Who will emerge as the best receiver?

During his first four seasons as the Buffalo Bills’ quarterback, Josh Allen enjoyed enviable continuity in the leadership hierarchy as he played for the same head coach and offensive coordinator.

But while Sean McDermott continues to be the only head coach Allen has had, the 28-year-old is now experiencing life on the other side in terms of the coaches who are most important to his success — offensive coordinator and QB coach.

Since Brian Daboll left Buffalo to become the head coach of the New York Giants in early 2022, Allen has had two OCs in Ken Dorsey and Joe Brady, and he’s brought in three QB coaches in Dorsey, Brady and now newcomer Ronald Curry.

“No year is the same as the year before, right?” Allen said in the spring. “But especially in this case. Going in with fresh guys and being able to communicate with them and learning from Joe, learning from (Curry). So being able to relearn the offense that we use here and being able to try to communicate it to the guys … I’m doing the best I can.”

Allen has a big responsibility on his broad shoulders, and it won’t be an easy task to live up to the legacy he’s already built over his first six seasons in Buffalo.

The offense, whether it was Daboll, Dorsey or Brady for half a season in 2023, was exceptional. Even though McDermott felt the need to fire Dorsey midseason, the offense was still very good and by the end of the year the Bills ranked sixth in scoring, fourth in total yards, fifth in yards per play, third in first downs, eighth in passing yards and seventh in rushing yards.

This is a huge success, which is in line with what happened in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Of course, ultimate success in the NFL isn’t based on stats, it’s based on championships, and while the Bills have won four straight AFC East division crowns for just the second time in franchise history, they’ve also been eliminated in the divisional round of the playoffs three years in a row, with the last two losses coming at Highmark Stadium.

If the Bills are to clear that divisional round hurdle in 2024, Allen will have to adapt to the new teachings of Brady and Curry, while implementing the changes to the scheme while breaking in a largely new set of passing targets.

“I’ve talked to some of the long-time veterans of the game and I understand that sometimes they may have been on the same team, but they’ve actually played on three or four different teams,” Allen said of players who have endured coaching upheaval. “I feel like I’m still getting better, I’m still learning a lot. There’s a lot to learn, a lot to grow, and I feel like we’re doing that right now. We just have to have confidence in what we’re doing.”

Here are five questions about the Bills’ offense.

1. Will Joe Brady succeed in his second attempt as offensive coordinator?

Everyone remembers that in 2019 at LSU, Brady was the wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator for what might be the greatest offense in college football history when quarterback Joe Burrow, running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire and receivers Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase led the Tigers to 726 points and a 15-0 record en route to a national championship.

That propelled him to the NFL the following year at age 30 as the Panthers’ offensive coordinator under new head coach Matt Rhule, but Brady quickly learned that the NFL is not the SEC, and life without all-time greats like Burrow, Jefferson and Chase was eye-opening.

It’s not that it’s all his fault, but Brady was considered a flop in Carolina and Rhule fired him in December 2021, sparking a career reboot that he got with Buffalo when McDermott hired him to be the QBs coach in 2022. Now, after taking over for Dorsey last November, Brady enters his first full season as the Bills’ OC with a chip on his shoulder, hoping to prove once and for all that he has the chops for the NFL.

Allen, for his part, is excited about what Brady can bring to an offense that will have a different personnel makeup.

“He’s trying to use our team’s strengths to the best of our ability and really put the power in our hands to go out there and do it,” Allen said, basing that comment on how things have played out in late 2023. “Ultimately, his big philosophy is, ‘If you want it, if it’s something you want, you’re going to make it happen.’”

2. Which receiver will become Josh Allen’s preferred target?

Of all the changes happening on offense, the biggest for Allen is the loss of his No. 1 receiver, Stefon Diggs, with whom he formed one of the NFL’s deadliest tandems. In just four seasons, Diggs has caught 445 passes for 5,372 yards and 37 TDs, numbers that rank him fourth in team history in each category behind players like Andre Reed, Eric Moulds and Lee Evans who spent much more time in Buffalo.

“It’s really tough to part ways with a guy who’s been a huge part of our success here the last four years,” Allen said. “If you look at the stats, they don’t lie. The numbers don’t lie.”

No, it is not, and Allen must now hope that someone among a diverse group of newcomers – although it will likely require a consortium – can cover most of that lost production.

It’s easy to say that tight end Dalton Kincaid will now become the No. 1 target, but there aren’t many teams in the NFL that run their offense through the tight end. He’ll be a big part of it, but the Bills need to get the impact of Curtis Samuel and Khalil Shakir, in particular. They spent big money to sign Samuel, who previously played with Brady in Carolina, when Samuel had his best season in the NFL with 77 receptions and 41 rushing attempts as a dual-threat weapon in 2020.

Shakir gained momentum in the second half of 2023, when teams began to limit Diggs’ efficiency, and he caught 39 passes for 611 yards. And then there are the intriguing additions of second-round pick Keon Coleman and free agents Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Chase Claypool. Coleman will need time to grow into this offense and likely won’t be a key cog, at least initially. Valdes-Scantling is the one to watch because he brings a deep speed element the Bills lacked.

3. Does Dawson Knox bring value to the offense?

The Bills gave Knox a generous contract extension through 2022, a move that doesn’t look like a great one after drafting Kincaid in the first round in 2023 and then turning him into a No. 1 tight end.

Knox had his best season in 2021, with 49 receptions for 587 yards and nine TDs. He was set to hit free agency after 2022, so the Bills decided to keep him under contract, but he then suffered an injury-plagued 2023 season that yielded just 186 receiving yards and it’s now hard to imagine Knox playing a significant role as a wide receiver.

Kincaid will likely increase his snap percentage from 60% last year, and using Knox instead of someone like Shakir, Samuel, Coleman or Valdes-Scantling wouldn’t make much sense. Knox may find a role on third down or in the red zone, but I think his primary contribution will be as a blocker.

“We’re going to try to put our best 11 players on the football field, and that could change from week to week based on the matchups,” Brady said when asked about using two-tight end teams. “When you have guys like Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox, it opens a lot of doors because they can play outside, block in the line. We’d like to develop that package and get them comfortable and put them in different situations.”

4. Can James Cook continue to carry a heavy load?

Over the final nine games of last year, including the playoffs, Cook’s production dropped off. He had a great game where he rushed for a career-high 179 yards against the Cowboys, but in the other eight games, his average was 66.8 yards and his average per carry was 3.65, more than a yard shy of his full-season mark of 4.73 yards, built over a strong first half of the season.

As a wide receiver, he had just 14 receptions for 80 yards in the last five games, and it was easy to extrapolate from his declining numbers that he was worn down. He had 281 touchdowns in the regular season and 44 in the playoffs, a hefty workload for a 5-foot-11, 190-pounder who hadn’t been close to being used since graduating from high school.

The Bills are hoping a full year with Ty Johnson as their backup will take some of the load off Cook, and if rookie Ray Davis shows promise in training camp and the preseason, you could see him used in some situations, especially on third down. Cook’s only weakness is that he’s not a good short-yardage runner, as evidenced by his yards after contact numbers (2.68, which ranks 21st among RBs with at least 200 carries), so Davis, a stocky, low-center RB at 220 pounds, could be useful on third-and-short or at the goal line.

5. Will the new offensive line be operational?

Mitch Morse left for purely salary reasons, which leaves room for doubt. Connor McGovern, who played center at Penn State but very little in his first four years in the NFL, takes over at center, and he and Allen will have to develop a relationship after spending five seasons with Morse.

“Even though he’s played the position before, it’s more of a newness to the position,” McDermott said. “It’s a little bit of a mental thing, but Connor is so programmed that he was probably thinking about it a year ago because last year he was really in a role where he could have been moved in a game to replace Mitch and so on.”

Moving McGovern out of left guard means re-signed David Edwards takes over, even though he hasn’t been a full-time starter since 2021 with the Rams.

“We have the best offensive line coach in the league,” Brady said of Aaron Kromer. “When that time comes, I think we’ll be on the same page.”

You can contact Sal Maiorana at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal’s newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out every other Friday during the offseason, please follow this link:https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

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