The Bills have won their first three games. They’ve rocketed to the top of the PFT power rankings. And their new no-number-one-receiver approach is working.
On Monday night, quarterback Josh Allen spread the ball around to 10 different receivers. Ten of them.
After the game, he explained the approach.
“It’s paying dividends of what we’ve worked on throughout the entire offseason and through training camp of the ‘everybody eats’ mentality,” Allen told reporters after the 47-10 win. “And, again, it could be your play this play. You never know when it’s gonna happen. And that’s the beauty of it. When guys get to buy into this and really understand, like, ‘I may not get the ball four, five times thrown to me a game, but the one or two times I do, I’m gonna have opportunities to be in the end zone.’ You know, it’s a fun and wonderful thing when you have a bunch of guys that don’t care about the stats, they don’t care about the touchdowns, and again, I think throughout practice, we’ve just had this mindset of like, ‘Hey, let’s just do things the right way and find ways to win football games. That’s what we’re doing right now.”
It’s impossible to read those words without thinking about the hand wringing that happened after the Bills traded receiver Stefon Diggs to Houston.
Diggs wanted the ball. All great receivers do. And, if the offense is struggling, great receivers tend to believe that the solution is to get the ball to them more often.
The situation became toxic in Buffalo, and a change was needed. Regardless of whether the blame falls to the team or to Diggs or to someone else, change was needed.
The Bills are thriving. Diggs had 10 catches for 94 yards on Sunday against the Vikings, even though the Texans lost badly.
And, yes, their paths cross. In 12 days. Bills at Texans, at 1:00 p.m. ET, on October 6.
