The 2022-2023 Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills for the 4th straight season end the season with a playoff loss 27-10 in their 2nd home playoff loss ever in franchise history to the Cincinnati Bengals. This loss was not as dramatic as the Houston Wild Card game in the 2019 season or the travesty that was those last 10-seconds in last year’s divisional loss to Kansas City. This loss was more similar to the Bills AFC Championship loss from the 2020 season where they failed to show up to Kansas City and were beat in similar fashion. When the Bills got on the field Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 they really believed they were gonna win. The media had already been talking about ticket sales for a neutral site rematch with Kansas City and the Bills 6-point home favorites in this divisional game versus Cincinnati.
From pregame to the national anthem the stadium was poppin’ with noise. Within 5-minutes the Bengals were in the endzone. A few minutes later, they were there again. The defense gave them zero resistance and the offense went 2-straight 3-and-outs. With 2:11 left in the first quarter the Bills were down 14-0 and never recovered.
At the press conference Coach Sean McDermott mentioned making adjustments on 3 occasions and was asked about going out like this in a game where the Bills were expected to win, but failed to show up, adjust and battle back: “It’ll be a discussion for another day. What we have to do to get it changed and that's part of the adjustments. We've got to be able to adjust from that as a coaching staff and beyond. So that's what we have to do if we want to continue to knock-knock at this door and move beyond where we were this year. We’ve got to learn from this and make the proper adjustments as we move forward.”
This review of the 2022 Buffalo Bills season is not going to be a splatter of throwing our people under the bus. We had a hell of a lot of adversity this year from injuries, weather, Damar’s near death, the mass shooting at the grocery store. Our guys battled all year but at the end of the day we lost. We didn’t lose, no, we were embarrassed. This will be an honest review based on what I saw with my own eyes and over 30 years of watching, playing, understanding the game of football. With all that out of the way.
Let’s Begin…
Our Defense was super shaky pretty much since the Baltimore game. In the Divisional Game they did not react. Got pushed back on all running plays. Literally, every running play our defensive guy’s first step was backward. 3rd down, specifically, 3rd and 5 and longer killed us all year and absolutely had its part to play here in the Divisional Round. If they don't change/adjust what they are doing we are never gonna catch up, overcome and fight for a championship.
Our Defensive Coordinator, Leslie Frazier, has always been 'slow' too adapted to what is happening on the field, live, in the game. That is why he won’t be a great head coach moving forward. This is not a dig at the man, but more things I have noticed during games and how the team has adjusted during a game and game to game adjustments. He can win, sure, but why his run in Minnesota didn’t pan out was a lot of the same. As the captain of the ship he cannot make the adjustments the position requires on the spot. This is why he is a great defensive minded coach, position coach, but you can see where his mind goes when he has to decide, in game, what to do. He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t make many adjustments and if he does it is way to slow going into today’s NFL. Part of our situational football problems stem from this. Do I think he should be replaced? I do not know… He will most likely leave to go be a head coach on his own. He will get interviewed. He probably will get hired based on his efforts, but my opinion of his abilities to be a play caller or a captain (head coach) won’t change. He will win, he may even win a division title or two; but he will never get passed that wild card round. Change my mind if you think you can…
The Buffalo Bills for 2023 definitely got some things to fix. We were exposed all year with how our offense operated and how our defense really was not as strong as advertised, even before the obvious injuries they endured. Injuries are not an excuse. Every team goes through them. We have been weak against the run for the past 3 seasons. They were exposed… Again… When you play other great teams those exposures show. It showed Sunday... On the field and on the coordinators.
The Buffalo Bills have some free agency challenges heading into the 2023 season. We have 13 free agents. It will be unlikely we will resign them all. Some of these guys were never healthy, some of them are backups, some are key position players while others are major key players.
• Case Keenum – QB • Devin Singletary – RB • Tommy Sweeny – TE • Jamison Crowder - WR/TE • David Quessenberry – RT • Rodger Saffold – G • Jordan Poyer – FS • Dane Jackson – DB • Cam Lewis – DB • Tremaine Edmunds – LB • AJ Klein – OLB • Jordan Phillips – DT • Shaq Lawson – DE.
On this list I feel 3 guys we absolutely need to resign are Singletary, Poyer, Lawson. As much as I want to resign most of the players on this list, we need to rebuild our Offensive line. We were not as strong in this area as advertised this year and us getting exposed did not show right away because our passing can be, at times, hard to stop. We didn’t run the football well most of the year. We had some games where we looked good against lessor opponents, but as I said previously we were exposed. We made Ken Dorsey our offensive coordinator and we immediately signed some bigger bodied WR/TEs which led me to believe we would see a more run balanced offense using our same offensive package of 3, 4 and 5 WRs, but now with 2 or 3 TEs on the field at all times. Much like how our offensive game plan was for last year’s divisional playoff loss to Kansas City. Run out of these bigger more spread out packages and push the ball down the field with deep throws and crossing patterns. We resign Knox to a big contract and do not use him nearly at all till the final month of the year. Almost everything we set ourselves up for in the offseason last year we got away from in 2022.
Where the final 6-games of the 2021 season all of the sudden we started running more and better. Devin Singletary was on a tear the last 6-games and the playoffs last year. We didn’t use him well this season at all. His fumbles were not bad this year where they cost us last 2 years. Even with the emergence of James Cook I feel letting Singletary test the market and go somewhere else would be a step backward for us. Instead of making changes there, we should be even more dedicated to the running game. Resign Singletary… Rebuild the offensive line and run the offensive package we should have run this season. We didn’t game plan very well around our other playmakers. Singletary/Cook are matchup nightmares. Knox is a matchup nightmare. Diggs/Davis/Shakir are matchup nightmares. Now ad all the other players like Beasley/ Crowder and who are you going to double team? Plus, you still gotta watch out for the run, WR/RB screens, QB draws. Instead of just calling plays we need to call plays with matchups in mind. Who is on the field in this/that package, who is covering who, run plays accordingly.
Our defense started out great and then the injury bug hit our defense hard this year. We never had a full strength of defensive backs where that was one of our strongest parts of our defense. Sure, some younger guys stepped up and that will serve us well next year. At full strength we will now have depth at those positions, but we did not adjust well to these injuries. Instead of doubling down with our strategy we needed to make better adjustments with matchups on the field. You do not run nickel/dime/zone packages and never blitz when your defense is that beat up, both on the line and secondary, lose the threat of a pass rush from the front four. The defense cannot recover fast enough under that sort of pressure and they didn’t. We just kept doing it over and over again. When Coach McDermott mentions making adjustments this is what I feel he means. Not just on the defensive side of the ball but the offensive as well.
“We have to make the adjustments, the proper adjustments we need to make so we can move this organization and continue to move it forward; because that's the direction we're heading.” ~ Coach Sean McDermott
Coach mentioned making adjustments a priority in the press conference and I believe that is what we are going to do in the offseason. Our offensive coaching needs to fully understanding the weapons we have on a given situation with the players we have on the field. Coach McDermott has stated several times that we are a sound situational football team and time and time again, over the last 3 seasons the team/coaches have shown we are not. I do not believe McDermott can continue to defend his coaches anymore for misunderstanding what situational football means. We cannot be too cute anymore. It is time on 3rd and 3 to run the ball with efficient play calls that favor us and do not rely on some scatter-garbage-junk-play that picks up the 1st down. We should get the first down not because we are bigger and can push the defense back but more based on the strategy.
We are still a really bad situational football team. If anyone that reads this does not believe me. Just watch the tape. It’s all there. Time and time again. Poor situational play calling. Poor game planning. Does not adapt well or make adjustments well… This is all stuff I am seeing game to game and now year to year. We have had issues in adapting to what other teams are doing to us, live, in the moment. We may need Coach McDermott to step in and force the coordinators to adapt faster in a game or at halftime moving forward. Coach McDermott has been good about letting his coordinators do their job, but after a few years with Frazier and a rookie offensive play caller it is time Coach McDermott step in more and force these coaches to have multiple game plans. We have now lost games, playoff games and possible championship runs due to really poor planning and situational football.
Still; we only lost 4 games the whole year. 3 of them by 3 or less points. We hadn’t played what I thought was great football since before the bye week and we still almost pushed through all this. I do not believe any sort of different game plan would have changed things Sunday. A bye week, perhaps, but really, we were just exposed. Too many injuries and with the ups/downs we have had all year. I am surprised we got a win vs Miami. If one only passively watched Buffalo Bills football this year this may come to a shock. The signs were there though. Things started to unravel in Miami, then Baltimore. By the second half of the Packers game I knew we were in trouble. Even after we ripped off 7 wins in a row those games were far from perfect and it was only because we have a Freakin’ ALIEN at quarterback did we get through some of those games with a win.
Down the stretch between injuries and all the other adversity surrounding this team this year we did not play very good complimentary football and it showed. Still got to give this team credit. If Jim Kelly, Thruman Thomas, Andre Reed, Bruce Smith know anything about adversity in the game of football it is these men. They know… We now know what this tastes like too. It takes like Poohdo…
Defense – We have to get stronger at attacking the run. Before Kyle Williams retired that defense was stiff against the run, but we couldn’t stop teams from throwing. Now we have gap problems down the board due to injuries and not being able to get a pass rush. It just exposes our zone too much. We must get better at 3rd and longs. This killed us this year. At the beginning of the year we made tackles behind the line of scrimmage. The last 10 weeks or so I saw guys straight-up miss because they got their head down. One cannot tackle what they cannot see. I see us making more changes on Defense. I think we really need to add something at the linebacker positon. The depth just isn’t there and it is unsure if we will resign Tremaine Edmunds or not.
Offense – We need to take a step back with our offense and look how we ran the ball in those last 6 games of the 2021 season. As stated above, we bulked up at the skill position and we should go back to that. We can run the spread with 4-5 wideouts, who says that must be WRs? Put 2 TEs there instead and run out of it. Run quick hitters out of that. We can still run our pass attack in this formation and it will make defenses go mad trying to get the right matchups to stop it. Plus, you have more blocking for the Alien. Resign Singletary and let’s start game planning with him as we did for Thurman back in the day. There were games in those years where if you couldn’t stop #34 the game was virtually over. We need to at least give Singletary that chance to prove to us he cannot be that guy. I think he can be and we have tape on him to show he can. We used to push the ball down the field with crossing patterns and other deep routes that are not straight go routes. More Knox in those situations.
Josh Allen is a goddamn Alien, but he cannot do it all by himself, all of the time. He is over 90% of our total offense. We need to take some pressure off this guy with a running game. He will still get his 300 yards and multiple touchdowns, but we have to use him smarter. This will be year 6 and we cannot have our #1 guy taking all those bumps all of the time. We cannot have Allen running around the field and play backyard football all of the time with the expectation that is how we have to play to win. Maybe year 1, 2 and 3, but now in year 6. I felt like we relied too much on junk plays this year.
Free Agents – I really hope we can get most of our free agents back. Especially the ones that are an intrical part of our team, but we still need to retool both our lines and the linebacker positon. I really hope Cole Beasley comes back. He says he wants to be there. I think Allen and company want him there too. He still has mustard left in the tank and what he can also teach some of our younger guys is worth the money to keep him. So I will just hope for the best. I think the draft will also provide us with some younger guys. I have noticed the draft nowadays is much more important as we have built this team primarily through the draft. I know we will pick some solid guys that have potential to help us right away. It seems every team now has 1 or 2 breakout rookies every year now.
Coaches/Coordinators – I do not think anyone will be fired. Dorsey isn’t going anywhere. Dorsey and Allen have worked together since the beginning and Dorsey showed some good stuff. We just need him to grow into his position a little faster and more assertive now. The only exception would be if Frank Reich wanted to come to Buffalo and Buffalo wanted to hire Reich in a QB position coach, perhaps assistant offensive coordinator. That would be the only situation I would see Dorsey lose that spot at this point. We won’t fire Frazier as he will leave on his own to be a head coach somewhere else. Although I could see Buffalo make a change for all that I have described above.
Next Season – We play a 1st place schedule, the NFC East, plus Tampa Bay, and one game in London (probably TB). It’s a decent schedule and someone has to go backward. Will it be us? We have been in the mix 4 years in a row now. I think if we do not learn, grow and adapt from this we will be in the same or close to the same position next year, but our record may not reflect that. 11+ wins… We play a lot of our tougher opponents at home. Home field advantage is a real thing, but we were so flat in the divisional game it didn’t matter. We didn’t play well in our own poor weather most of the year and last year, which is supposed to be an advantage to us. We gotta get better there. If we do learn, grow, get healthy, adjust and ad to what we already have then perhaps the road to Super Bowl LVIII goes through Buffalo…
Our defense has been and still is a bend but don’t break defense and they played like it most of this year except for this last game. Now you can say our whole team, surrounding area, people, and culture is bend but don’t break and this will not break us. We will rebuild… Thank You for a season to remember though. I was on the edge of my seat all year. Heavily invested in this team. I flew up to Buffalo and watched the opening game with my Aunt/Uncle. I watched back to back games on my phone with limited data as I was at ground zero for hurricane Ian. The people of Buffalo dealt with a mass shooting, the hardships of a very hard winter, that insanity that happened to one of our players, Damar Hamlin. The Buffalo Bills were plagued with injuries. The people of Buffalo also felt these injuries. Our captain Josh Allen, the Alien, had to shoulder so much this year. If anyone is ready to grow, learn and transcend Josh Allen shall understand that process. He has now seen it all in both the regular season and the playoffs. 4 straight years, the last game of the season was a playoff loss. Josh knows… Josh will learn… Josh will grow… This has been said every year since January 31st, 1993. Next Season…
One Team, One City, One Love, OneBuffalo…