hyde is determined to play. So far, he’s been the best player on the Bills defense, allowing just 5 catches for 34 yards, wild for a safety. He does look to be a step slower, and faces a huge challenge in containing Tyreek Hill. Taylor Rapp was added in the offseason as insurance here: Rapp was fantastic in run defense for the Rams through his rookie contract, spending the last two years as a starter and notching 152 tackles. Indeed, PFF projected Rapp’s contract to be 3 years, $22 million, and yet he signed a one-year prove-it deal for the minimum. Curious. He is PFF’s worst ranked Bills defender right now; they do not feel as though he brought his run defense with him. I don’t know what evidence they have for that assertion, as he’s been in on 4 tackles and missed none of them. At corner, Tre White, the two-time All-Pro, returns another year off of a bad knee injury in 2021. He came back for 2022 in week 12, and played inconsistently while teams targeted him at a higher rate than ever before. Kaiir Elam started in Tre White’s stead through week 9 and was relegated to a backup role as the boundary corner in the nickel afterward: all of his 3 interceptions came as relative gimmes in trail coverage, and he played pedestrian ball otherwise as a raw 1st-rounder learning the game. He has yet to play a down this season, a healthy scratch in all three games, so there’s a story there (we call it The Noah in the biz. Yeah, I know it’s the same joke, but it isn’t it interesting to see how the evidence that the Dolphins are mismanaged are also present on…every other team?). Instead, Christian Benford has gotten the nod, allowing just 4 catches through 3 games, but giving up 68 yards. Taron Johnson is poised to resume his role as the slot after a year of strong play within the zone-heavy system. All of Buffalo’s corners struggled with penalties last year, and the Bills have to hope that a coaching change will bring the discipline that defined the previous years of McDermott’s scheme. This year has indeed been better, with Benford logging the only accepted penalty. The team stats for the secondary are nuts, as you might expect with the level of competition, both in the numbers documented in the Coaching section and just in raw stats (3rd best 427 passing yards allowed, 2 passing TDs allowed and 7 INTs in 3 games). With the actual level of talent and intrigue of the game, it is conceivable Tua throws for more yards and TDs than that this week alone.
Special Teams
At kicker, Tyler Bass gets a little better each year. He kicks a metric ton of extra points thanks to Josh Allen’s nuttiness, hitting 175/182 in his career, and had the 4th most last year behind Philly, San Francisco, and Dallas’s kickers. Bass hit 30/34 FGs for a career-best 88.2% rate, going just 2 of 3 from over 50. Sure, Bass had some mental lapses, but he has a big leg (in his rookie year, a 54-yard bomb in the playoffs drew plenty of attention and is an NFL record for a rookie) and he was called on to make 6 FGs one game in 2022, hitting them all. He was extended for the next 4 years, and does exactly what is needed of him. Sam Martin will also return as the Bills punter. At 33, he is an elder statesman in the special teams world, and has hit a punt over 60 yards every year of his NFL career. Martin had his second highest yards per attempt last year, but his hangtime has gone down over the years. The Bills simply aren’t too worried about punting, and he’s been better this year. Nyheim Hines, one-time featured back and current returner in Buffalo, was excellent last year, but will miss the season with a knee injury after he was hit by a jet ski. As I’ve said, strange vibes in Buffalo. Harty and Harris will handle punts and kicks respectively, but neither has had much of an opportunity to do anything so far. Overall, the Bills had the best special teams by DVOA last year, and Miami certainly knows this as both their losses to the Bills came via strong plays on special teams (not to mention the Butt Punt in the one Dolphins win). Many players contribute on Bills special teams, with no one player deemed a specific ace.
Game Prediction
Two of the best teams in the NFL head up to Orchard Park, both with plenty of evidence to suggest that they’re playing the best football in the NFL right now. Neither team has really been tested: the Bills lost an emotional and frankly fluky game Week 1, but both teams sliced and diced inferior teams over the last two weeks. The record may not matter to results, but it matters in one way: the winner of this game will take the Q1 lead in the AFC East, with the Bills winning by tiebreaker if they win, and the Dolphins taking a suddenly-commanding 2 game lead. To hear Mike McDaniel drop his “check your pulse” line in media availabilities this week tells you all you need to know: the Dolphins know what kind of advantage they could garner from a win. In terms of Miami matchups, the Dolphins enters this game at their absolute weakest point of the year against strong Bills lines: Connor Williams and Jaelan Phillips are not expected to play and Terron Armstead is still struggling through practices. Their replacements have played from fine to great (Liami Eichenberg was fine in Week 3, Kendall Lamm was quite good at LT through the first two games, and Andrew Van Ginkel is taking a star turn), but the Bills have one of the better interior pass rushes in the league right now. So how good is the perimeter run game? We watched it explode for 70 points, 8 TDs coming from the RBs, but can it compensate for the opponent’s strong interior? The Bills will attempt to bully Miami, and a victory has to come from resilience in the face of relentless pressure.
The word, of course, is that this will be Josh Allen and the Bills juggernaut versus the upstart Dolphins offense, and analysts are sure that both teams score well above 60 combined points. My take, friends, is that there are two reasons that this game will feature much less scoring than expected: first, both QBs will have high completion percentages and both run games will be used to try and wrestle time of possession away from talented offenses. Secondly, and more importantly, there is no way that this game does not feature at least 4 turnovers. If I were a betting man (I am, of course, but I couldn’t find a place to bet it!) I would guess at 5 between the two teams. Buffalo and Miami are both committed to taking the football away, both have the capacity to be sloppy, and plenty of players will be straining for that extra effort. The team that gets the extra turnover late, whatever that may mean, will probably win the game.
Some individual matchups/thoughts that might determine, or at least add context to, the game:
- Can anyone stop Ed Oliver in the interior? With Connor Williams out, advantage goes to Buffalo easily.
- The Bills have the 9th-worst tackling grade on PFF this year, logging 10 last week against a surging Brian Robinson and the Washington Commanders. The Dolphins have the 7th best PFF tackle grade. The Dolphins are more equipped to bend but not break.
- The Dolphins lead the league with nearly EIGHTY PERCENT of their red zone opportunities turning into TDs. Only Kansas City and Dallas topped 70% last year. As you might guess, the Bills are the second best team at denying teams TDs in the red zone. Strength on strength, and the best Unstoppable Force/Immovable Object moment of the week. Btw, the Browns somehow have yet to allow a single red zone TD: I digress, but WHAT?!
- PFF believes Jevon Holland is the best safety in the league so far and I agree. Watch him all game mop up messes and potentially make the big play. He is Miami’s most indispensable non-Tua/Tyreek player on the football team, surpassing Armstead. His two Peanut Punches were mean against the Broncos, and if Allen is looking at Jumbotron confused by an INT, Holland will be indirectly or directly to blame.
- Not really a key to the game, but a few other Dolphins are PFF’s top at their position, including Tua, Tyreek, De’Von Achane, and Raheem Mostert (they are 1 and 2 respectively as RBs).
If ties were more common, I might pick one this week. As it is, I believe the Miami Dolphins capitalize on their speed, efficiency, and the newness of their scheme to steal a win from Buffalo in a game I predicted they’d lose in my preseason simulation. I am slamming the points under, as this game will align more with the 21-19 early season matchup than the two 60+ point matchups later in the 2022 season. I expect that classic Playoffs-In-September atmosphere, and plan to enjoy the result, however it lands, for the fantastic measuring stick that it is.
Game Prediction: Dolphins 24-22
Season Record (Taylor Picks): 3-0
NEXT WEEK: New York Giants
* = See Glossary
