ORCHARD PARK - Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott gave a cryptic hint Monday night that Ken Dorsey’s days as the offensive coordinator may be over, and Tuesday morning, that became a reality.

McDermott fired Dorsey and will turn the play-calling duties over to quarterbacks coach Joe Brady.

“I just felt like it was time for a change,” McDermott said Tuesday afternoon during a Zoom call with reporters. “We need to be a confident offensive football team and find consistent production and that’s really what it came down to. More than anything is come out with an energy about our offense and what we’re doing and move the football and score points. I mean, that’s really the offense’s job at the end of the day.”

Thus ends a rough ride over the past month and a half for the embattled Dorsey who has helped drive a once exciting and explosive offense into the ground with questionable play calls and schemes.

Quarterback Josh Allen, who strongly backed the promotion of Dorsey to OC in 2022 when Brian Daboll left to become head coach of the Giants, has regressed in the time Dorsey has been calling the shots. Last year, that regression began in the second half of the season, culminating when Allen and the offense crashed and burned in the playoff loss to Cincinnati.

Ken Dorsey's troubles started in Week 1 for Buffalo Bills

This year, there were massive problems on opening night in New York, and after a three-game revival, the offense has been in steady decline since the loss to Jacksonville.

“I think it’s just when you’re not producing over the course of time, that’s where confidence levels spin, and I think that’s really the goal here is to find that confidence again,” McDermott said. “I think through the better course of 10 games, that’s really where we were. We were inconsistent and because of that, not scoring enough points.”

Brady, who was hired in 2022 to be QBs coach after a failed stint as offensive coordinator with the Carolina Panthers, will get a seven-game window to determine if he’s the right man for the job moving forward.

When he was asked about the status of Dorsey Monday night following the Bills’ inexcusable 24-22 loss to the Denver Broncos, it was clear McDermott knew what he was going to do but wasn’t ready to make the announcement in the cauldron of defeat following the game.

“I think I need a little bit of time here after the game to assess that,” McDermott said. “Obviously I’m not real happy right now so I’ll evaluate that in the next 24 hours here and see where that takes us.”

It took barely 12 hours to make the decision.

Over the last six games, during which the Bills have lost four times and seen their playoff chances reduced to rubble, the offense has sputtered at every turn. The run game has been sporadic at best, the 192-yard output against a terrible Broncos’ run defense aside. But far more stark has been the play of Allen, once thought of as a perennial MVP candidate but who in 2023 has faded into the murky middle of of the quarterback rankings.

He leads the NFL in turnovers with 14 including 11 interceptions, and it seems like on almost every play, he is struggling to process the reads and throws he needs to make. It’s not unfair to say that he looks very much like the quarterback he was in his first two NFL seasons when there were so many doubts about whether he would ever justify being the seventh overall pick in the 2018 draft.

He of course shattered those illusions with three remarkable seasons between 2020-22, but 2023 has seen a startling reversal of fortune and Dorsey has to take part of that blame.

Joe Brady has previous experience as offensive coordinator

Now Brady will get a chance to revive his own career. He was given massive praise for the dynamic offense he built during his time as offensive coordinator at LSU when he had Joe Burrow throwing to Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson and helping the Tigers won the 2019 national championship.

That led to his hiring by the Panthers as offensive coordinator in 2020, but Brady’s star fell quickly in the NFL. His first Carolina team, with career mediocrity Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback, ranked 24th in points and 21st in yards.

And when the 2021 season was heading down the same path - the Panthers finished 29th in points, 30th in yards with Sam Darnold and Cam Newton as the primary quarterbacks - Carolina coach Matt Rhule fired Brady in December.

When he came to Buffalo, there was high hopes that he could take some of the things he taught to Burrow and impart them on Allen as a way to further his development. How much of an impact Brady has had on Allen is tough to gauge because we don’t really know how much influence he had, but now the canvas is all his, at least for the final seven games.

Why Brady in this spot, McDermott was asked.

“He comes with some experience, and I think overall, just his day-to-day command of his job more than anything,” McDermott said. “It’s like anything else, some of this is a projection and I also want to see what he can do in this role. He has a close relationship with Josh as the quarterback coach … he’s got some ideas and we’ll see where it goes from here.”

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: Ken Dorsey fired by Buffalo Bills, Joe Brady new offensive coordinator