Bills promised a new way, but Josh Allen remains their answer for everything
Other teams with expensive quarterbacks have made headliner moves during free agency, but not Buffalo, which still has roster holes.
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The Bills cited Josh Allen's contract as one reason why major acquisitions would be difficult in free agency. Nick Cammett / Getty Images
Josh Allen is the answer. He is the reason, the justification. He’s all rationale.
Allen makes the sun rise and set upon One Bills Drive every day.
He is the alpha and the omega.
Despite the top football executive’s consolidated power and a new head coach, the Buffalo Bills — as always — will go as far as their franchise quarterback takes them.
As free agency’s opening week concludes, not much has changed with the Bills aside from the vibes. Yes, there are a few new players, some of them intriguing.
The trade for DJ Moore might have been an overpay, but he’s an upgrade over any receiver on the roster over the past two years. Edge rusher Bradley Chubb arrives with attractive production but a checkered injury history. Safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson is a baller, but there’s a reason he’s on his fifth team in the past year.
The Bills also lost some quality players and, thus far, have failed to make any moves that go beyond what the team always was: Josh Allen and a bunch of people hoping his cape is strong enough to pull everybody on a long ride.
That plan hasn’t worked yet. The Bills won five consecutive AFC East titles before the New England Patriots supplanted them last season, but that wasn’t enough for coach Sean McDermott to keep his job, not after owner Terry Pegula witnessed a grieving, teary Allen after the game and couldn’t stand it anymore.
At the news conference explaining McDermott’s ouster, Pegula eventually said it was because Buffalo had been incapable of breaching the “proverbial playoff wall.” Still, the owner didn’t mention that in the prepared statement to deliver his tone-setting, opening remarks.
Pegula — and whoever advised him to frame the surprising decision this way — wanted to take us into the theater of the mind and imagine Allen’s sobbing husk inside the heartbroken locker room.
Nobody makes Josh Allen cry and gets away with it, apparently.
Pegula vowed a new day and a new way, promoting Brandon Beane to president of football operations in addition to general manager (because he drafted Allen) and promoting Joe Brady from offensive coordinator to head coach (because he knows Allen best).
Yet here we are after the most significant few days of meaningful, roster-changing NFL transactions, and the Bills don’t look that much different in terms of personnel or organizational identity.
Allen remains the answer to every question regarding the Bills.
He participated in interviews for McDermott’s replacement. While the team was eager to declare Allen didn’t select the next head coach, you can’t convince me that Pegula and Beane didn’t pick the candidate who would make Allen happiest.
The Bills have treated him that way for years. When offensive coordinator Brian Daboll left to become the New York Giants’ head coach in 2022, the Bills promoted Ken Dorsey at Allen’s request. They also approached Davis Webb, then the Bills’ third-string quarterback and 27 years old, to be their quarterbacks coach — because Allen likes him.
Brady is 6 1/2 years older than Allen. At his introductory news conference, Brady gushed over his quarterback and proclaimed that every decision will be made to get Allen that long-overdue Lombardi Trophy.
Sometimes, it feels like “The Twilight Zone” episode about Anthony Fremont, the 6-year-old boy whom his family and townsfolk must constantly praise and reassure, lest they be banished to a cornfield purgatory.
So, of course, the Bills carry on as though Allen can do it all. Just 10 months ago, Beane mocked the notion that Allen needed receiver help.
Allen earned the 2024 MVP, connecting with Mack Hollins for a team-high five touchdown receptions. The Bills repeated a similar patchwork receiver setup last year, relying on Joshua Palmer, Curtis Samuel, Elijah Moore and Keon Coleman out of camp.
By the NFL trade deadline, Beane admitted he tried to trade for a wideout but couldn’t get it done. Allen’s last two passes, with Buffalo needing only a field goal to beat Denver, were to November acquisitions Mecole Hardman and Brandin Cooks — an incompletion and that controversial interception.
It was crystal clear that Allen needed more dangerous playmakers and a defensive game-changer or two to further lighten his load. And the message by firing McDermott was that anything less than the Super Bowl will be considered a failure.
Why, then, shouldn’t we see an obvious overall enhancement to Buffalo’s 2026 roster after a week of free agency?
The answer from leadership: Josh Allen.
Beane and Brady spent the past few weeks trying to tamp down expectations for this week.
During their media rounds at the NFL Scouting Combine, they reiterated to anyone who would listen that Allen’s mammoth contract would make major free-agent acquisitions difficult. Not mentioned were all the heavy contracts Beane has given to players whose contributions don’t match the outlay or who are no longer with the club.
The Bills drop Allen’s name so much that it’s starting to sound like a crutch.
Buffalo fans have been riled for months, but their frustrations grew as early free-agency negotiations commenced Monday and nothing juicy transpired.
Other teams with expensive quarterbacks made headliner moves. New England added to the FOMO by adding several players, including receiver Romeo Doubs, safety Kevin Byard and Buffalo fullback Reggie Gilliam. The hated Patriots also have been sniffing around receiver A.J. Brown.
Forty minutes before the new league year dawned at 4 p.m. Wednesday, I searched recent tweets mentioning “Brandon Beane,” and folks were enraged. Bills fans just don’t like the guy anymore. Big Baller Beane’s popularity has been in quicksand since the end of the 2024 season, and offseason developments have accelerated the descent. Bargain Bin Beane is the nickname that is taking over.
Beane deserves kudos for being involved in the Trey Hendrickson derby, for trying to land Mike Evans, for salvaging the re-signing of center Connor McGovern (with Allen lobbying for his return), for finagling a seventh-round pick for nickelback Taron Johnson after announcing he was being released and for securing Moore.
We can quibble about Beane sending the 60th overall pick to the Chicago Bears for Moore and a fifth-rounder, but the Bills desperately needed a producer.
Greg Gabriel, a native western New Yorker who won a couple of Super Bowls as a New York Giants scout and is a former Bears college scouting director, told me he would be “shocked if Moore doesn’t have 100-plus catches for Buffalo. … He will do what Stefon Diggs did, only he’s tougher.”
Well worth a second-round pick, if true.
However, Beane still must add to the receiving corps and handle the Coleman fiasco that Pegula created, never mind that the Bills have promoted on their media platforms how much Allen and Beane desired Coleman in the 2024 draft.
Allen — and I say his name instead of “the Bills” because he essentially is viewed as the entire team — needs help on defense even more if he’s going to reach another level of success.
To buy into the premise that McDermott needed to go and Brady deserved the promotion requires one to believe the defense was deficient. Allen had the ball in his hands, and Brady was speaking into his headset with a chance to win each of Buffalo’s past three elimination losses. However, McDermott’s defense surrendered a lot of points.
Allen, it then must be reasoned, shouldn’t be forced to win a shootout in every playoff round.
The Bills still have holes on defense. They added nickelback Dee Alford, a smallish-but-fearless player who essentially replaces Johnson and added Gardner-Johnson, who has a track record of running afoul of his employers and teammates. Chubb is better than Joey Bosa, but not seismically. Questions remain at linebacker, with no additions yet, and Matt Milano and Shaq Thompson are unsigned.
Beane’s draft history in the early rounds (aside from Allen eight years ago) doesn’t prompt optimism for locating a difference-maker with the 26th pick. Minus their second-round pick, the Bills are among the worst three teams in draft capital based on the Fitzgerald-Spielberger NFL Draft Trade Value Chart.
When Gardner-Johnson revealed on social media that he was signing with Buffalo, the image he chose was Allen, smiling and sparkling with iced-out grillz.
There were no other words, let alone acknowledgment of the Bills. Allen was the prize in Gardner-Johnson’s mind.
Despite the declarations, things around here could not stay the same; Josh Allen is still the team.
More than ever.
