Who’s at fault for Buffalo Bills’ latest loss to another AFC playoff contender?

Another week for the Buffalo Bills. Another loss to an AFC contender. Another aftermath where coaching becomes the main narrative. Another one of these reactions articles.

The Bills fell to 3-2 on the season with a 23-20 defeat at the hands of the Houston Texans in Week 5. With any loss comes the assignment of blame, and while no loss is ever 100% on any unit or person in a team sport as complex as American tackle football, Buffalo’s coaching staff once again finds itself under the microscope following the team’s latest stumble.

Last week, it was the trick play. This week, it’s the end-of-game sequence. Let’s set the stage: The Bills have the ball on their own three-yard line. Thirty-two seconds remain in the game. The score is 20-20. The Houston Texans have all three of their timeouts. The Bills had just declined a ten-second runoff that could have been utilized due to an intentional grounding penalty on quarterback C.J. Stroud. And then they were pinned down by a punt from Houston.

The Bills throw the ball down the field three times: a sideline shot to wide receiver Keon Coleman almost intercepted by Texans cornerback Kwamie Lassiter, a deep shot to wide receiver Mack Hollins, and a 15-yard dig to Curtis Samuel. All three ended up as incomplete passes.

The Bills would go on to punt the ball to the Houston Texans, who would get a good return from Robert Woods of 13 yards and then utilize one of their remaining timeouts after a five-yard pass play to set up Ka’imi Fairbairn’s 59-yard game-winning field goal as time expired.

It didn’t work. Whose fault is it?

The Texans are a primarily single-high defense that ran man coverage in key moments against the Bills, essentially requiring that the wide receivers win on the outside. Buffalo’s receiving corps was not up to the task against Houston, a leading cause of quarterback Josh Allen’s 9-of-30 day throwing the ball.

In the highest of high-leverage moments, the plan for the offense was to do the thing that hadn’t worked all day.

“In high-leverage moments, I want the ball in Josh Allen’s hands” is not the same stance as “in high-leverage moments, I want my wide receivers who haven’t won on the outside down the field essentially all day to win on the outside down the field.” “I want the ball in Josh Allen’s hands with 32 seconds after a touchback needing to get into field goal range” is not the same as “I want the ball in Josh Allen’s hands with 32 seconds left to go from our own three-yard line needing to get into field goal range.” Pure “drop back, down the field” throwing has been the weakest aspect of the Bills’ offense even in the weeks where the production has been stellar, and expecting it to show up in a critical moment was unwise.

But who is responsible for the results of those plays?

Sean McDermott — As head coach, McDermott sets the agenda for the offense. Had he told offensive coordinator Joe Brady “we’re running the ball here” (the most consistently effective of Buffalo’s plays against Houston, overall), Brady would have. The precise plays that are called are functions of Brady; the umbrella those plays fall under is on McDermott.

Joe Brady — pure drop-back-passing down the field to wide receivers without Allen on the move and with Tyrell Shavers on the field is a Joe Brady call. What I just described, when said out loud, could not reasonably have been expected to generate the first down necessary to help the Bills run out the clock. Buffalo’s drop-back success rate against the Texans was 31.4%, the second lowest of any team that played (excluding the MNF game) in Week 5. That includes Josh Allen’s scrambles for first downs on designed passing plays, of which there were three for 10-plus yards.

Josh Allen — QB17 is not without blame. He had Keon Coleman and Dalton Kincaid open for reasonable gains on second down and passed them up in favor of a deep shot to Mack Hollins. A five-to-seven yard completion (maybe more if a tackle gets broken) in that place could allow Brady to get Allen on the edge and give him a playmaker’s option on third down.

When it was clicking the first few weeks of the season, Buffalo’s offense was very much like a game of “duck, duck, goose”: it was slow and boring, with short schemed passes off motion and stacks, and run plays that were effective in keeping the Bills out of situations where they were behind the sticks often — punctuated by big Josh Allen plays where he reminded you that he’s one of the most gifted football players on the planet. The Houston Texans dared Buffalo’s receivers to beat them one on one on the outside, and the coaches leaned into a weakness in the highest-leverage moment in the game.

But does it need to be as significant of a weakness?

The Bills have a wide receiver that Matt Harmon of Reception Perception has charted above a 75% success rate against man coverage: Curtis Samuel. But they’re currently targeting Samuel like he’s Laviska Shenault. When wide receiver Khalil Shakir suffered his ankle injury, head coach Sean McDermott said the team was “thankful (they) have Curtis.”

New Bills WR Curtis Samuel’s 2023 #ReceptionPerception profile is up on the site.

– 75.4% success rate vs. man coverage (82nd percentile)
– He’s cleared 75% success rate vs. man in all 4 seasons charted for RP
– 80% success rate vs. zone was the best mark of his career

Samuel… pic.twitter.com/jtoVbOh8zw

— Matt Harmon (@MattHarmon_BYB) March 19, 2024

Thankful to line him up in the backfield twice a game for screen passes?

I went back and watched every single snap Curtis Samuel had against the Texans while writing this article. Bubble screen, blocking (for runs and other screens), and verticals represented the bulk of Samuel’s snaps. The remainder were divided as follows:

Drag x2

Whip x1

Corner x1

Deep over x1

Hook x1

Slant x1

Pick for Kincaid x1

Dig x1

He won versus man on his go-route to the end zone and wasn’t targeted. He appeared to be the first read on a non-bubble/RPO minimally, if at all.

If the turf toe is still an issue, why is he playing so many snaps? If it’s not an issue, why isn’t he getting prioritization on non-screen passes? There were two main concerns for the Bills’ wide receivers coming into 2024: lack of vertical prowess and the concern about separating versus man coverage.

Curtis Samuel has the ability to contribute in both ways and has yet to be meaningfully targeted in either way in this offense. (It should be noted that Samuel was open on the end-of-game dig route and pressure on Josh Allen stopped the throw from getting there.)

The Bills, throughout the game and in a pivotal moment, leaned into an established weakness against a team schemed up to take advantage of that weakness without utilizing the player they brought in who can contribute specifically to minimizing that weakness. The one time they did, he was open and contributing circumstances stopped the play from being successful.

Maybe if they would have gone to Samuel against the Cover-1 and Cover-0 looks from the Texans in other meaningful moments, the end-of-game sequence wouldn’t have been necessary.

There’s never a catch-all, “this one guy is at fault” answer for why a team loses a game, but for the second week in a row, we’re left wondering if any reasonable person could have looked at the Bills’ coaching plans and determined logically that they were a good idea.