Dion Dawkins owned it: He and the Buffalo Bills offensive line did not have a good night

Dion Dawkins wasn’t about to shrug off his individual, or the collective offensive line’s less than stellar performance in the Buffalo Bills’ 27-15 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers Saturday night.

“I don’t think there’s any excuse; I don’t want to put the words ‘it’s preseason in the air,’” Dawkins said. “We have a standard and at times it wasn’t up to our standard. And that’s the good thing with having something like the preseason, but I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, preseason, who cares?’”

That’s a good path to follow because Dawkins and the rest of his linemates up front need to start getting it together sooner rather than later. Pretty soon the preseason, the time to get the mistakes out of the way, will be over and the Bills will be facing a very good New York Jets defense led by destructive defensive tackle Quinnen Williams.

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Based on what we saw in Pittsburgh, that’s a scary thought.

The Bills’ offensive line has been a run of the mill unit for several years. Dawkins has been a mostly solid left tackle and Mitch Morse a good center, but the other positions have been lacking and have dragged down the overall effectiveness.

Right tackle Spencer Brown, the 2021 third-round pick, continues to struggle in establishing himself as a bookend despite his 6-foot-8, 311-pound frame which is buoyed by a notable mean streak. And since the Bills became the dominant team in the AFC East in 2020, they have done so despite the guard positions being manned by mediocrities named Quinton Spain, Cody Ford, Ryan Bates, Ike Boettger, Jon Feliciano, Daryl Williams and Rodger Saffold.

The Bills hope they have addressed the guard situation with the signing of free agent Connor McGovern and the drafting in the second round of O’Cyrus Torrence. It’s way too early to tell how those moves will pan out.

Josh Allen and his wondrous talents have helped to mask the play of the offensive line, but enough is enough. The big boys need to start pulling their weight and they certainly did not against a Steelers defense that, early in the game, featured stars like T.J. Watt, Cameron Heyward and Alex Highsmith who dominated the line of scrimmage.

“I felt like they affected our quarterback and we didn’t affect their quarterbacks,” coach Sean McDermott said, folding into his answer the play of his defensive line. “We’ve got to make the adjustments we need to make, just overall all of us take ownership, take responsibility and work our tails off this week to get ourselves where we need to be. It’s clear we’re not where we need to be right now.”

Of course Allen did not admit to being worried because he never would; that’s just who he is. Instead, he pointed at himself for not getting rid of the ball quicker, though anyone who watched the game knows that he was under duress throughout his brief time on the field.

“I probably could have gotten the ball out of my hands a little bit quicker, made a couple quicker reads,” he said. “I’m not concerned. That’s a really good front that we just played. They’ve got some real dudes on that defensive line so I think it was good for our offensive line to see.

“During the season when we game plan for a team like that, we’ll make sure that we have parameters in place to try to negate that as much as we can, but it being the preseason, obviously just going out there and trying to call our plays and trying to work on some things. That’s what we did tonight.”

From a team perspective, he’s right. The Bills didn’t game plan anything outside of identifying assignments on the plays they planned to use. But from an individual perspective, there were certainly some things to raise a few eyebrows because the blockers lost their battles.

Bills offense plagued by penalties and poor play

The first series went three-and-out when James Cook was stuffed for nothing on second down, and on third-and-2 there was pressure up the middle that flushed Allen out of the pocket and he threw an incomplete pass.

On the second series, there were all kinds of problems. Dawkins was beaten badly by Highsmith but Allen was able to step up and hit Gabe Davis over the middle, and a few plays later, rookie fourth-round pick Nick Herbig zoomed past Dawkins and hit Allen’s shoulder just as he threw, forcing an incompletion.

Then the penalties began. A quick screen to Deonte Harty was wiped out by Brown’s block in the back penalty which, granted, looked like a pretty lame call. Left guard McGovern had a false start, and then Brown was beaten by Marcus Golden and had no choice but to hold in order to save Allen from a sack. That infraction negated a beautiful 35-yard completion to Davis and created a second-and-34 which, obviously, the Bills did not escape.

And on the final series played by Allen, a false start on tight end Quintin Morris set the Bills back to first-and-15 from the 7 and they went three-and-out with Highsmith blowing past Dawkins again on third down and forcing Allen to run for his life before he was dumped for a six-yard loss.

“We’ll use this as a lesson and we won’t let it hurt us, we’ll learn from it instead of letting it hurt us or break us,” Dawkins said. “We have a standard and we want to win all the time. And that’s what we’re gonna push for, so we have to come out better, we have to do things better.”

Buffalo Bills injuries: Loss of Tommy Doyle limits depth on offensive line

As worrisome as the first-string line play was, the night grew darker. Tommy Doyle - competing for the swing tackle job - suffered a knee injury and had to be carted off the field and is lost for the season. And with Brandon Shell having retired early last week, the Bills are down to underwhelming veteran David Quessenberry and young kids Ryan Van Demark, Alex Anderson and Richard Gouraige as depth tackle options.

There probably isn’t much general manager Brandon Beane can do right now, but once final cuts around the league are made Aug. 29, he’s going to need to explore bringing in a viable veteran.

“That’s a question for Brandon at this point. I’m sure he’ll look into it,” McDermott said Sunday. “We remain confident in the guys we have. That said, there is certainly a numbers issue. We have more practices ahead and it’s an area we have to continue to look at and analyze.”

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 will come out every Friday during training camp, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Tommy Doyle injury another blow to Buffalo Bills offensive line