Bills bringing different approach into latest playoff battle with Chiefs
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The leadup to Buffalo’s fourth playoff matchup with Kansas City in five years often lands at the question of how and why the result might be different for the Bills this time.
The possible answer begins back in the spring, when the Bills first gathered to turn the page on their latest playoff loss to the Chiefs and chart a new vision for the offence.
It was their first time together without receiver Stefon Diggs, who’d been dealt to Houston Texans in a financially punitive trade for the Bills that spoke to just how badly the team wanted to move on from him.
Diggs had been the most productive Bills receiver in history, so talented that there were even those who attributed much of quarterback Josh Allen’s greatness to Diggs.
But by last January, the Diggs experience had run its course.
Besides the drama that followed Diggs at times, he simply wasn’t productive when the Bills needed him most, such as when the Bills faced the Chiefs.
In each of the two games against K.C last season, a three-point win during the regular season and a three-point loss in the playoffs, Diggs failed to reach 25 yards receiving.
Buffalo wasn’t prepared to try and run it back one more time with him as a focus of the offence. The new Bills attack would be different.
Instead of being built around a star receiver with a consistently high volume of targets, the Bills were going to share the wealth.
And the first time Allen said “everybody eats” in the media at OTA practices, a slogan was born.
It was easy to be skeptical, given that teams don’t usually get better by removing one of their most talented pieces. And it’s not like the Bills had a lot of options to replace Diggs with a player of similar talent, given the calendar and their tight salary cap situation.
It was a dramatic shift in philosophy, but not the only evolution in the offence heading into the season.
The Bills would also be more committed to run game, continuing what had started to take place when Joe Brady took over from Ken Dorsey the previous October.
The run game in Buffalo had always seemed to be a complimentary part of the Bills offence, rarely setting the tone. But the Bills could take advantage of a talented offensive line and three running backs with complementary styles, all with big-play ability.
The result, ideally, was to be a Bills offence that would be far less predictable. Teams could no longer count on seeing eight to 12 targets per game directed at one player each week, as had been the case with Diggs.
Instead, the Bills might have a different leading receiver every week. And how much yardage a player might get would be hard to anticipate because there might be times when the run game was the focus.
That was the theory. And then the Bills went out and executed it as perfectly as anyone could have imagined.
The highest-scoring team in Bills history. The most touchdowns in team history. The first team in NFL history to score 30 touchdowns on the ground and 30 through the air in the same season.
The Bills didn’t have a 1,000-yard receiver, with Khalil Shakir, in the third year of his rookie contract, leading the team with 821. Eight players finished with between 251 yards and 556, as the Bills set an NFL mark with 13 different players catching at least one touchdown pass.
The Bills can win games when Allen throws 22 times for 127 yards as he did against the Baltimore Ravens last Sunday. They can also win them when he throws 34 times for 362 yards, as he did during the Bills win over Detroit.
It’s allowed them to roll into Kansas City this weekend having scored 30 or more points in 11 of their past 12 games in which they’ve dressed a full lineup – a total the Chiefs hit just twice during the regular season.
And the only team to hit the 30-point mark against Kansas City this season? Buffalo.
As all this was happening, another pattern emerged in this offence – the ability to keep the football safe and secure week after week. Allen threw career-low six interceptions this season, while the Bills lost just two fumbles all year.
There simply haven’t been many instances where a Bills gameplan has been interrupted by a turnover.
Meanwhile, the defence took the ball away 32 times during the regular season for an NFL-best plus-24 turnover ratio, with a defence that at times seemed more able to create a turnover than force a punt at some critical junctures of games.
Allen has become more of a game manager, a term not ever associated with his play during the early years of his career, by simply not taking unnecessary risks with the football and making plays that fit the game script.
That ability not to beat themselves, carried throughout the season, was the key dynamic that separated the Bills from the Ravens in the Divisional Round win, when Buffalo won the turnover battle 3-0.
There are all kinds of elements that will play into the result of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game, and not all of them will happen when the Bills are on offence.
Buffalo’s defence may be able to slow Kansas City down, but it’s not the type that’s likely to shut a team like the Chiefs down. No one does that anyway.
So, if the Bills are going to get to their first Super Bowl in more than 30 years, they’re going to need to score early and score often, with an offence that’s been built to deal with any opponent in any kind of circumstance.
That won’t guarantee victory Sunday night. But win or lose, no one can say the Bills didn’t try a different way to get it done.