The Bills have an offense capable of giving the scoreboard operators a serious workout this season.
In their season-opening 27-17 win over the Jets, Buffalo raced out to a 21-0 win. While their opponents struggled to keep their offense on the field, the Bills did the opposite.
Quarterback Josh Allen threw for 312 yards, completing 33 of 46 pass attempts, with two touchdowns. When Allen wasn’t raiding the Jets’ defense with an air attack, he added 59 rushing yards with another score on the ground.
Allen has an upgraded wide receiver unit this season, the Bills went out and added playmaking Stefon Diggs to the mix.
With Diggs joining John Brown and Cole Beasley, Buffalo’s offensive coordinator Brian Daboll has a heck of a playbook to curate for Allen.
Against the Jets, Allen opened by completing his first seven passes. He was 16 for 20 on Buffalo’s first four offensive series. The Bills were up 21-0 midway through the second quarter.
The Bills have an offense loaded with potential
The final score of this game wasn’t as close as it appears. This indicates the Bills left a handful of plays on the field. This could’ve been a three-score or more blow out.
“We left some things out there,” Bills head coach Sean McDermott said via video conference. “Overall, Josh did a really good job with giving our receivers a chance. I thought our line did a great job giving Josh time to work back there. Good first game but a lot to work on. There’s a lot to like. We’ve worked things in practice that we saw carry over to the game, that’s the biggest thing that makes me smile as a coach.”
The lot to work on for the Bills will have a lot to do with Allen taking better care of the football. Allen fumbled twice against the Jets, the third-year quarterback must continue to work on cleaning up those mistakes.
“Those two fumbles early on, I can’t do.” Allen said. “When we’re in a position to score points, I can’t take that away from us. The way we won, yes, I’m happy. But at the same time, we’ve got a lot to work on, a lot to grow from. We’ve got to be better. We left a lot out there and we know that.”
Diggs caught eight passes for 86 yards in his Bills’ debut. Brown added six catches for 70 yards and a touchdown. Beasley had four catches for 58 yards. The three receivers each had a gain of 20 yards or more in this game. Buffalo averaged 9.5 yards on 33 completions. Eight different players had touches.
The Jets came into this game with a suspect secondary, but it’s still your job to exploit those weaknesses and execute. Buffalo saw the Jets were struggling early in pass coverage and attacked.
Allen also saw what the offense can look like with Diggs and Brown on the field running routes.
“Well one they are extremely smart football players,” said Allen of his receiving corps. “They know how to get open. They’re just fun to play with. They communicate, they talk, and the things that they can do not a lot of guys in this league can do what they can do. They’ve been constantly getting open. They’re making plays, you saw some run after the catch. I threw Stef (Diggs) one ball, two yards and he made two guys miss and ended up getting eight or nine, that’s what you’d love to see.”
Diggs is going to be a game changer for Buffalo’s offense this season. The veteran also sees big things in John Brown.
“I think, in my opinion, John Brown is one of the most underrated receivers in the NFL,” Diggs said. “He’s underappreciated as well. He does a lot of things extremely well. He plays on the outside, can play on the inside, he has great hands, great routes.
“… It’s fun to play with guys like that because it’s hard to double, it’s hard to do all that. It gives the ability for everybody to eat, everybody to win on the outside.”
The defense remains the strength of the Bills. However, once the offense gets their legs under them this season, opposing teams will cringe trying to scheme against this attack.
