Bills’ Bond On and Off the Field Paying Dividends

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Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott was watching the World Series pregame the other night, and Los Angeles Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw, who missed the playoffs with a bum shoulder, was on with the Fox crew. The 10-time All-Star brought expertise and baseball knowhow to the broadcast, for sure.

But what caught McDermott’s attention was Kershaw’s perspective.

“He’s banged up, couldn’t contribute on the field,” McDermott says from his office inside Highmark Stadium late Sunday afternoon. “He was just saying how close the Dodgers team was. Here’s a future Hall of Famer and veteran player, and it’s his perspective on why that’s so important. Usually your better teams are the ones that are the closest—I think it’s an outlier if you can find a team that’s really good, but they’re not close off the field.

“We’re fortunate in Buffalo that we have a community built on that, and is rich and fertile for that kind of team bond and development.”

This year’s Bills are missing a lot of what they had the past few years. Six of the 2023 team’s eight captains are gone. The undisputed Alphas of McDermott’s defense, going all the way back to his first year—safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer—are part of that equation. So, too, is the five-year leader-pivotman of the offensive line, Mitch Morse, and also Stefon Diggs, a Pro Bowler for all four of his years as a Bill.

And, yet, McDermott, in the bowels of the team’s venerable old home, on the first weekend of November, in the first season after all of that attrition, was talking about what the Bills have rather than what they have lost.

It’s not, to be clear, that he wanted to see all of those guys go at once (that part’s more just the reality of the NFL). In fact, maybe as much as anything, that he was sitting there, able to say what he did, was a tribute to what all of those guys helped build, something strong enough to withstand a mass exodus like the one the Bills endured.

So here’s what else, in the end, the team was left with in the aftermath—its undeniable dominance over the AFC East that the Bills hadn’t won in a quarter century before this run.

Sunday proved it once again. 

A Miami Dolphins team in desperation mode, with its season sent sideways by injury, did all it could to keep up. Buffalo kept swinging back. It was Taron Johnson punching the ball out and Kaiir Elam covering it at the start of the second half. It was McDermott pushing his chips to the center of the table on a key fourth down. It was having faith in Tyler Bass from 61 yards. It was, of course, Josh Allen, over and over again.

In the end, it was Bills over Dolphins, 30–27. It put Buffalo (7–2) up four full games on the field in the AFC East, just midway through a year that was supposed to be the one where the other teams could finally get the Bills. But it was about more than just that.

 

It was what this season has shown—the strength of what’s been built in Western New York.

We’re officially halfway through the NFL season (or will be after Monday night’s Kansas City Chiefs–Tampa Bay Buccaneers game)! And with a bit of a sleepy Week 9 Sunday slate in the books, here’s what we’ve got for you in the takeaways …

• Derwin James on the growth of the Jim Harbaugh Los Angeles Chargers.

• How Week 9 affected teams’ trade deadline approaches.

• Zac Taylor on Joe Burrow’s relentless standard for the Cincinnati Bengals.

• How the Philadelphia Eagles have found their stride.

But we’re starting in Buffalo with the Bills, and a story that, as I see it, isn’t getting nearly enough attention.

In a vacuum, each of the decisions the Bills made on veterans this offseason was logical. Buffalo had mortgaged some contracts, so a proverbial tearing-off of the Band-Aid had to come, sooner or later. Morse was 31, Poyer was 32 and Hyde was 33. Diggs’s time in Buffalo, great and well-liked as he was by so many, had run its course. Tre’Davious White, once a first-team All-Pro corner, and on an outsized contract, couldn’t stay healthy.

So what was jarring about going through those moves was the totality of pushing the button on all of them at once, given what each of those guys meant to what McDermott and GM Brandon Beane set out to build all the way back in 2017.

“I understand why you’re asking it,” McDermott says. “Through the natural flow of business in the NFL, guys come and go. To me, big picture here, it’s really about more than football, with the relationships you’re able to build through football. This business is tough. It’s transactional at some points. We try our best to make it more transformational here to the best of our abilities. But that transactional piece is undefeated.

“Just being able to keep the thing on the tracks is a combination of having the right people, leaders developing inside our building, number one being Josh and his leadership, the rudder he puts in the water every day, every week. It’s other guys developing, too, and being able to step up in new roles that were once occupied by guys that you were mentioning.”

McDermott then paused, and added, “Having the right DNA is important.”

And like the eighth-year Bills coach said, you need to have the right quarterback.

Allen wasn’t perfect Sunday. The red-zone pick he threw wasn’t his fault—the ball went off Keon Coleman’s hands and Miami’s Jalen Ramsey did a spectacular job of hauling the ball in on the fly—but this wasn’t Allen’s best afternoon.

Still, over and over again, he gave the Bills what they needed. He converted two third downs on the team’s half-ending field goal drive, and even ran for a 21-yard touchdown on first-and-20 that wound up nullified by a holding call. Then, after dealing with the frustration of having three trips to the red zone result in just six first-half points, down 10–6, McDermott rolled the dice with the best player on the field—keeping the offense out there for fourth-and-goal from the 1, on the first possession of the second half.

Then, given the green light to go for it, rather than go with a conventional play-call, OC Joe Brady put the ball in Allen’s hands.

“I certainly have confidence in Josh, number one. Two is confidence in Joe and the offense,” McDermott says. “And I just felt like the way the game was going, you’re talking about, when they’re healthy, a [Dolphins] offense that is very explosive and hard to stop. Just start with the wide receivers that they have outside. Just felt like it was me making a decision that was best for our team in that situation and giving our team the best chance to win there.”

Brady doubled down on McDermott’s gamble, calling a play that had a play-action fake, and a pump fake, and would take time to develop. At the snap, Allen carried out the run fake to James Cook, then the pump fake to Khalil Shakir, running a swing route off motion, before waiting for Mack Hollins to get open along the end line. Allen put it on him to give the Bills a 12–10 lead.

Bass missed the extra point, which would become a big part of this story, too.

Allen, of course, wasn’t done. He had another two touchdown throws after the fourth-down play to Hollins in the second half.

But it wasn’t just him. In so many cases, it was also guys that the Bills developed within their program behind the aforementioned guys.

It was Quinton Morris—an undrafted free agent in 2021 who served his time on the practice squad, and beat out former first-round pick O.J. Howard for a roster spot in ’22—being in the right place when Allen pulled off a ridiculous scramble-shovel pass that was willed into the tight end’s hands in the third quarter. It was Johnson and Elam, homegrown DBs, combining to create the turnover to set up the first touchdown.

It was a running back room that, in a lot of ways, provided the perfect illustration for what’s happening in Buffalo on this particular Sunday, as a room that was once led by Devin Singletary, and has stayed healthy even as the names have changed.

“You got James Cook. You got Ray Davis, who’s younger. You got Ty Johnson who’s more of a veteran,” McDermott says. “You have, in one position room, guys that are at different points in their career and have had to embrace different roles at different parts of the season, or even through one game. They’ve done a really good job of producing for us, yes, but also becoming close and challenging each other at the same time, with some direct competition.

“It’s a good thing when you can watch these guys grow and develop and embrace roles. Week to week they change roles. It’s a cool thing to watch within one position room.”

The three combined for 87 yards on 17 carries, and averaged more than five yards per rush on the afternoon. But this was Davis’s afternoon to shine, and the rookie from Kentucky took the shot he got, on a little checkdown from Allen, 62 yards to paydirt—shaking two Dolphin defenders in the open field and sprinting to the longest touchdown catch for a Buffalo running back in a dozen seasons.

Meanwhile, Cook had five carries for 22 yards on Buffalo’s first touchdown drive, and Johnson churned out a key third-and-1 conversion on the Bills’ final touchdown drive.

These, of course, aren’t the only examples of guys stepping into elevated spots. Blocking for those backs, you had Connor McGovern, who seamlessly slid over from guard to center to replace Morse as the offensive line’s point man. At linebacker, there’s rising star Terrell Bernard, who’s had the benefit of Matt Milano continuing to invest in the team, even after being injured. There’s a defensive line group, anchored by young veterans Ed Oliver and Greg Rousseau, that’s continued to make an impact.

And, then, there are the coaches, and front-office staff, and all of the people involved day to day that have made the Bills the consistent winner they’ve become again, about three decades after the franchise’s last era of sustained glory.

All of which is why if you ask McDermott how this all happened, how the Bills have gotten to the doorstep, and stayed their through attrition, he struggles to answer succinctly.

“There’s really not one clear answer I can give you,” he says, “other than it’s really a full-building deal, when you can sustain it the way that we’ve been able to.”

So much of this story, to McDermott, is about having faith in the people around him, both to develop the guys, and to become the guys, the Bills need to win on Sundays.

At the end of the game, that faith was tested in a major way.

Bass is now in his fifth season as the Bills’ kicker, but this hasn’t been his best one. Coming into Sunday, he was just 4-of-7 on field goals of 40-plus yards. Against the Dolphins, he missed the aforementioned extra point, then banked another one in off the upright after the Bills’ last touchdown with 6:24 left.

And in a weird twist, McDermott had to start really thinking about Bass’s range after one of those old departed leaders, Poyer, who now plays for the Dolphins, extended Buffalo’s last possession—his unnecessary roughness penalty converted a third-and-9 in Bills territory.

But rather than seeing images of the missed and clanged PATs in his head, McDermott recalled warmups, and seeing Bass nail one with the ball snapped from the 40. In this circumstance, the line was the 43, and, of course, plenty could go wrong with a longer kick that generally would need a lower trajectory. A lot of coaches, given a quarterback like Allen, and given Bass’s struggles, probably would play for overtime.

McDermott did think about it, and as for any discussion on it ….

“What discussion? I was praying,” he says, with a laugh. “It’s funny how it goes crickets on the headset when you say, What should we do? All you hear is crickets chirping. Then it’s, So, O.K., here we go. Honestly, I wanted to give us the best chance to win. … [Special teams] coach [Matthew] Smiley said he liked it, he felt good about it. I got to trust the coaches and then trust the other players.”

Most of all, he had to trust Bass, who affirmed to his coach he was good to kick it, even after the issues he’d had.

“The game, sometimes, is just as much mental, if not more mental, than it is physical—even for these guys who are dang good physically,” the coach says. “He’s been on a journey a little bit last year, had some ups and downs at times, people know it. One of the strongest, most admirable things that he’s done is he’s owned it and been forthcoming and vulnerable. “

And all he did in confronting those demons was drill the longest kick in franchise history, the 61-yarder at the wire to vanquish them, and the Dolphins, and maybe anyone else’s shot of wresting the division from the four-time reigning AFC East champs.

Add the belief in Bass, to the togetherness of the running back room, to the resourcefulness and leadership of Allen, to the readiness of so many young veterans to fill the voids that the 2024 offseason left, and you come back to where McDermott started—and what he heard Kershaw say on TV.

Some of that stuff might happen on its own, without the foundation in place in Buffalo.

It’s unlikely, though, that all of it would.

“We’ve been fortunate to have the players we’ve had here and close teams, guys that are close in the relationships that we’ve built,” McDermott says. “I think our culture has helped that. But having the types of people we have is the start of all that, as you know. This team is probably as close as any that we’ve had.”

Given where the Bills have been over the past seven years, and where they were coming from, that’s really saying something. And, maybe, just maybe, this time around, it’ll give them the shot to get to the one place they still haven’t gotten to.