Let me be honest with you about something that doesn’t get said enough: the run-first offense you watched the Buffalo Bills run for the past two-plus years? That wasn’t entirely Joe Brady’s offense. Not his full version of it, anyway.
I know that’s a spicy take. Brady was the play-caller. Brady was the coordinator. The success is his, and the frustrations belong to him, too. But here’s the uncomfortable truth — the identity of that offense was shaped by two forces working in tandem: the conservative
ball-control DNA that Sean McDermott has always preferred, and the genius of offensive line coach Aaron Kromer, who quietly turned the Bills into one of the most effective ground-and-pound operations in the league. Brady operated within that framework. He didn’t build it.
Kromer is retired now. McDermott is gone. And Brady? He’s the head coach. Which means for the first time in Buffalo, we’re about to see what Joe Brady’s offense actually looks like when he calls the shots with nobody pulling him toward the run.
I think you’re going to be surprised. And I think the DJ Moore trade and the drafting of Skyler Bell are the most obvious tells that the new HC envisions a more balanced and complete offense going forward.
Who Joe Brady was before he got to Buffalo
In 2019, Brady was the passing game coordinator at LSU. That Tigers offense went 15-0, won the national championship, and rewrote the NCAA record books. Per LSU Athletics and Tiger Rag, LSU led the nation in total offense at 568.4 yards per game, ranked second in passing at 401.6 yards per game, and was first in scoring at 48.4 points per game. Joe Burrow threw for 5,671 yards and 60 touchdowns. The offense became the first in college football history to feature a 5,000-yard passer, a 1,000-yard rusher, and two 1,000-yard receivers in the same season. Brady won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach.
Then he went to Carolina. As the Panthers’ offensive coordinator in 2020 — with Teddy Bridgewater, not exactly a gunslinger — Brady orchestrated the first offense in Panthers franchise history to produce four different players with over 1,000 scrimmage yards: DJ Moore (1,215), Robby Anderson (1,111), Curtis Samuel (1,051), and Mike Davis (1,015), per the Panthers’ official 2020 statistical review. His stated philosophy, per a 2020 film breakdown, was to force defenses to cover every blade of grass and get speed into space. That’s not a guy who dreams about inside zone runs on first down.
This is who Joe Brady is. He is a passing game architect who believes in spreading the field, attacking downfield, and putting the ball in the hands of playmakers at the skill positions. The run game he built in Buffalo? Effective? Absolutely. His true identity? Not really.
Brady was calling McDermott’s offense — not his own
Here’s the context that almost nobody has touched. When Brady took over from Ken Dorsey midway through the 2023 season, he wasn’t walking onto a blank canvas. He was walking into an offensive coordinator role that had just opened — at least in part — because McDermott was frustrated with how Dorsey was managing the football. The criticism was that Dorsey threw the ball too much and abandoned the run game too quickly. That’s well-documented.
Now put yourself in Brady’s shoes. You’re a quarterbacks coach promoted to interim offensive coordinator, under a head coach who just parted ways with the previous guy for being too pass-happy. What do you do? You run the ball. You protect the football. You do everything that tells your boss you’re the answer to the problem he just fired someone to fix. That’s not philosophy — that’s survival.
Brady was smart enough to understand the assignment. And he was good enough (with Kromer’s help) to execute it at an elite level. But let’s not confuse executing someone else’s vision with having your own. Now, for the first time in Buffalo, he has the power — and the obligation — to reveal what he actually believes.
What Kromer built — and what leaves with him
When Kromer returned to Buffalo in 2022, he turned the offensive line into a weapon. In 2025, per ESPN analytics, Kromer guided the Bills’ offensive line to the best run block win rate in the NFL at 75%, and fourth in pass block win rate at 71%. The Bills had the rushing title, with James Cook finishing 2025 with 1,621 rushing yards, the first Bill to lead the league in rushing since O.J. Simpson in 1976, per Pro Football Reference.
That is remarkable. Nobody is taking that away from Kromer. He had 24 seasons in the NFL and earned every bit of the respect he commanded. He was the best/most proven coach on the team, in my opinion.
But here’s what the numbers also tell us. Per ESPN, from 2021 through Week 10 of the 2023 season, the Bills ran designed run plays 35% of the time — 27th in the NFL. After Brady was promoted in Week 11 of 2023, that rushing rate climbed to 44.2%, ranking fourth in the league, and the Bills had the third-highest run rate in 2025. Per a 2024 analysis in the Buffalo News, the Bills in 2023 had the largest increase in rushing attempts of any team in the NFL, adding 82 more carries than the year before, and 30 more rushing first downs. And per Sportradar data cited in the Buffalo News, the Bills had the best rushing success rate in the entire NFL in 2024 at 57% — the highest in franchise history since at least 2000.
Kromer’s fingerprints are all over those numbers. He was, as Brandon Beane publicly said, one of the best assistant coaches in football. He even deployed a sixth offensive lineman on 14% of Bills plays in 2024 — more than any other team in the league by a wide margin. That level of schematic commitment to the ground game doesn’t happen without a coach who bleeds run-blocking.
Kromer has retired. Without him, that identity doesn’t automatically transfer to whoever fills the role next, nor the conviction that they can still run the ball at such a high level.
But the run Game wasn’t the problem — and it isn’t the enemy
I want to be clear about something, because I think this argument gets misread easily. I am not saying the run game is a problem. Cook is a weapon. The offensive line, even without Kromer and Edwards, is still very good. An effective run game remains a crucial piece of any championship offense.
What I am saying is this: you have Josh Allen. You have the most prolific quarterback in the history of the league — nobody has scored touchdowns at such a high rate, ever. He has to be the centerpiece of your offense, not a panic button you press when your run-first offense is struggling to generate points. You cannot afford to have your passing game be an afterthought. You cannot go into January with receivers who generated a combined 719 yards from your leading pass-catcher (Khalil Shakir, per official Bills stats), with no wideout cracking 750 yards in a full season, ranking 29th in yards per catch at just 11.6, per PFF advanced metrics. That is not a good passing game — that is a passing game on life support.
Brady learned real lessons from 2024 and 2025. The balance he built — the 12 personnel, the misdirection, the “everybody eats” philosophy — those are tools he keeps. What he is adding is the one thing those offenses were missing: a genuine downfield threat that forces defenses to make a choice.
The DJ Moore move tells you everything
Want to know what Brady actually about his past receiver room? He gave up a second-round pick — No. 60 overall — for DJ Moore. In February. Before free agency opened.
That is urgency. That is a first-time head coach making his very first significant personnel move with the pass game, not the run game, in mind. For the past two seasons, the Bills’ offense was limited in through the air by a lack of separation from their receivers, without a true No. 1 target since Stefon Diggs departed. Strong defenses consistently took their chances against the Bills’ pass catchers in one-on-ones, without any help, sending pressure after Allen and daring his receivers to beat their CBs and make them pay. It worked more often than not.
Enter Moore — I think his decline in Chicago needs more nuance than the critics are giving it. Moore posted 50 receptions for 682 yards and 6 touchdowns in 2025, in just 85 targets (Khalil Shakir led the Bills with 95). That is, by his standards, a down year. But the Bears were moving in a different direction. Rome Odunze, Luther Burden III, and Colston Loveland were the present and the future of that offense under Ben Johnson. Moore wasn’t being phased out because he regressed — he was being phased out because the roster around him was changing. When the Bears drafted a receiver with a similar profile in Burden, the writing was on the wall.
Moore doesn’t need to be a 1,300-yard receiver in Buffalo, though. He doesn’t need to replicate his 2023 career high with the Bears. What he needs to do is be the player that defenses pay a price for leaving in single coverage without safety help — and I believe he will be that. Shakir will move chains in the intermediate game. Dalton Kincaid, if healthy, is a real mismatch at tight end. Keon Coleman or Skyler Bell can be a fourth option with real upside. Moore’s job is to be the guy who breaks a game open when a defense overcommits to stopping Cook. In Brady’s system, with Allen throwing the ball? He will find those moments.
Remember: in 2020, with Teddy Bridgewater under center, Brady had Moore averaging 18.1 yards per catch, ranking second in the NFL, per the Panthers’ official stats. It’s been six years, but imagine what happens when you replace Bridgewater with Allen.
Then the Bills drafted Bell in the fourth round to add another explosive option. The Bills now have a “big three” at the pass-catching group in Moore, Shakir, and Kincaid, with some potential in Coleman and Bell, plus the vet Joshua Palmer as depth behind them. Is it an elite group? No. But it’s probably the best receiver room Brady has had to work with in Buffalo. The philosophy change should give them a fair chance at proving themselves.
When it’s on the line, the passing game has to deliver
Here’s the conversation nobody wants to have. The Bills’ recent January exits haven’t all been blowouts. They’ve been gut-punch losses where the offense had the ball last and couldn’t convert.
I said the offense — not Allen — for a reason.
Think about that 2021 Divisional Round loss to the Chiefs. The “13 seconds” game. Allen led two legitimate scoring drives in the final two minutes of regulation — two. He did everything a quarterback could possibly do. His defense couldn’t hold. That’s not on the offense.
But think about more recent exits. In the overtime loss to Denver in the Divisional Round this past January, the Bills had the ball. In the AFC Championship loss to Kansas City before that, Allen had opportunities late that the offense couldn’t finish. When the game is on the line — not the first quarter, not a comfortable second-half lead — the passing game has to be impeccable. You have to be able to take the game on Allen’s arm and win it. And despite being “Superman”, he also needs help.
Brady said publicly in his introductory press conference that his philosophy is to generate explosive plays in any way possible, and he’s been candid that the downfield passing game needs to improve. He’s adding Moore and Bell to give Allen weapons that defenses can’t simply load the box against. Because when it’s fourth quarter, one score, two minutes left, and the whole season is riding on the next drive — you want Allen with real options. Not a receiver room where Gabe Davis coming back off the practice squad is an upgrade.
The Bills have the hardest part of that equation already solved. They have the quarterback. Brady spent this offseason going out and getting him the weapons to finish the job.
What to Expect in 2026
I’m not predicting the Bills become a 65% pass team overnight. Brady is too smart for that, and the lessons of 2024 and 2025 — the balance, the ball security, the situational football — don’t disappear because Kromer retired. What I’m predicting is a genuine shift in offensive identity, particularly on early downs where the Bills have been among the most predictable rushing teams in the league, and a passing game — not just a quarterback — that for the first time in years actually commands respect from opposing defensive coordinators.
The building blocks are there. Allen is still the most talented player in football. Moore gives him a real No. 1 option. Bell adds fresh legs on the outside. Kincaid, healthy, opens the middle of the field. And without McDermott demanding ball control and Kromer designing the run game, Brady has room to build the offense he’s always envisioned — a balanced, multi-threat attack that keeps defenses guessing on every down.
Brady built the most explosive passing offense in college football history at LSU. He turned a Bridgewater-led Panthers team into a four-headed scrimmage-yards machine with Moore as the centerpiece. He also learned valuable lessons under McDermott and alongside Kromer. He knows how to attack, how to spread the field, and how to build an offense that scores points when it matters most.
The offense hasn’t been Buffalo’s biggest problem — there’s plenty to discuss on the defensive side of the ball, but that’s a conversation for another day. On the offensive side of the ball, though? There are real reasons to be excited about what the new head coach’s first truly autonomous attack will look like in Buffalo. The foundation was built under McDermott and by Kromer. The walls are going up under Brady.
I can’t wait to watch it.
Catch up on all this and more with the latest edition of Leading the Charge!
