Buffalo Bills OC Joe Brady: 'This is Josh Allen’s offense'
The Bills offense is evolving, as it must. The team has seen a ton of turnover, most prominently in the wide receiver room. There are plenty of new players, and with that, an opportunity to switch up the offense.
It didn’t take long for Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady to note the importance of his quarterback.
Asked about how much of his own spin he can put on the Bills offense with a full offseason at the helm, Brady said “only time will tell.” But there are other factors influencing the offense’s development besides just time.
Just two sentences into his news conference ahead of Tuesday’s voluntary organized team activities, Brady made a declaration.
“Look at the end of the day, this is Josh Allen’s offense, right?” Brady said.
Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady speaks prior to the organized team activities on Tuesday. Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News
“You’re gonna put together the offense around the guys that you’ve got,” Brady continued. “So, for us to just say, ‘Hey, we’re just going to scrap everything and, you know, everything was broken’ – that wasn’t the case. Right? And so, there’ll be some elements of things that I believe in, but it’s more of like, tell me who we have on our football team and the guys and what they can do well and we’re going to do that.”
The Bills offense is evolving, as it must. The team has seen a ton of turnover, most prominently in the wide receiver room. Wide receivers Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis, who combined for 241 targets last season, are gone. Third-year player Khalil Shakir is now the longest-tenured receiver. Of the 14 receivers, only Andy Isabella and Shakir played snaps for the Bills last season.
There are plenty of new players, and with that, an opportunity to switch up the offense. And when it comes to the actual playbook, there are also differences, as tight end Dalton Kincaid noted.
“The playbook has changed, I wouldn’t say a ton but there’s a lot of changes and tweaks we’ve made from last year,” Kincaid said Tuesday. “So, I think the creativity and kind of freedom (Brady) has right now in terms of just testing things out, especially in OTAs, is super-helpful, just with our playbook. So, I think he’s getting a lot more comfortable as an offensive coordinator in terms of calling plays and creating a playbook around us.”
As Brady implements his changes, he’s careful to avoid just trying to plug players into the roles that Diggs and Davis have vacated. Now is the time of year to tinker with the skill sets he has.
“You don’t just sit there and just say you’re gonna replace a player or replace a scheme or targets,” Brady said. “Every year is gonna be different, and to me, the biggest thing is just as you’re going into is, ‘All right, hey, what do these wide receivers do well? And let’s find ways to put them in those positions.’ ”
And as the Bills hash out how to maximize their options on offense, Brady has a clear vision.
“In this offense,” Brady said, “Everyone is going to eat.”
Brady finds integrating all the new players to be “exciting,” and he’s very purposeful in the way he goes about that.
“You gotta be really intentional about it, because at the end of the day, like there’s only one guy in the receiver room that’s even caught a ball from Josh in a game,” Brady said. “And so, every rep in practice, the individual, there’s such an intention behind what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
“And it’s trying to get a comfort level on the field for some of those guys, and so, your offense is Josh Allen’s offense, but it’s also about what your players do well, and so this is the time right now that we’re experimenting with some things like, ‘Hey, can this guy do this? Can this guy not do this?’ ”
He’s spending more time around those players, too. Brady said that the addition of quarterbacks coach Ronald Curry has made him more comfortable spending extra time with the rest of the offense, instead of the majority of his time in the quarterbacks’ room.
And soon enough, opposing defenses will be getting to know those new Bills, too.
“At the end of the day, when you played the Buffalo Bills for however many years, you had to worry about Stefon Diggs, right? And that is different now. But you also had to worry about Josh Allen,” Brady said. “It’s a quarterback-driven league, and at the end of the day, we’re fortunate that we still have him, and the offense will still run through him. We’ll have to adjust, and we’ll have to get a feel of how teams are playing us. We’re a few days in but we’re excited about the group that we have.”
