No Matter How Bad You Think the Bills Are, They're Much, Much Worse

Jerry Thornton10/25/2018 6:30 PM

Source – The Buffalo Bills are on pace to be the worst offense in modern NFL history.

The 2018 season has been a historic one for offense. But perhaps the most historic offense is the worst one in the league. …

Football Outsiders’ DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) ratings break down every play individually, looking for success based on down and distance, and adjusting based on situation and opponent. We’ve broken down play-by-play going back to the 1986 season, giving us 33 years of NFL history to analyze. After their 37-5 loss to Indianapolis, the Bills now come out as 53.2 percent less efficient than the average team this year. That’s the worst offense we’ve ever tracked through seven games. …

Right now, the entire league is averaging 363 yards per game, which would easily surpass the previous record of 350. Buffalo is averaging just 234 yards per game, over one-third less than the league average. …

NFL teams are averaging 24.1 points per game. The Bills have less than half that, 11.6 points per game. The Bills are averaging 3.92 yards per play compared with a league average of 5.67. They lead the league with 12 interceptions. They are tied for 29th with 26 sacks, but they lead the league in sack rate. They rank 31st in third-down conversion rate at 27 percent. Rushing the ball? The Bills are a little better there than they are passing, but they still rank 28th with 3.85 yards per carry, and that could easily get worse if LeSean McCoy has to miss time with a head injury suffered in Sunday’s loss to the Colts. …

[T]he Bills average just 3.56 yards per play on first down, over a yard less than any other offense.

Well, if you’re gonna put it that way …

Saying the Bills offense is bad is no secret. There are unborn babies in Buffalo who will come into the world already knowing the Bills offense is terrible, simply from hearing Red Zone through their mother’s uterine wall. But as horrifically gawdawful as I thought they were, I’m just now picking up on the fact their futility is history-making in its atrociousness. But the numbers don’t lie, no matter how much the Bills Mafia would prefer they did.

It’s a sorry state of affairs to say the least for a franchise that has invested so much effort, money, draft capital and cap room into turning things around. Since 2012, they’ve used picks in the top 80 in the draft to get WR TJ Graham, OL Cordy Glenn, WR Robert Woods, QB EJ Manuel, OT Cyrus Kouandjio, WR Sammy Watkins (4th overall), G Dion Dawkins, WR Zay Jones and QB Josh Allen (7th). They traded for LeSean McCoy and locked him up for $40 million. They picked up QB Tyrod Taylor. They signed AJ McCarron as a bridge quarterback in case Allen needed a season to get acclimated. And landed 30-year-old RB Chris Ivory in free agency. They’ve spent over half a decade on this effort hoping to build an offensive wagon. And they succeeded:

Juggernaut? More like … Jugger-NOT, amirite? Huh? Huh? I’ll see myself out.

This is astonishing when you look at how every NFL game now looks like a 1980s Denver Nuggets home game. We’re not halfway through the season and we’ve already had three games where both teams have scored over 40 points. We had all of two over the last four years combined. Defense in tackle football has been outlawed by Royal Decree, and yet the Bills have produced this:

Sad! And now the Patriots face them Monday, with McCoy possibly out and Derek Anderson at quarterback, signed off the street and coming off a game in which he had three picks and a passer rating of 39.6 against the Colts Mr. Stay Puft defense.

So I say to you now, with blood in my eyes that if the Pats play one of those frustrating, bendy-straw game plans where they keep everything in front of them and play the boundaries and let Anderson have the deep middle to put up a ton of yards and score a couple of touchdowns because they’re just happy to let their own offense carry them, I will disavow this team. I will publicly renounce my faith in Bill Belichick. Refuse to ever say another positive thing about them. Go to their next press conference and demand they personally apologize to all of us.* After reading this, there is no excuse for holding them to single digits, at the very most.

These are sad, sad days indeed in Buffalo. You hate to see it.