Buffalo Bills 2025 Midseason
I haven’t written about the Buffalo Bills much in 2024, and this is my first of 2025. I wrote about the Bills a lot in their 2022 and 2023 seasons. We are at the bye-week for the 2025 season. So, before we get into it let’s recap right quick on what happened in 2024. We left the 2024 season with another loss with an asterisk at Kansas City in the AFC Championship game, but started our 2025 season at the awards ceremony at the end of the 2024 season with Josh Allen winning the NFL MVP.
“Be good, do good, God Bless and Go BILLS” —Josh Allen, upon winning his first NFL MVP (2024-2025 NFL season).
2024 was a good run till things were going, oh, so well till you get a hot flash, know something is wrong, feel uneasy about that good feeling lasting and some shit finally does go down. Ah, there you are my ole friend, the FUCKENING… 2025 started out well enough at 4-0, till we failed to show up twice in a row on primetime television, exposing our very beat-up and weak defense. While we did score over 30 points in our first four games and wins, we weren't even that efficient. Up/down the whole way. We just got away from what we do because Joe Brady wants to be cute like Ken Dorsey is/was. And look how that all panned out for Dorsey? Great quarterback coach, High School Offensive Coordinator at best.
I have said this a few times:
I hear the complaints on the Wide Receiver issue, but the Wide Receiver and Tight End position are solid in my opinion. We just don't have a guy that can run a straight line, fast, that doesn't mean or even imply we have a Wide Receiver problem. Lately, we have a 'Josh Allen not finding the open guy problem' and there is one almost every play. Josh just isn't seeing them or is running for his life on that individual play.
Offense…
We play bully-ball. We run downhill with power. That is our game. We have gotten away from that or we have yet to really stick with that plan. We are in a position for Josh to do less, but we keep deviating from that, putting Josh Allen in compromising positions. For instance; when Allen looks to his right and Cook goes in motion from right to left, he is almost always open on the run, 1-2 seconds after the snap. I have seen so much tape on this; it drives me nuts that we are not even looking for him in those situations. When we run play-action with crossing patterns, guys are open. Josh just isn't seeing them or is hesitant to look that way. Sometimes he looks and doesn't throw. We run downhill but on short yardage, we want to run side to side, why? We are the worst screen team in the league, dump all wide receiver and tight end screens from the offensive game plan. Maybe a fake draw, then screen to a running back is acceptable to try. Those wide receiver screens don't work well this year and why would you throw a screen to a tight end that is built for boxing out and run blocking than running bubble screens? It’s so painfully obvious when they try them. Also, no more Jets sweeps. We are not fooling anyone there either. We used to set these up during the game. Now we lead with them and there lies in part of the problem.
Why are we trying to sneak or fool anyone?
Our offensive troubles are not people. It’s methodology. Also, Josh, hasn't been very good in the last two weeks verses the Patriots and Falcons in both methodology and execution. It’s, of course, not all on Josh. As Coach said, “we make it too hard for Josh and it doesn't need to be that way,” but Brady is calling the plays like he hasn't played Madden before and is just trying out the controls and plays to see what everything does. We start with let Cook, Cook, till its third and one and then take him out for a scat-back and handoff to a wide receiver, fooling NO ONE... I think Allen might need to just call his own play and number when he gets calls like this... Allen should be saying something in the moment. Like, “HUH? You want me to run what?” I feel like its Dorsey all over again and I am sure Brady doesn't like this comparison so maybe put the ego aside and at least look at what massive amounts of Buffalo Bills fans are talking about in the groups. Instead of just ignoring the voices of uninformed fans on social media. Some people know what they are talking about.
What is considered ‘good Wide Receiver separation?’
I don’t know, deeper crossing routes for starters. Maybe instead of NOT even looking at Cook out of the backfield, we look at him more. I feel like Josh is super good at taking the checkdown guy that's open, but lately he isn't seeing it "as well." If one and two are covered, you can bet three, four and five probably are open or at least one of them is. The idea is our fourth and fifth receiving option is better than a given team’s fourth and fifth cover guy. Yet, we don’t take advantage of those matchups. Know where they are. Get it to them faster. Especially Cook on the run. The deep ball will be there if we are gouging them for first downs on first and second down on the ground. Lately, we are not setting poop up and it shows when 2019 Josh shows up, running around a like chicken with no head, trying to make a play.
Coaching…
Brady was solid last year, this year, for some odd reason he is playing mad scientist with no common sense or even football logic while he plays with his food like the kid in “A Christmas Story.” It’s up to Coach to identify this and make adjustments. Not just say, Run/Pass in his headset but actively, during the game, call his guy out and/or take charge. Our coaches, dating back to even 2019, have a hard time adapting to their own football philosophy, situationally, as it happens in the game. I still say we are a bad "situational football team." That in the situation, we don't always make the right or even best decision possible.
Defense…
On defense, our scheme, sucks. We play a modified 4-3 with nickel personnel or a nickel configuration disguised as a 4-3. Our coverage is zone, but it doesn’t work well, because we have no pass rush. We cannot play man very well due to our guys being undersized and are there for their zone coverage abilities. Not man on man. You cannot leave lesser guys on an island and expect them to make the play, play in and play out. This is and has been a real problem the last three seasons, maybe more. The secondary cannot tackle very well either. They consistently take bad angles and have been doing that since 2021. This is still very much broken.
Why??? We cannot stop the run. We cannot cover anyone past five yards and the social media mob all want to trade draft capital for a Wide Receiver that complains more than your would-be everyday liberal. Makes ZERO sense. The Defense is a huge problem right now. Starter-wise we are not as bad as we have shown in games. Even if fully healthy we would not dominate like I thought we would, but decent enough. We have had injuries since week one for reasons that make little sense. I don’t know how a team trying to go to the Super Bowl is injured before the season starts, but ok. At the end of this season, I think the Bills need to start releasing players that show an inept ability to get injured and stay injured. I know we have guys’ that are loyal and all and we have been loyal to them, but now it is starting to hurt the team and the season for the past four seasons. Let’s not forget about suspensions. The Bills literally sign two players from Free Agency only for them to sit out the first six games due to breaking NFL policies. In their place we have these “role players” that are not doing their job right now. While the role players are there to fill roles when a guy is out, they are not good enough to be on the field first, second, third down drive in and drive out. They can give us a few good series, but to be a replacement for starters isn't going to get it done. We have seen this time and time again for about four or five seasons now. We try to address it, but it has not been that fruitful.
I feel like this is a broken record with injuries. I know it is never “if” a player gets hurt, but rather “when” he gets hurt. Some teams are heavily affected by this. The San Francisco 49ers have had major injuries the past five seasons. This has literally ruined their chances to make another Super Bowl run. They seem to have it the worse over that span, but the Buffalo Bills are right behind them. I can remember 2022, 2023, 2024 for the Bills on defense having so many injuries it cost us games that cost us home field advantage in the playoffs to where, who knows how that would have transpired. We can’t use injuries as an excuse, but the Buffalo Bills have not done well with back up players that can literally replace a starter. Most teams can’t do this, but it seems even worse for the Bills. The drop off from number one, to number two, to number three is drastic in my opinion. So much so, we have vets on our practice squad that we would save for December and January that are now having to step in and play and risk themselves getting hurt that could and probably will set us back even further.
However, the "like, comment and sub, click bait podcasters" (not a real job.) Want us to keep talking nonsense about trading for a Wide Receiver, this/that. We have enough cancer in the Western, NY area and they all want to invite more of that from a Primadonna Wide Receiver? Man... Get a grip. Watch some tape. Learn some actual logical football talk and sure, we can debate all that civilly. A lot of what I see on social media cannot be taken seriously. It is a joke or clickbait. Not a serious football take and if it was presented as such, time to check if these people know anything about football and watching hours and hours of tape instead of giving hot takes from their phone while the game is actually on. Just saying…
Come-On-Mannnnnnn...
Our problem isn't the starters. It is injuries, coaching philosophy and the backup role players who on paper fit, but on the field, where it counts, do not. Sadly; this has been an issue for at least four years now. We have a whole secondary issue... We have since last year. It was addressed by getting aging vets and a rookie who hasn't played yet. Never say never, but haven't seen good play from the secondary all year. Zone only works if you hurry the Quarterback into a bad throw. If he is free, our guys can't cover. Week one to now it's been in every game. We have bigger issues. Offense is going to have to score forty a game due to the defense’s lack of ability to hold anyone off consistently. A few stops sure, but the defense is super weak right now and everyone knows it.
We hosted the Patriots, a divisional rival that we have largely dominated since Tom Brady left, on Sunday Night Football. The NFL and the Buffalo Bills, instead of giving the fans what they want (the 1990s uniforms), roll out these all-WHITE jerseys. Encouraging the fanbase to spend, spend and spend more money. All this hype for the white out game. All that money spent to lose at home on prime time by a team that only beat the Panthers and the Dolphins up to this point. Now they are in first place in the AFC East and we have to chase them. Maybe that is what we need. Some fire for us to chase. The Patriots exploited our clumsy offense and exposed our weak defense. The very next week on Monday Night Football the Atlanta Falcons looked like Super Bowl contenders against us in the first half. The Bills offense looked good for two drives. The rest of the night looked like the 2019 Buffalo Bills offense of Josh running for his life, making ill-advised throws, not seeing the open guy, guys dropping balls they should catch and getting away from what we do, which is bully-ball.
It’s all on tape. I don’t know who is watching that tape, but it is there. I am not even a football Coach, but I watch tape like one. I have a film degree so I attack watching tape with an editor's eye. So, I see things that most may not see, but I am not saying no one else is paying attention. Only that my attention to watching tape is hyper-focused compared to others.
Even with a bye week we'll give up rushing yards and wide-open receivers ten yards down field. We been here before. We've prevailed some over this time. We were literally in this same spot the last two seasons, just like this. Defense beat up, offense looking weird, but we’d inch out games. We’d find a win. We’d make a lot happen with very little. However, this time the light hole in which light can trickle through is smaller than we all feel comfortable with. Where we prevailed in the past, looks darker this year, because in the past we had played really well, fell off, got hurt, readjusted and made a run. This year we have not look at all great or even good in ALL of our games… Till we see that we can ball out on both sides of the ball I don’t know if we can rise above this year. It just might be that year where we limp into the playoffs and get eliminated with little fight. I am not praying for miracles. Just hoping the Bills can find a way to win six or seven of our final eleven games to limp into the playoffs and hope Josh can be extra-magical. I know he and our whole team can be, but will they? That is another matter.
Time to work, cause it looks like they haven't been… Go BILLS…
Go Bills… (a phrase now adapted to mean whatever you want it to mean, in the moment)...
Buffalo Bills 2025 Mid-Season by David-Angelo Mineo 10/23/2025 2,523 Words