When you look near the top of the AFC standings, you'll see a very familiar sight. 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 each season since 2020, so it shouldn't be surprising to see the Bills there once again.
It shouldn't be surprising to see that the Bills once again rank inside the top six in point scored, which they have also done each season since 2020. And it also shouldn't be surprising to see that Bills quarterback Josh Allen is, once again, one of the most effective and efficient quarterbacks in the NFL, leading one of the league's best passing attacks.
That might be where the similarities between this year's Bills offense and that of previous seasons end, though. Because Buffalo's passing game is much different now than it was between 2020 and 2023. Which, again, is not surprising. When you remove a player like Stefon Diggs from the equation, as the Bills did when they traded him to the Houston Texans this past offseason, things are going to shift pretty dramatically.
And that's exactly what's happened. The pass offense is now much more egalitarian than in previous years, with no player on the offense receiving more than 20% of the total targets. By way of 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've laid out the target shares for 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 the difference pretty easily.
| Player share | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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% (Cook) | 9.6% (Samuel) |
| 5th | 8.4% (Singletary) | 9.6% (Davis) | 9.1% (Singletary) | 7.8% (Shakir) | 9.1% (Cook/Hollins) |
The target shares for the Nos. 2 through 5 pass-catchers are pretty consistent, but that decrease in share for the top individual target has been distributed further down the line. There are already 10 Bills with double-digit targets this season. There were only nine all of last year, as well as in both 2020 and 2021. (There were 10 of them in 2022.)
Some of this is due to the fact that players have missed games. But even if you gave Khalil Shakir the additional 6.6 targets he's averaging, in the one game he's missed, his target share would still only be a hair over 21%. Dalton Kincaid's would only increase to around 19% when accounting for the game he missed. Keon Coleman's would be around 12.6% accounting for his two missed games. And all of those targets would've had to come from somewhere else, which would reduce those other players' respective target shares.
It's not just the targeted player that's changing for Buffalo, either. The Bills are testing different areas of the field. Specifically, Allen is being asked to throw intermediate-depth passes less often, largely in favor of more quick throws at or behind the line of scrimmage. (That's part of Shakir's increased target share. He is often the one being thrown to on those plays.) Via Tru Media, you can see the share 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 down the field, in each season since 2020.
| Air yards | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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-plus | 10.5% | 10.5% | 12.0% | 13.0% | 12.7% |
There's also been a change in both the types of passes Allen is throwing, and where those throws are headed. The Bills have dramatically reduced the share of play-action dropbacks in their attack, which in turn has resulted in Allen getting the ball out quicker, and throwing shorter passes. And the distribution of targets between wide receivers, tight ends and running backs is now far narrower than it was in years past. Tight end target share has actually more than doubled since 2020, while the running back share has ticked up and the wide receiver share has decreased by almost 20 percentage points.
| Passes | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Play action | 30.8% | 29.8% | 23.3% | 20.4% | 19.6% |
| WR | 72.0% | 68.1% | 62.8% | 56.8% | 53.7% |
| TE | 11.5% | 13.2% | 14.2% | 23.9% | 26.3% |
| RB | 12.8% | 14.2% | 19.6% | 14.9% | 15.9% |
| Air Yards | 8.5 | 8.2 | 9.2 | 8.7 | 7.6 |
| AY2Sticks | -0.7 | -0.7 | 0.5 | -0.1 | -1.5 |
| Time2Throw | 3.02 | 2.92 | 2.91 | 2.95 | 2.82 |
So far this season, it's all working quite well for the Bills. They struggled in back to back games against the Ravens and Texans (the latter of which they notably played without Shakir) earlier this season, but have otherwise been humming along with fantastic efficiency.
We might not see them get tested too often down the stretch. They get a 49ers defense this Sunday night that is dealing with multiple injuries and has not lived up to its level of performance in recent years, and the only top defensive unit Buffalo sees the rest of the way comes when the Bills take on the Lions in Week 15. Otherwise, it should be pretty smooth sailing. They may have to wait until the playoffs to see how this much more evenly-distributed attack works against the best defenses, and whether not having a true "go-to guy" for those moments makes a difference.
