Adversity, Aggies and Uno: How the Buffalo Bills salvaged a doomed season

Orchard Park, N.Y. – Sean McDermott wanted to inspire his flailing football team. It was late in November and the Buffalo Bills had just suffered an inexcusable late-game collapse against the Denver Broncos that dropped them to 5-5.

So McDermott played his team a video.

Players knew the stakes after that loss. Quarterback Josh Allen said the clock was ticking on the season.

“It’s no secret,” he said. “Gotta have some urgency now.”

The night before the Bills played the Jets, McDermott played a highlight from the Texas A&M game earlier that day. The Aggies sent out a kickoff unit made up of walk-on players in the fourth quarter in honor of a former coach who used all walk-ons for kickoffs in the 1980s.

The Aggies flew down the field and hit the returner twice, nearly causing a fumble. McDermott reminded his players that any one of them could be the guy that makes that kind of play.

Reggie Gilliam wanted to be that guy. On the opening kickoff against the Jets, the Bills faced New York returner Xavier Gipson, who returned a punt for a touchdown in the opener against Buffalo in September.

This time, Gilliam had other plans. The fourth-year special teams standout and former Toledo walk-on sprinted down the field - past every possible blocker - and landed with a titanic thud, driving Gipson to the turf and causing him to fumble.

Gilliam had the Aggies’ kickoff hit on his mind as he dashed down the field.

“They were running down with their hair on fire,” Gilliam said on Friday, thinking back on the play with a smile. “I was like, in my head: ‘I gotta be one of those guys.’”

An inspired Gilliam sent Highmark Stadium into a frenzy with his seismic boom of a tackle. Buffalo scored off the turnover and went on to a dominant 32-6 win.

That win marked the beginning of a stretch of games that put the Bills’ fate back in their own hands. They’ve won five of their last six games since losing to the Broncos, and now sit at 10-6 with a chance to punch a ticket to the playoffs. They play the Miami Dolphins Sunday – a team they blew out, 48-20, in Highmark Stadium back in September – with the AFC East regular season crown on the line.

The Bills haven’t saved their season just yet. If they lose Sunday, they could miss the playoffs entirely. But if they win, they’ll earn their fourth straight division title and the no. 2 seed in the AFC.

It’s a scenario that felt like a pipe dream six weeks ago, as the team sat in 10th place in the AFC with playoff odds below 20%. They head into the final week of the regular season with a glimmer of hope at the end of what once seemed like a futile campaign.

How did the Bills put themselves in this position? It started with a mid-season trade, a coordinator change, and a card table.

Stealing a corner

The last time the Bills played the Dolphins, All-Pro cornerback Tre’Davious White suffered a season-ending torn Achilles. Once he went down, general manager Brandon Beane looked at his depth at cornerback and got to work to find a replacement. Former first-round pick Kaiir Elam lost out of a starting job in training camp and a season-long ankle injury landed him on injured reserve on Nov. 2.

Two days earlier, Beane got on the phone with the Green Bay Packers and tried to make a play for veteran cornerback Rasul Douglas. The Packers weren’t biting initially because Douglas was a leader in their locker room and a takeaway artist. But Beane was relentless and kept trying to figure out a way to make a deal work – and finally, he did. All it took was a third-round pick in 2024 and the Bills acquired Douglas and a fifth-rounder in return.

Since the trade, Douglas leads the NFL in turnovers with six (four interceptions and two fumble recoveries), and almost single-handedly led Buffalo to a critical one-score win over the Patriots last week. He returned an interception for a touchdown, which was the difference.

Bills safety Micah Hyde wondered after the game how the Bills stole Douglas away from the Packers. The truth is the Packers thought their season was over. They were riding a four-game losing streak and staring down a major rebuild. Never mind that they’ve won six of their last nine and can also lock up a playoff spot with a win on Sunday.

All fun and games

Left tackle Dion Dawkins noticed a change in his team on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles before the bye week. It’s the only game the Bills have lost since December began. But during that game, Dawkins recognized his team for the first time all season. The fight returned and the team came together. Buffalo lost the game, but it went toe-to-toe with the defending NFC champs – in their house – and nearly pulled off a massive win.

Dawkins said that the shift in the team started back in November when the Bills were preparing to play the Jets. Von Miller set up a card table in front of his locker with a bunch of different games. Before long, the table became one of the most popular spots in the room. When practice was over you could usually find Miller, Hyde, Butler, and veteran practice squad cornerback Josh Norman on the table.

Their game of choice?

Uno.

The games are competitive and everybody that pulls up a chair. They play for keeps. Miller said Douglas might be the most talented player because nobody bluffs like he can. He’s as hard to read as he is on the football field for opposing quarterbacks.

Norman and Douglas both claim the other cheats at the game. Whether they’re on the field or off, the two fiery veterans are always competing. Norman started a game he plays with the other cornerbacks after practice where an assistant coach throws up the ball in a rugby-like scrum and the winner must come away from the pile with possession. Douglas and Norman are usually jawing at each other all the way into the locker room at the end of their game, arguing over who won.

Through the competition, the Bills bonded.

“All of the dinners, all of the hanging outs, all of the UNO games, the card games, the everything,” Dawkins said. “Guys (are) meshing together closer and understanding that we can have all of the talent in the world but when you play for your brother, like genuinely play for your brother, we’re an unstoppable group.”

McDermott’s difficult choice

After a red-hot 3-1 start that included their blowout win over the Dolphins, the Bills went 2-4 in their six games and the offense was coming up empty in their search for answers. The offense had two or more turnovers in five of those six games and an eye-popping four turnovers in the loss to the Broncos.

McDermott needed to shake things up. Ken Dorsey had been one of the key figures in the development of Allen since the Bills drafted him in 2018. The All-Pro quarterback hand-picked Dorsey to succeed Brian Daboll when the latter took a head coaching job with the New York Giants.

But the offense seemed broken.

When McDermott fired Dorsey the day after the Broncos loss and promoted quarterbacks coach Joe Brady to the position on an interim basis, he said he wanted energy.

So far, Brady has delivered. The Bills are scoring 28 points per contest in the six games with Brady calling the offense. In the final six games of the Dorsey era, the Bills averaged just 20 points per game. The Bills run game has also taken off under Brady. Buffalo is averaging 153 yards on the ground per game in his six games. They averaged just 116 rushing yards in their first 10 with Dorsey.

McDermott said this week that Brady has done a nice job but that things are going to get harder now that defensive coordinators can study his tendencies as a playcaller.

“When you first come into a situation there’s not all these printouts on (your) tendencies,” McDermott said. “And as you go, and as you continue to throw pitches, I’ll use that analogy as a pitcher, the data starts to add up. And so people ... have more information from which to draw from to try and get a better feel for your tendencies and how you want to call games.”

Off-field turbulence

The Bills’ late-season push hasn’t been without bumps. And it certainly hasn’t been pretty. They’ve won ugly games, and kept things tight with lowly teams. And off the field turbulence has roiled the organization.

On Nov. 30, Von Miller was arrested in Dallas, Texas during the team’s bye week for allegedly assaulting his pregnant girlfriend. He denied the accusations and the Bills have kept him on the team while the legal process plays out.

On the field, Miller has been a shell of himself on gamedays. He’s played 243 snaps this season has managed just three tackles and doesn’t have a single sack. He was benched last week against the Patriots for undrafted Syracuse product Kingsley Jonathan.

A three-part story by Tyler Dunne of GoLongTD.com threatened to send the Bills’ season off the rails again in early December. The piece unearthed McDermott’s poorly conceived messaging in training camp 2019. He said the 9/11 terrorists worked effectively as a team to carry out their attack. That nugget from the story went viral and McDermott called his own press conference later in the day to explain himself.

In the days that followed, the Bills rallied around McDermott. Allen’s relationship with his long-time head coach was called into question, but he called McDermott one of the better humans on the planet.

“Our relationship honestly has never been stronger,” he said.

After the Bills defeated the Chiefs in Week 14 – just three days after the McDermott story published – Beane took over the locker room speech to give McDermott the game ball.

***

That loss in Denver in early November was rock bottom for the Bills. They entered the season as Super Bowl darlings and found themselves facing embarrassing losses to the league’s lowliest teams.

But they survived the ensuing stretch, and did enough to put themselves in a spot where a Sunday win clinches the division and a number two seed.

Dawkins said they’ve been playing playoff games since November where a single loss could potentially thwart their push for a playoff spot.

Since 2020, the Bills are 18-2 in the regular season in December and January. A 19th win would secure the AFC East.

“It’s playoff ball,” Dawkins said. “We play this game to play this late in the season. … We play for these moments.”

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