• I think the big question coming out of Week 10 is one that was being asked starting late Monday night—
I went to a couple of guys for answers Tuesday morning who have gotten a look at them this year.
“Despite having blue-[chip] players, they haven’t been able to establish a consistent style or level of play, which should be coming through by November,” texted one NFC pro scouting director. “I don’t know if Sean [McDermott] is doing too much, running defense and the team with an inexperienced OC [Ken Dorsey, who was fired Tuesday morning]. And the injuries on defense are real—[Matt] Milano is very important and easy to underrate sometimes. Seems like they’re pressing and playing tight. And I think they do miss [Brian] Daboll.”
“A number of different reasons for it,” a rival AFC exec told me. “Defensively, they’ve regressed. They are slower. Not having Milano and [Tre’Davious] White with the injuries, lost [Tremaine] Edmunds in free agency, missed on first-round corner—when they needed it—both safeties [Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde] are on the decline. Offensively, it’s the turnovers. The quarterback [Josh Allen] isn’t playing well—poor decisions and not having Daboll on his ass is probably affecting him.
“I think one of the things that made Allen such a pain to defend was his ability to run—don’t have numbers in front of me, but seems like they’re doing that less, probably to protect him.”
And the numbers do, in fact, check out—Allen is on pace for 81.6 carries for the year, 4.8 per game this year, after running the ball 124 times last year and 122 times the year before. That’s a significant difference, and, while it’s definitely good for his long-term viability, making him less of a threat in the run game for defenses (his average, too, is down to 5.1 from 6.1 last year and 6.3 in 2021) would come with a short-term cost.
Which brings us to the bigger question: What’s the short-term outlook here, with an aging core versus the long term with Allen as the centerpiece of an eventual retool?
As the AFC exec said, Hyde and Poyer are 32, Von Miller is 34, Mitch Morse is 31 and Stefon Diggs turns 30 in two weeks. Dion Dawkins and Milano are 29, and White turns 29 in January, and will be coming off his second major injury in three years at a position where athleticism is at a premium. So some shuffling is coming, whether it’s after this year, or next year, around the franchise quarterback.
Now, remember, the current brass built this team into a top-of-the-league type of operation that other teams plucked from, so I’d trust GM Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott with the next phase of Allen’s career in Buffalo. That, as we know now, will start with a new coordinator …
