When you look near the top of the AFC standings, you’ll see a very familiar image. Right there, leading the AFC East and sitting in second place in the conference with a 9-2 record, are the Buffalo Bills. Buffalo has won 11 or more games and the AFC East crown in every season since 2020, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the Bills there once again.
It should come as no surprise to see the Bills once again rank in the top six in points scored, which they have also done every season since 2020. And it should also come as no surprise to see that Bills quarterback Josh Allen is, a once again, one of the most effective and efficient quarterbacks in the NFL, leading one of the best passing attacks in the league.
However, that may be where the similarities between this year’s Bills offense and those of previous seasons end. Because Buffalo’s passing game is much different now than it was between 2020 and 2023. Which, again, isn’t surprising. When you remove a player like Stefon Diggs from the equation, like the Bills did when they traded him to the Houston Texans this past offseason, things are going to change quite dramatically.
And that’s exactly what happened. The passing offense is now much more equal than in previous years, with no offensive player receiving more than 20% of the total goals. For perspective, consider that Diggs had a target share between 25% and 27.9% in each of his four seasons in Buffalo.
In the table below, we present the target percentages of the Bills’ top five pass catchers in each season since Diggs arrived in 2020, up to and including this year. You should be able to tell the difference quite easily.
| 1st | 27.9% (Diggs) | 25.0% (Diggs) | 26.8% (Diggs) | 27.6% (Diggs) | 19.3% (Shakir) |
| 2nd | 18.0% (Beasley) | 17.1% (Beasley) | 16.2% (Davis) | 15.7% (Kincaid) | 17.3% (Kincaid) |
| 3rd | 10.4% (Davis) | 11.0% (sanders) | 11.3% (Knox) | 14.0% (Davis) | 10.5% (Coleman) |
| 4th | 8.7% (brown) | 10.8% (Knox) | 11.3% (McKenzie) | 9.3% (cooking) | 9.6% (Samuel) |
| 5th | 8.4% (lonely) | 9.6% (Davis) | 9.1% (solitary) | 7.8% (Shakir) | 9.1% (Cook/Hollins) |
The target percentages for pass catchers 2 through 5 are fairly consistent, but that drop in percentage for the top individual target has been spread further out. There are already 10 Bills with double-digit goals this season. There were only nine for all of last year, as well as in 2020 and 2021 (there were 10 in 2022).
Part of this is due to the fact that players have missed games. But even if you gave Khalil Shakir the 6.6 extra goals he averages, in the one game he missed, his goals percentage would only be a tad higher than 21%. Dalton Kincaid’s would only increase to about 19% if the game he missed was taken into account. Keon Coleman’s would be around 12.6% taking into account his two lost games. And all of those targets would have had to come from somewhere else, which would reduce the other players’ respective target percentages.
It’s not just the target player that’s changing for Buffalo, either. The Bills are trying different areas of the field. Specifically, Allen is being asked to throw intermediate-deep passes less frequently, largely in favor of quicker throws toward or behind the line of scrimmage. (That’s part of Shakir’s higher target percentage. He’s often the one being thrown at on those plays.) Through Tru Media, you can see the proportion of Allen’s throws that were intended for receivers behind the line of scrimmage, within 5 yards, from 6 to 10 yards, from 11 to 20 yards and finally 20 or more yards downfield below, 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+ | 10.5% | 10.5% | 12.0% | 13.0% | 12.7% |
There has also been a change in both the types of passes Allen throws and where those throws go. The Bills have drastically reduced the proportion of dropback plays in their offense, which in turn has resulted in Allen getting the ball out faster and throwing shorter passes. And the distribution of targets between wide receivers, tight ends and running backs is now much tighter than in previous years. The target share of tight ends has actually more than doubled since 2020, while the share of running backs has increased and the share of receivers has decreased by almost 20 percentage points.
| Play action | 30.8% | 29.8% | 23.3% | 20.4% | 19.6% |
| W.R. | 72.0% | 68.1% | 62.8% | 56.8% | 53.7% |
| TEA | 11.5% | 13.2% | 14.2% | 23.9% | 26.3% |
| R.B. | 12.8% | 14.2% | 19.6% | 14.9% | 15.9% |
| air patios | 8.5 | 8.2 | 9.2 | 8.7 | 7.6 |
| AY2Palos | -0.7 | -0.7 | 0.5 | -0.1 | -1.5 |
| time2release | 3.02 | 2.92 | 2.91 | 2.95 | 2.82 |
So far this season, everything is working out pretty well for the Bills. They struggled in back-to-back games against the Ravens and Texans (the latter of which played without Shakir) earlier this season but have otherwise been humming along with fantastic efficiency.
We may not see them get tested too often down the stretch. This Sunday night they get 49ers defense that is dealing with multiple injuries and hasn’t lived up to its performance level in recent years, and the only top defensive unit Buffalo sees the rest of the way comes when the Bills face the Lions in Week 15. Otherwise, things should be pretty quiet. They may have to wait until the playoffs to see how this much more distributed attack works against the best defenses, and if not having a true “go-to guy” for those moments makes a difference.
