If you look near the top of the AFC standings, you'll see a very familiar sight. Right there, at the top of the AFC East and in second place in the conference with a 9-2 record, are they Buffalo Bills. Buffalo has won 11 or more games and won the AFC East title in every season since 2020, so it shouldn't be surprising to see the Bills there again.
It should come as no surprise that the Bills once again finish in the top six in points scored, something they have done every season since 2020. And it shouldn't be a surprise that the Bills are quarterback Josh Allen is once again one of the most effective and efficient quarterbacks in the world He led one of the league's best passing attacks.
However, that may be where the similarities between the Bills' offense this year and those of previous seasons end. Because Buffalo's passing game is very different today than it was between 2020 and 2023. Which again isn't surprising. If you remove a player like Stefon Diggs out of the equation, as the Bills did when they traded him to the USA Houston Texans Things are going to change pretty dramatically this past offseason.
And that's exactly what happened. The passing offense is now much more egalitarian than in previous years, with no player on offense receiving more than 20% of the total goals. For comparison, consider that Diggs had a target percentage between 25% and 27.9% in each of his four seasons in Buffalo.
In the table below, we've outlined the target shares for the Bills' top five pass catchers in each season since Diggs' arrival in 2020 through this year. You should be able to tell the difference pretty easily.
| 1 | 27.9% (Diggs) | 25.0% (Diggs) | 26.8% (Diggs) | 27.6% (Diggs) | 19.3% (Shakir) |
| 2 | 18.0% (Beasley) | 17.1% (Beasley) | 16.2% (Davis) | 15.7% (Kincaid) | 17.3% (Kincaid) |
| 3 | 10.4% (Davis) | 11.0% (Sanders) | 11.3% (Knox) | 14.0% (Davis) | 10.5% (Coleman) |
| 4 | 8.7% (Brown) | 10.8% (Knox) | 11.3% (McKenzie) | 9.3% (cooking) | 9.6% (Samuel) |
| 5 | 8.4% (singlearian) | 9.6% (Davis) | 9.1% (singlearian) | 7.8% (Shakir) | 9.1% (Cook/Hollins) |
The target shares for pass catchers Nos. 2 through 5 are fairly consistent, but this decline in share for the top individual target has spread further down the line. There are already 10 Bills with double-digit goals for this season. In all of last year and 2020 and 2021 there were only nine. (In 2022 there were ten.)
Part of this is due to the fact that players have missed games. But even if you give Khalil Shakir With the additional 6.6 targets he averages, his target share in the one game he missed would still be just over 21%. Dalton Kincaid would only increase to about 19% taking the missed game into account. Keon Colemans would be about 12.6% considering his two missed games. And all of those goals would have had to come from somewhere else, which would reduce those other players' respective goal shares.
It's not just the target player that's changing for Buffalo. The Bills are testing different areas of the field. Specifically, Allen is required to throw medium depth passes less often and instead favor faster throws at or behind the line of scrimmage. (This is part of Shakir's increased target percentage. He is often the one thrown to on these plays.) Via Tru Media, you can see the percentage of Allen's throws that were intended for receivers behind the line of scrimmage within 5 yards 6 to 10 yards, from 11 to 20 yards, and finally 20 or more yards behind the field in every season since 2020.
| Negative | 15.0% | 16.7% | 12.5% | 14.0% | 22.2% |
| 0 to 5 | 33.7% | 32.5% | 35.0% | 37.3% | 32.2% |
| 6 to 10 | 19.9% | 20.3% | 17.3% | 15.9% | 16.9% |
| 11 to 20 | 20.8% | 20.0% | 23.1% | 19.8% | 16.0% |
| 20-plus | 10.5% | 10.5% | 12.0% | 13.0% | 12.7% |
There was also a change in the two types of passes Allen throws and the direction of those throws. The Bills have drastically reduced the amount of play-action dropbacks in their offense, which in turn has resulted in Allen getting the ball out quicker and throwing shorter passes. And the distribution of targets between wide receivers, tight ends and running backs is much tighter today than in years past. The tight end target share has actually more than doubled since 2020, while the running back share has increased and the wide receiver share has decreased by almost 20 percentage points.
| Play action | 30.8% | 29.8% | 23.3% | 20.4% | 19.6% |
| WR | 72.0% | 68.1% | 62.8% | 56.8% | 53.7% |
| TE | 11.5% | 13.2% | 14.2% | 23.9% | 26.3% |
| RB | 12.8% | 14.2% | 19.6% | 14.9% | 15.9% |
| Air courts | 8.5 | 8.2 | 9.2 | 8.7 | 7.6 |
| AY2Sticks | -0.7 | -0.7 | 0.5 | -0.1 | -1.5 |
| Time2Throw | 3.02 | 2.92 | 2.91 | 2.95 | 2.82 |
Things are going pretty well for the Bills so far this season. They struggled in consecutive games against the Ravens and Texans (the latter played primarily without Shakir) earlier this season, but have otherwise been successful with fantastic efficiency.
They may not be tested too often moving forward. You get one 49ers Defense this Sunday night that is dealing with multiple injuries and hasn't lived up to its level of performance in recent years, and the only top defensive unit Buffalo sees the rest of the way comes when the Bills take on the Lions in week 15. Otherwise it should go pretty smoothly. They may have to wait until the playoffs to see how this much more evenly distributed offense works against the best defenses and whether not having a real “go-to guy” for those moments makes a difference.
