The Buffalo Bills are coming off an anemic six-point performance against the Jacksonville Jaguars, in which they turned it over, were terrible on third downs, and continued to struggle in the red zone.
Josh Allen already took blame for the bad 9-6 loss in Jacksonville. Now, offensive coordinator Brian Daboll is also bearing some of the brunt for the offense's inability to move the ball consistently.
"The guys that are out there, we have a lot of confidence in," Daboll said, via the Buffalo News. "Our job is to go out there and whoever's ready and available for us, that's who we have confidence in. We can coach it better, play it better. It's a team thing. No one wants to go out there and score six points. There's a lot of things that contributed to that. And at the end of the day, and this is the nature of this league, you have to be at your best each and every week. You have to coach your best, you have to play your best."
The Bills' offense was disjointed all game. Allen was off-target early, unable to connect with Stefon Diggs much of the contest, and the ground game was silenced again.
Buffalo entered the week leading the NFL with 32.7 points per game, but the past two weeks (including a 26-11 win over Miami), it hasn't been a pretty operation.
The Bills have a +117-point differential this season (2nd in the NFL, behind Arizona), the highest point differential of any team with three or more losses through the first eight games of a season since 1940 -- 1 of 6 teams since 1940 with 3-plus losses and a 100+ point differential in their first eight games (all previous five teams won their 9th game of the season).
Allen has struggled to find consistency, including a season-low 62.7 passer rating Sunday. The Bills' run-game issues were caused by an injured offensive line. But the inability to buffer Allen with any semblance of a rushing attack, particularly outside of QB scrambles, has been an issue all season in Buffalo. The Bills RBs are averaging the sixth-fewest rush YPG (74.4) in the NFL. Allen has led Buffalo in rush yards in each of the last two games (55 yards in Week 8, 50 yards in Week 9). Zack Moss' head injury last week won't help the matter.
"It's an area that we're working hard to improve," Daboll said of the run game. "Positive plays in that area have been tough to find here as of late and we need to do a better job and it starts with me. Two-dimensional, one-dimensional, there's situations that come into play. Is it first down, is it second and long … we probably had far too many second-and-long or third-and-long situations, whether that be from the run or the pass. And, again, I'll take ownership of that."
Luckily for Daboll, Allen, and the rest of the Bills offense, they face a New York Jets defense in Week 10 that has been shredded. Gang Green ranks last in total yards allowed, last in points allowed, 29th in passing yards, and 27 in rush yards given up. If the Bills struggle to move the ball Sunday, then we can really start to wonder if the issues in Buffalo are chronic or just a few-week kink that needed to be untwisted.
