Buffalo Bills Offseason Preview
The folks who got the Bills into this mess have been empowered to get them out of it. What are the chances that backfires? Probably not much greater than 50% ...
This is the latest installment of an ongoing series of offseason previews.
2025 Season in a Nutshell
The Bills defeated their opponents 12 times in the regular season. They beat themselves five times. Both parties joined forces with the refs to defeat them in the playoffs.
A fed-up Terry Pegula held exactly one (1) person responsible for the disappointing season — head coach Sean McDermott — then handed out promotions to everyone else. In this way, excellence shall be achieved.
Coaching Situation
Newly-promoted Supreme Ruler Brandon Beane and head coach Joe Brady aren’t just Real Football Guys but Realpolitik Football Guys. They are master credit-takers and accountability avoiders. When things got tough in 2025, they kept their priorities (self-preservation and career advancement) straight. They might not be very good at their jobs, but they excel at keeping them. Or getting better ones. They’re exemplars of 21st century American leadership. They should be blasted off in a SpaceX rocket to colonize Pluto.
After enduring some skepticism early in the coaching carousel news cycle, Beane and Brady Jedi mind-tricked BillsMafia into liking them again by hiring defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard, who played for the Bills in the early 2000s before rising through the coaching ranks from Wisconsin to the Broncos. Pete Carmichael, Sean Payton’s majordomo since the Drew Brees era in New Orleans, will be Brady’s offensive coordinator and blame deflection shield. Both are fine coordinators who would look even better if some other coach and GM had hired them.
Quarterback Situation
Josh Allen is so talented that he makes everyone and everything around him look better, which is precisely why the Bills are in their current predicament.
State of the Roster
There’s no WR1, and the folks who think the Bills don’t need one – or that Khalil Shakir or Keon Coleman somehow qualify – are now in charge.
The defense is full of young veterans like Christian Benford, Greg Rousseau and Terrel Bernard whose scouting report boils down to, “Well, he’s a starter for the Bills, so he must be kinda good …”
Flanking the youngish nucleus-ish are far too many Matt Milano/Joey Bosa/Tre’Davious White/Shaq Thompson types, at or near the downsides of their careers. Ed Oliver, who was healthy for about a dozen snaps per month in 2025, straddles the two camps.
On the plus side, James Cook won the rushing title. The Dion Dawkins-led offensive line remains stout. Rookie defenders Max Hairston, T.J. Sanders and Deone Walker weren’t spectacular – Hairston, the best of the bunch, bounced from injury to injury – but at least flashed the potential to get better. This is not a bad roster. It’s just not a “straight back into Super Bowl contention” roster, either.
Cap and Draft Stuff
The Bills are $7 million over the 2026 salary cap on paper. They will be able to clear space, but not a ton of it. Allen’s contract is already highly leveraged, though they can squeeze a little more savings from it. It might make more sense to release veterans like Oliver and Dawson Knox than to keep extending them.
Beane did a legitimately fine job massaging contract extensions to keep the Bills nucleus together for the last few years. We’re about to discover if he’s a one-trick pony like Mickey Loomis who keeps extending contracts past the point of diminishing returns and over the horizon of absurdity.
DaQuan Jones, A.J. Epenesa, Milano, Bosa, White and Thompson are among the top in-house free agents. The only reason not to part with all of them is the lack of viable talent behind them.
One Thing the Bills Should Do
Trade Coleman. He went just 38-404-4 on 59 targets while running 284 pass routes. He’s a clog in the artery of the passing game.
Beane will be tempted to keep trying to justify selecting Coleman 33rd overall, but the Bills will be better off engineering a Jalen Raegor/Denzel Mims-style change-of-scenery swap for some other team’s 2024 draft reach.
If nothing else, such a deal would signal that Beane can acknowledge a mistake. But why would an exec who just “earned” a promotion want to do a thing like that?
In Summary
The Bills appear likely to take a step backward in order to get younger and cheaper before proceeding with Allen Phase 2.0. Beane and Brady probably realize this and have already decided who to blame for the soft reboot. (Deposed head coaches are useful in that respect.)
It will be interesting to learn which veterans depart, which are considered indispensable and what position group (receiver, defensive tackle, linebacker) is prioritized in the draft. The fates of players like Oliver, Coleman and Milano, and the identity of that first-round pick, will tell us more about where Beane/Brady’s heads are at than anything the Bills do with their coaching staff.
