The Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator runs an upbeat system.
By Nick Wojton / billswire.usatoday.com
The Buffalo Bills’ offense still has a lot to prove, but through one preseason game, the unit turned some heads.
Buffalo fell 28-23 on Thursday against the Carolina Panthers and while Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott is always upbeat and optimistic when discussing his players and team, the offense gave him good reason to do so.
McDermott said all three of his quarterbacks, Nathan Peterman (9/10, 119 yards, TD, INT), AJ McCarron (7/10, 116) and rookie Josh Allen (9/19, 116, TD) played well. And they did.
“The good part about it is, all three of them played well. It makes my job tougher,” McDermott said. “They all raised their game and moved the offense at times down the field. I thought for the most part their operation was good at the line of scrimmage.”
But did someone preform too well? If they did, it was offensive coordinator Brian Daboll.
Daboll’s playbook looked fun. There was strong power runs by Marcus Murphy, some throws on the run by McCarron, quick strikes and deep fades from Peterman, spread formations and plenty of motion. However, it’s the preseason, McDermott sounds like he might have told Daboll to pump the brakes.
“Well we certainly have to be mindful of that because there’s a lot of people watching out there,” McDermott said. “We have to build some self awareness moving forward and self-scout ourselves in terms of tendencies and what not.”
Traditionally in the preseason, NFL teams will run “vanilla” plays on both sides of the ball because they’re afraid other teams will take notes.
And those teams probably will do that, so Bills fans might need to pull the reins. Though in truth, McDermott had to admit he really wasn’t too upset with Daboll.
“I thought (Daboll) got into a pretty good rhyme early on and you saw it felt like we had a pretty good run-pass ratio, you use some different elements in terms of attacking and slowing things down and attacking again, different tempos. I thought that was apart of the game, within the game, and I thought we were in a pretty good rhyme,” McDermott said.
“When you come into halftime and we have 256 yards or somewhere in there, those are some pretty big numbers. That’s a start, you want points,” he added.
Comparatively, Buffalo’s offense has some room to improve from 2017. Their passing game ranked second-last in the NFL (176.6 yards-per-game). Heck, even the running attack which finished sixth-best (126.1) was a drop off. The two seasons prior, it finished in first place in back-to-back seasons.
Even McDermott had to admit what he has in mind for his team’s offense when he was named Buffalo’s head coach is more similar to what was on display Thursday, compared to 2017.
“I think as a whole, yes. Not that we didn’t do some good things last year, but focusing on this year, I liked what I saw, particularly in the first half, last night, but it’s not always going to be as good as it was last night at times. We just have to continue to grow, get better, and be honest with ourselves and say ‘hey, what’s next?’” McDermott said.
How creative McDermott allows Daboll to get throughout the rest of the preseason will be interesting to see. However, come Buffalo’s first regular season contest against the Baltimore Ravens in September, fans will be a little more eager to see the offense, instead of hesitant.