Buffalo Rumblings
How good are the Bills' offensive players — can they win games for the team, can Buffalo win with them, or is the outlook altogether different?
In his press conference to end the season, Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott talked about, ideally, having two or three true elite difference makers on each side of the ball. Beane remains focused on competing for a Super Bowl, and he let us know his considerations on that matter for the Bills’ roster moving forward.
Without head coach Sean McDermott’s assessment, I decided to examine the roster and check how close (or far away) the Bills are to this "ideal world" painted by Beane. The tool I'll be using, starting today with the offense, is the "Lofton Exercise.”
In an appearance on “The Tim Graham Show” years ago, former Buffalo Bills great and NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver James Lofton talked about one simple exercise that former Chargers head coach Marty Schottenheimer used to ask from his staff after every season.
Lofton (a wide receiver coach back in the day) and the entire Chargers' staff were asked to rank every player on the team in one of three tiers — players who can win games for us, players who we can win with, or players who simply aren't good enough and we need better. Schottenheimer's task to his coaches gave him a pretty straightforward assessment of his rosters every year, lining up well with what McDermott talked about in his latest interview.
With that in mind, I'll start this 2025 Buffalo Bills Lofton Exercise with the offense and its players. Do the Bills have those two or three players McDermott feels are necessary toward winning games for them?
Allen is the unquestioned "can win games for us" player not only on offense, but among the entire roster. If there's a guy who can single-handedly win games for the Bills by himself (and he does it several times a year), it’s Josh Allen. We've seen enough to realize he’s that guy and then some.
The second player on Buffalo’s offense who has emerged as a "can win games for us" kind of guy is James Cook. He's become an elite running back with vision, patience, game-breaking speed, and a surprising physicality to finish off his runs.
Despite how good Cook has become, I can't name him as a tier one player without putting an asterisk on it, though. Drafted primarily as a pass-catching back (according to McDermott himself), Cook hasn't been able to stay on the field during third downs and two-minute situations, thanks to unreliable blocking and his struggles with some bad drops.
Improving on those areas would make him a true tier one talent but, right now, those flaws matter, resulting in situations like we saw in the last game — where he wasn't on the field for a single...
