Bills unlock potent offense under Joe Brady: 6 reasons Buffalo obliterated Cowboys

ORCHARD PARK - When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and I’m going to own it now that the Buffalo Bills offense is on a heater over the past month.

I wasn’t ready to blame former offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey for the struggles the Bills endured during the middle of the season, a portion of the schedule where they lost four of six games - two of them to teams they had no business losing to - which is why they remain on the outskirts of the AFC playoff race.

Well, we now have four games of evidence - the most recent being Buffalo’s 31-10 decimation of the Dallas Cowboys Sunday night at Highmark Stadium - that seems to indicate that Dorsey played a bigger role in the poor play than I was willing to pin on him, and his firing and the subsequent switch to Joe Brady was the right move.

Brady has unlocked an offense that was sputtering and the Bills are averaging 29.3 points per game since he took over the playcalling. The Bills have two blowout victories over the Cowboys and Jets, a hard-earned win on the road in Kansas City, and a 34-point output in a game the defense blew in overtime at Philadelphia.

Sunday night, Brady didn’t begin the game thinking he would call 49 running plays and that Josh Allen would attempt only 15 passes - but once he saw what was happening, and how the Bills’ offensive line was simply maiming Dallas’ talented front seven, he leaned into it. Hard.

“I applaud Joe for sticking with it,” said Josh Allen.

Bills report card: Buffalo puts AFC on notice by annihilating Cowboys

Surely, Brady was prepared for a shootout against this Dallas offense, but that never materialized and it was the type of in-game adjustment that the best coordinators excel at. Brady has proven in the month he’s been in charge that he has the chops to do that.

Coach Sean McDermott, who made the decision to can Dorsey and promote Brady because he knew the offense was underachieving, praised assistant coaches Aaron Kromer, Kelly Skipper and Austin Gund for their role in the design of the run game plan against Dallas.

But he then gave full marks to Brady because, “You’ve got to be willing to call it. Give Joe credit there, too. Stick with it and when it’s working, why get away from it, right? Whether it’s the pass or the run. The run was working for us.”

Now at 8-6, the Bills have given themselves a chance to get to the postseason. If they win the next two, they could go to Miami in Week 18 with a chance to not only lock up a wild-card berth, but maybe win the AFC East. Had McDermott not pivoted to Brady when he did, there’s a chance we’d already be looking ahead to the Scouting Combine and the NFL Draft.

Here are Sal’s Six Points:

1. James Cook is becoming a star

Brady called 49 running plays because he recognized very early that James Cook was running like a man possessed. On back-to-back plays on the opening drive of the game Cook ripped off gains of 10 and 12 yards and by the time the Bills reached the end zone on a Latavius Murray plunge, Cook already had five carries for 34 yards.

For whatever reason, Cook wasn’t on the field for the next possession and the Bills went three-and-out. But then on the third series, Brady came to his senses and got Cook back into the mix and it all fell into place from there.

Cook had three runs totaling 12 yards, and after a roughing the punter penalty prolonged the march, Cook had a 24-yard catch and run, two more runs for nine yards, and then an 18-yard reception for a touchdown that made it 14-0.

A man of very few words, Cook said, “I just just let it rip when I get my opportunity. My O-linemen, they was opening it up and I mean I was hitting it, finding that rhythm.”

Cook finished with 179 yards rushing on 25 carries, both career highs, and he had two catches for 42 yards so he finished with 221 yards from scrimmage and two TDs. He hasn’t had a game like this since at least high school. In a four-year college career at Georgia he was never the feature back and carried only 230 times for 1,503 yards with a single-game rushing high of 104.

“He’s cooking,” offensive tackle Dion Dawkins said. “Chef Cook, man. Chef Boyardee. I love the kid, young kid but he’s been showing up and showing out.”

2. James Cook had help in the run game

Cook was the shining star, but Ty Johnson - who was buried on the practice squad until Damien Harris got hurt - had 54 yards on nine carries, the fourth-highest total of his NFL career which has been spent mostly as a backup. And Allen contributed 24 yards, with five of his eight rushes resulting in either first downs or touchdowns.

In all, the Bills rushed for 266 yards (the highest in the McDermott era), averaged 5.4 yards per attempt, and their 20 first downs via the rush tied for the second-highest total in team history. They had 21 in a game against Washington in 1996.

“Seeing this guy (Cook) break tackles and you’re seeing the back of his number, that’s when you know that this dude’s running his ass off and along with that all the running backs in general,” center Mitch Morse said. “You don’t come into every game thinking we’re gonna pound the rock the whole game and win this way or run the ball or throw the ball or whatever. You just kind of see how it goes.”

3. The Bills made Micah Parsons irrelevant

Deservedly so, Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons gets massive praise around the NFL and there isn’t a team that plays Dallas who doesn’t have a specific game plan for the game-wrecker.

Clearly, the Bills wanted to neutralize him by running the ball and staying out of tricky down-and-distance situations where Parsons could just concentrate on trying to get after Allen.

“I’m not gonna lie, it was nice not having to be pass happy against a very good defensive front that really hunts the passer,” said Morse.

Parsons was invisible which is quite rare for him. He finished with two tackles and no sacks or QB hits. Allen dropped back to pass less than 20 times, and with just 94 yards passing, it was the fifth time in his career he had less than 100. All of those were in 2019 or before, and four of the games deserve asterisks because he didn’t play the whole way for various reasons.

In addition to leaving this game with 10:37 remaining, he came on in relief in the 2018 season opener in his rookie season against the Ravens; he got hurt and had to leave in 2018 against Houston; and he played only briefly in the 2019 finale when he was rested/protected before the playoffs. The only full game he has ever played where he was under 100 yards was against the Titans in 2018.

“Our O-line played fantastic today,” Allen said. “The O-line loves running the ball. Don’t don’t get it twisted; they can say they want to pass protect, but they want to move people off their feet and they want to attack downhill. And that’s what they did today.”

4. Cowboys missed a chance for a turnover

Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered in the end, but Dallas blew a chance at what could have been a pivotal turning point.

Midway through the second quarter on a second-and-6 from the Bills 40, Stefon Diggs caught a short pass on the left sideline and as he was going down, the ball got punched out. The Cowboys recovered but the officials gave Diggs the catch and the game continued, but it was clearly a fumble.

Replay confirmed the fumble, but to his credit Allen may have realized it was a fumble and he got the Bills to the line quickly and got a play off before the Cowboys could challenge. At that point the Bills were up 14-3 but a turnover there would have set the Cowboys up in great field position with a chance to get within one score.

Instead, the Bills went on to complete a 76-yard drive with Allen scoring a one-yard TD to make it 21-3.

5. Getting off to a fast start was imperative

Against an explosive team like Dallas, the Bills knew they were going to need to get off to a good start, something that has been a problem for them this season. They came into the game having been outscored 62-57 in the first quarter while the Cowboys had outscored their opponents 108-43.

So what happened? Sheer domination in the first half from which Dallas never recovered.

It was stunning how Buffalo dominated the first 30 minutes of the game. At the half, the Bills had 19 first downs including 12 on the ground which is quite amazing given that it’s usually the exact opposite - the vast majority of their first downs usually come via the pass.

The Bills scored three touchdowns on drives that covered 75, 86 and 76 yards and get this - they became the only NFL team in the last 30 years to have three touchdown drives of 11-plus plays and 75-plus yards in the first half of a game. When it was over, they had outgained the Cowboys 210-89 even though Allen completed only five passes for 73 yards. Crazy.

6. This was a defensive masterpiece

As part of that first-half dominance, the Bills held the NFL’s No. 1 scoring offense, which had been averaging nearly 37.5 points per game during a five-game winning streak, to just three points, six first downs, and 89 total yards.

“Get out on ‘em, get up on ‘em and kind of make them one-dimensional,” said Ed Oliver of the plan. “Basically what we preach all the time. The game got going and it seemed like a snowball effect. It was just one of them games when you get up on people and it just keeps going. We stop them, offense scored. We stop them, offense scored. Doing it like that makes it easy.”

By game’s end, the Cowboys had a season-low 195 total yards, their 10 points matched a season low and Dak Prescott, who was becoming an MVP favorite, threw for just 134 yards with an interception.

“They’ve got multiple weapons across their offense, starting with Dak,” McDermott said. “He’s having a heck of a year, MVP candidate. He was playing really clean football and he did so tonight as well. We got one of them (a pick by Christian Benford). I thought we had chance to get a couple more. We’ve got to continue to work on those and tackling the football. It was a good combination of run defense and rush and coverage working together. I think any time you can do that, you’re giving yourself a chance.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana and on Threads @salmaiorana1. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out twice a week during the season, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Buffalo Bills unlock potent offense under Joe Brady to destroy Cowboys