The Buffalo Bills’ loss to the Denver Broncos on Monday night was inexcusable. They lost, 24-22, on a 36-yard field goal as time expired. That was after the Broncos missed their first attempt at a game-winning kick, when the Bills were penalized for having 12 men on the field. And that field goal was possible only because of a pass interference call on safety Taron Johnson, on a deep and badly underthrown pass on third-and-10 on a play in which the Bills sent a Cover Zero blitz. The loss feels inexplicable, and yet completely deserved. The Bills, now 5-5 and rapidly falling out of playoff contention, simply can’t get out of their own way. Now, they’re rolling heads hoping that it’ll fix things.
The Bills fired offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey on Tuesday morning, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Joe Brady, who was an offensive coordinator with the Panthers for two seasons (2020-21) before joining Buffalo’s staff as quarterbacks coach, has been named interim OC. Only the Chiefs have had a better offense by expected points added per drive than the Bills since Dorsey took over play-calling duties in 2022, yet he is the scapegoat for the team’s latest blunders.
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The coaching staff, which obviously included Dorsey but starts with head coach Sean McDermott, has failed to prepare the team well enough to get out to hot starts as of late, and they’ve struggled to correct early mishaps in games (like the curious decision on Monday night to bench running back James Cook deep into the second quarter after just the second fumble in his career). Quarterback Josh Allen—without much schematic help from Dorsey, mind you—has made too many mistakes, and most of his errors are self-inflicted. And the defense, which McDermott took over after Leslie Frazier left the team at the end of last season, is an injury-plagued disaster made worse by overaggressive calls like the zero blitz that put the Broncos in field goal range late in the game. It’s a Kendall Roy–level bed-shitting across the board. And Monday night was just par for the course.
But the Bills’ problems extend beyond Dorsey, as Monday’s loss showed. Cook coughed up a fumble on the first snap of the night, marking the second time this season the Bills have turned the ball over on their first play of a game. Allen threw two picks, the first clanging off Gabe Davis’s hands and the second on an awful throw that looked like a repeat of so many interceptions we’ve already seen from him this year. Allen also fumbled the ball away on a puzzling botched handoff with Cook in the third quarter. Turnovers have become a constant for Allen.
He now has the very odd distinction of leading the NFL in both passing touchdowns (19, tied with Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa) and interceptions (11, one more than both Jordan Love and Mac Jones). He’s a roller coaster. A fun one, sure, but also a scary one. His 26 total touchdowns are four more touchdowns than any other player in the NFL has this season, but at what cost?
The Bills are now a .500 team that’s on the outside of the AFC playoff race looking in, and they need a lot to go right to sneak in now. The New York Times’ playoff predictor currently gives the Bills just a 19 percent chance of making the postseason—lower than the Steelers, Texans, Colts, and Bengals. Their remaining schedule, per ESPN analytics, is the third hardest in the league. They don’t have their bye until after Thanksgiving, and then they open December with back-to-back games against the Chiefs and Cowboys.
How the hell did this happen? The Bills have been in Super Bowl or bust mode in each of the past three seasons. They were the preseason favorite to win the AFC East, which would be their fourth consecutive division win, and only the Chiefs and Eagles had better Super Bowl odds at the start of the year.
It starts with, well, the beginning. Buffalo has been god-awful in the first halves of games in recent weeks. Since Week 5, the Bills have ranked 30th in point differential and 27th in offensive EPA per drive in the first halves of games. Allen has ranked 25th in EPA per dropback in the first two quarters of games in that span, just ahead of Kenny Pickett, Zach Wilson, and Mac Jones, and the offense ranks 16th and 27th in third-down and red zone efficiency, respectively. What’s crazy is that all those metrics improve dramatically in the second halves of the same games. The Bills have ranked first in both third-down and red zone efficiency in the third and fourth quarters since Week 5. The offense has also ranked first in EPA per drive and Allen’s ranked first in EPA per dropback after halftime of those games. They just can’t get out of the blocks right now. While they aren’t always falling into insurmountable deficits—despite all of their early mistakes on Monday night, they trailed by only seven points at halftime—their inability to build a lead changes the dynamic of the offense and seemingly puts Allen into hero-ball mode, which often leads to even more mistakes.
The slow starts on offense have been compounded by a significant drop-off in defensive efficiency after injuries to key players like cornerback Tre White and linebacker Matt Milano. The Bills have gone from third in offensive points allowed per game in Weeks 1-4 to just 17th in Weeks 5-10. This is no longer a team that can play complementary football; instead, issues on both sides of the ball have made the margin for error on the other side almost nonexistent.
And perhaps that’s what makes this recent slide so confusing. This was a Bills team whose defense was supposed to have improved since last season, when they gave up 31 points to the Dolphins in a wild-card win and couldn’t stop the Bengals in a 27-10 divisional round loss. This was a Bills offense that was supposed to be more balanced and have more options outside of receiver Stefon Diggs. For a while, it was working.
In Weeks 2-4, Buffalo’s defense forced 10 turnovers while the offense committed just one (an arm punt to Gabe Davis in a one-on-one situation on third-and-20). The result was a plus-90 point differential and three dominant wins over the Raiders, Commanders, and, most impressively, the Dolphins. Then came the flurry of injuries and turnovers. In the six weeks that have followed that win against Miami, the Bills haven’t won the turnover battle once. Every game has been a one-score game, and they’ve gone 2-4, with a minus-6 point differential.
The common denominator in those turnovers is Allen. As awesome as he is in his best moments, Allen has lost the Bills games this season. He had four turnovers in what should’ve been a cakewalk win against the Jets in Week 1, and he’s had nine more turnovers in their past six games. Downfield accuracy has been a problem, and his decision-making, never his strongest attribute, has been especially suspect recently. He’s taking too many unnecessary risks throwing the ball downfield, often ignoring open looks at the short and intermediate levels of the field to chuck it deep. His EPA per attempt on throws of 20-plus air yards ranks just 25th this season, yet he’s thrown the fourth-most deep passes of any quarterback. Six of Allen’s league-leading 11 interceptions this year have come on such throws.
This isn’t necessarily new. Allen was tied for the second-most interceptions last year, and he has had more turnovers (94) than any other quarterback in the NFL since he was drafted in 2018. It’s his Achilles’ heel, and he knows it. Allen said so after the Bills’ first embarrassing loss of the season, their Monday Night Football season opener against the Jets.
“Same shit,” Allen said. “Same place. Different day.”
It can’t be the same shit anymore if the Bills are going to make the postseason. Allen has to play less hero ball. Both sides of the ball and the coaching staff—now without Dorsey—have to avoid unforced errors and start games faster and in a more focused way. It’s do or die now.
Buffalo’s ceiling is still as high as that of any team in football. Absolutely no one in the AFC wants to see the Bills in January. But at this rate, no one will have to.
