The Bills season ended a little over a week ago and now begins the crucial offseason before the draft where the Bills can make many key moves so that they won’t be a one year wonder like other AFC East teams in recent years.
New Offensive Coordinator Brian Daboll
The Bills made the wise choice of firing Rick Dennison after taking a top 10 offense and turning it into a bottom ten offense and not adapting to personnel and making Tyrod regress and pushing for Nathan Peterman to start. After being the reason the Bills lost to the Jaguars (only scoring 3! points) Sean McDermott took no time replacing Dennison to National Champion winning offensive coordinator Brian Daboll who has won a Super Bowl and National Championship in the past year. Daboll is an interesting hire as he isn’t what you expect the Bills would look at as many expected people like Mike McCoy, Mike Shula or Rob Chudzinski.
Daboll years ago was an offensive coordinator for three NFL teams where the results were not that great if you look at the stat sheets without context. Many look at those stops and think “well he sucks, McDermott is clueless” however if you look closely you could see how little he had to work with with those teams. First we had the Cleveland Browns whose best player during his two years was Peyton Hillis and had to work with such QBs as Brady Quinn and Colt McCoy who even on their best day wasn’t even as good as Tyrod Taylor. Plus it is the Browns who are forever cursed to be terrible until the team moves. Then he goes to Miami for Tony Sparano’s last year and his QBs were Chad Henne and Free Matt Moore. In Miami Daboll had Reggie Bush have his only good year as an actual running back and made people think Matt Moore was actually good (and is the reason the Cult started). Then he goes to Kansas City with Romeo Crennel where he had a reunion with Brady Quinn and Matt Cassel. The only bright spot of that offense was Jamaal Charles who had a great season while the QBs stunk like many expected. All in all his NFL career as an offensive coordinator is really hard to judge as he was on teams with QBs worse than Tyrod Taylor and lacked real offensive weapons outside of RB. However he did have good success with running backs which bodes well for LeSean McCoy and future Bill Bo Scarbrough.
Daboll is known to be flexible on offense as evident by the National Championship game a earlier this month where he dramatically changed the offense in the 2nd half and with a true freshman at QB which ended up winning Bama the championship. He also runs a power blocking scheme which is great for Buffalo as a zone blocking team the Bills are not. He will run and throw if need be and coming from the Patriots offensive philosophy he incorporates a lot of the passing concepts NE currently runs which is a great improvement over the passing concepts the Bills have had since Chan. QB will be the biggest question mark for him as so far in his entire career as an offensive coordinator the best QB he had was a true freshman from Hawaii. That will still be determined and will determine whether he gets a HC job in 3 years or he is back at New England coaching the waterboys.
Offseason before the Draft
The biggest question mark for the Bills will be QB. I highly doubt Tyrod Taylor will be on the Bills roster next year and they will need a veteran QB on the roster to be a placeholder for the QB they draft or to be a veteran backup for that high draft pick. Alex Smith would be a good choice to be a placeholder however the price for him would be high. Kirk Cousins is a definite no as he is extremely overrated and more a product of Jay Gruden than anything. Case Keenum or Sam Bradford might be good but they both might be expensive and Bradford is more fragile than Sammy Watkins. For a veteran placeholder the options are limited and Tyrod Taylor might be the best choice however I don’t think they will go with him and instead go the cheap veteran route and hope their 1st round pick is ready day one.
Now for the rest of the positions. Cordy Glenn will probably be moved due to his contract and the new regime likes Dion Dawkins a lot at LT. Richie Incognito might also be moved for cap reasons but with the new coordinator he might stay as he fits the new scheme. The right side of the line could use a definite upgrade at RT and unless they come to their senses and play John Miller, RG will also bee a position they need to look at. At the skill positions RB could use a change of pace backup to Shady McCoy however that will be more of a draft pick. At WR the biggest move will be to cut Andre Holmes who was a waste of a roster spot in the first place and TE will probably stay the way they are.
On offense outside of maybe QB and offensive line as those holes might be filled in the draft. The decent amount of cap space the Bills have will be spent on defense which you will find out where next Tuesday.
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