What’s wrong in Buffalo? How the Bills went from a contender to a question mark
If nothing changes in Buffalo, signs are pointing toward another year of Josh Allen's career ending the way the rest of them have.
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Buffalo's offense led by Josh Allen, James Cook and what had been one of the NFL's best offensive lines coming into the season,
scored just 19 points in a loss to Houston on Thursday. Alex Slitz / Getty Images
The scene inside the visitors’ locker room at NRG Stadium was an all too familiar one for the 2025 Buffalo Bills.
For the third time in four road matchups, the Bills were on the wrong side of the result, this time, a 23-19 loss to the Houston Texans. A general hush overtook the room of 70-plus larger-than-life human beings. A group that, over the years, has been so accustomed to making settings like that one a rarity.
There were pockets of low conversation spread throughout the room, but they were drowned out by the equipment staff hurriedly zipping up all the players’ gear bags to get them on the truck home. The players who agreed to interviews even low-talked. Wide receiver Gabe Davis was so quiet during his interview that you couldn’t even make out what he was saying from more than one arm’s length away.
Those different pockets were spread throughout. There was the quarterback area, with Josh Allen, backup Mitchell Trubisky and practice squad quarterback Shane Buechele, who didn’t chat after the game as long as they usually do after losses. There was a wide receiver area, consisting of Davis and Khalil Shakir, having a quiet conference at the lockers nearest the exit.
But for the most part, players just kept to themselves, packed up their suitcases and exited to begin their long walk to the buses.
Those who talked tried their best to unpack what had just happened.
“Better days to come. It kind of feels like the last game of the year, but it’s not,” left tackle Dion Dawkins said. “We’re a good team, though. Our best day is yet to come.”
The simple fact of the matter is that very confidence, that things will just get better because, partially, it always has before, is not rooted in the current reality of the Bills’ offense. And that might be part of the overwhelming problem — an overreliance on the things that got them there previously.
This year’s team is a far cry from what they were in 2024. There was something unique about that team last year, learning their lessons early, finding their stride, and even looking great and super competitive in all their losses. This year, that energy is off. Rather than learning from their lessons, there is too much resting on the laurels of the past.
Bills head coach Sean McDermott will be the first to admit that every season is different. In fact, he stresses it at the beginning of every year.
Last year, the togetherness of the Bills’ roster was easy to see. It was effortless. That’s why their loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game was such a stinging one, because last year really seemed like the one they were going to break through. This year, we’ve seen instances of players demonstratively correcting others on film when there’s a mistake made, almost in exasperation. Just last week, in a game where the Bills’ offense had been the best it’s been all season, there was a moment on the sidelines when two offensive linemen had to be separated during a heated discussion by another after something went awry on the field and carried over to the bench area.
The 2024 Bills, these Bills, are not. At least not right now. And if they don’t do something quickly to alter their course, this season is veering toward yet another early playoff exit.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. These Bills are now 11 games into the 2025 season. While yes, the Bills still sit 7-4 and in a playoff position, they have lost four of their last seven games, two of which they’ve dropped to teams with a losing record and one to a backup quarterback who couldn’t move the ball for an entire half.
The idea that they are going to magically snap out of it without something changing the fabric of their 2025 operation is quickly losing its steam. The inconsistency is their consistency. And the majority of this season’s inconsistency has to do with the offense.
“It goes without saying, right? It’s a game of inches,” Dawkins said. “If, at the end of the game, Gabe (Davis) caught a beautiful pass if his feet were just a couple more inches the other way, the energy would be a little bit different.”
But the inches were hard to come by — too hard to come by, in fact. The Texans were outright begging to be beaten with how they played on offense in the second half. The Bills’ defense held the Texans to only 19 plays across five second-half drives, totaling 60 yards. Subtracting their penalty yardage, the Bills yielded only 35 yards and one field goal that came after a turnover that gave the Texans possession in Bills territory.
After a one-week hiatus of offensive coordinator Joe Brady busting through his usual tendencies and helping morph the team into a 44-point dynamo, the frustrated and seemingly out of answers offense returned with a vengeance in Houston. The Texans boast one of the best defenses in the league and make teams earn it every drive, and that has to be considered with the outcome in this game. However, the best offenses will carry a competence that has been far too difficult to come by for this year’s Bills group.
Even against the elite defenses of the league, an offense led by Allen, James Cook and what had been one of the best offensive lines in the league coming into the season should be able to score 24 points to win a game. They were able to attain only half of that, with 12 points being the total yield from Brady’s bunch.
After the Bills scored a field goal to make it 9-3 in the first half, the Bills went ice cold. They gained only 170 yards over seven total drives, running 40 plays over those opportunities. Of those yards, 63 percent of them were gained on only three plays — a Cook 20-yard run on 2nd-and-8, a Shakir make-a-defender-miss play for 44 yards on 3rd-and-12, and the 44-yard hook-and-ladder play on 4th-and-27.
On the other 37 plays, the Bills averaged 1.67 yards per play. Of those 40 plays, 40 percent of them went for zero yards or worse. Even with the three big plays, the Bills only averaged 4.25 yards per play over those final seven drives.
You have to give credit where it’s due, and Brady had a few brilliant plays on “gotta have it” moments. That 4th-and-27 hook-and-ladder was perfectly constructed. The Bills had practiced that a lot during training camp this summer, almost too much, and waited for the perfect time to deploy it.
But outside of a few plays, the offense’s overall stale nature returned with haste. In one of the Bills’ best opportunities for points in the second half, Brady followed up a 20-yard Cook run with four straight running plays to turn the ball over on downs. The passing concepts drifted back toward the line of scrimmage. The crutch plays returned. One week after Allen set his 2025 best with 11.5 air yards per attempt against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, that number cratered to 4.7 air yards per attempt against the Texans.
With it being this far into the season, there aren’t many other levers the Bills can pull from a personnel perspective. Only six regular-season games remain, and they’re getting close to who they are at this point with this group. There isn’t a highly impactful free agent receiver just waiting out there for the Bills to call.
However, the Bills are in a bit of a unique situation. There is one notable free agent perfectly suited to help solve the problem.
His name is Brian Daboll.
Brian Daboll, now a free agent after being fired by the Giants, knows Josh Allen better than most.Timothy T Ludwig /Getty Images
Besides those currently inside the building in Orchard Park, there isn’t another NFL coach who understands what makes Allen tick more than Daboll. The former Bills offensive coordinator was instrumental to Allen’s evolution, and through their years together, Daboll had the pulse on the ways that best put Allen in a position to succeed. If there were lulls, Daboll would break through them. He was anti-tendency in his calls. Creativity oozed out of his plans most weeks. It’s the reason he was hired by the New York Giants as their head coach in the first place.
The last time the situation was broached was the day that Daboll was fired by the Giants. At that point, it was all very fresh.
“At this point,” McDermott said on Nov. 10, “that’s not under any type of consideration.”
But with a qualifier right at the top, that isn’t a firm statement that they are against the idea altogether. That was a full week-and-a-half ago, which can feel like an eternity in NFL time. After all, the Bills stood by former offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey on a weekly basis up until McDermott thought he had no other choice but to change the trajectory of the offense in that season and fired him.
Considering that decision proved to be yet another catalyst to finding new life in that 2023 season, McDermott would be the first to admit the value in having some fresh direction for his players when the season appears to be at a fork in the road.
The Bills committed to Brady as the offensive coordinator for the rest of the season, and that should be noted, as Dorsey was never given the same commitment amidst his turmoil. Brady seems likely to remain on staff at this point, with Allen being a staunch supporter of his to boot.
However, bringing on Daboll does not mean Brady has to go. It’s bringing back a highly successful coach who intimately knows the program and quarterback, whose ideas can spark more creativity within the building and inspire a seemingly frustrated Allen by turning back the clock. A role as a senior offensive adviser would keep Brady in his role, with a sounding board in Daboll, and provide the Bills with a fallback plan if the results don’t improve. Both Allen and Daboll could find themselves reinvigorated with the nostalgia play.
Some wonder about the feasibility of it all, which is fair. Would Daboll actually return to Buffalo after some frosty moments between him and McDermott through the years? In this case, time and new perspectives over the last few years can be a real catalyst for healing any potential hang-ups around a reunion. If I had to guess, I think both parties would be receptive to the idea if the timing were right.
With Daboll having had some time to catch his breath since his firing, and with the Bills needing to find their breath on offense, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that they consider it. McDermott has some extended time this weekend with a mini bye week to ponder it all, and undoubtedly, he will give thought to anything that can make his team right. Everything should be on the table to maximize their winning window in a given year. There is still time to rectify the situation and change their trajectory.
Perhaps it’s a week too early for Daboll, and the Bills will want to see how the offense responds against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 13, but the Bills are in a position they haven’t been in quite some time. They are now the strong underdogs to win their own division and are looking increasingly likely to begin their playoff journey on the road, where they have a 2-3 record away from Highmark Stadium. The answers they’ve found by this point in most of their playoff seasons have evaded them, and the same inconsistencies have occurred time and again. Daboll could be their ace in the hole if they allow themselves to get there.
If nothing changes, they can’t expect to change. And if nothing changes, signs are pointing toward another year of Allen’s career ending the way the rest of them have.
The time to find answers in Orchard Park is now.
