Joe Brady using Bills camp as a lab to put the pieces of his offense together
Joe Brady made it perfectly clear in the spring that the Buffalo Bills offense is owned by Josh Allen. It was his money quote of the offseason workout program.
But while Allen is undeniably the most important player, the superstar quarterback around which everything revolves, Brady holds the title of offensive coordinator and ultimately, he’s going to be calling the plays that Allen runs, and he’ll also be taking the heat if things don’t work.
That’s just the nature of the business, and look no further than last season when things weren’t working for Ken Dorsey, so Sean McDermott fired him and elevated Brady into the coordinator role. It’s a harsh existence, coaching in the NFL, because the pressure to win is monumental.
Sign up for the Bills Blast newsletter Delivered straight to your inbox, additional Bills analysis, insight, stats, quotes and team history from Sal Maiorana
When Brady took over in mid-November, he was essentially married to Dorsey’s offense and was only able to tweak a few things here and there. Now, with an entire offseason under his belt, Brady is crafting his own scheme - with major input from Allen regarding what he thinks will and won’t work - and it is being implemented during training camp at St. John Fisher University.
“If you continue to do the same thing over and over, while we’re all studying each other and the defenses are evolving, eventually it’s gonna hit a point,” Brady said Thursday morning before the Bills took the field for practice. “I think regardless of if you’re the best offense, in order to stay the best, obviously you’ve got to continue to grow and evolve and you get new pieces and so the offense has to change regardless.”
How Joe Brady views Buffalo Bills training camp
Brady is reveling in being away for training camp because it’s like he’s in an experimental lab with the players fully focused on football, figuring out what each player can contribute to the offense. And there’s a lot to figure out, given the major overhaul to the receiver position and the keen competition that is taking place.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to kind of take a step back and figure out exactly who we have and try to build an offense around that,” Brady said. “We signed a lot of pieces in free agency, did things in the draft and then try to mix and match and put them all together.
“We’ve got all training camp to kind of see exactly who we’re going to be, putting guys in places to see, ‘Hey, can we do this? Can this be something that will be a huge part of us or is this something … maybe this kind of goes down the road and we focus on something else.’ I’m not concerned with the results right now; I’m just concerned with how we’re doing it.”
Josh Allen looking forward to offense evolving under Joe Brady
Allen loved working with Brady when he was his QB coach for a year and a half, and he liked what the offense did after Brady took over for Dorsey. Now? He’s really looking forward to diving deep into the revamped playbook and seeing how it translates on the field.
“How guys reacted to him last year when he took over and the way that he talks to guys is so much different than I think anyone I've been around,” Allen said. “His willingness to listen to guys. When we sit in meetings before the game he's not saying, ‘This is what we're going to run.’ He's like, ‘What do you guys want to start with? What first run do you want Dion Dawkins? What first reception do you want Khalil Shakir?’ So he's trying to utilize the strengths of our team to the best of our ability and really putting the power in our hands to go out there and do it.”
Shakir, who is the only wide receiver on the roster who has caught a pass from Allen in a regular season game, thinks Brady is going to knock it out of the park.
“As far as Joe as a person, I mean his energy is insane, he brings the energy every day,” Shakir said. “He was doing that when he took over last year as well. Just the preparation, the approach that we’re all doing is the same thing. And he’s a guy that just, he understands, especially from a receiver standpoint, just everything that’s getting put in, everything that we’re doing, everything that we’re trying to accomplish. I wouldn’t say it’s that much different from when he took over.”
Buffalo Bills news from training camp
Be sure to return to democratandchronicle.com for daily updates throughout the Buffalo Bills training camp. You can also sign up for Bills Blast, Sal Maiorana's newsletter which will follow the Bills action all season long. Here are stories from camp:
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out every other Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Buffalo Bills training camp is Joe Brady's lab to build his offense
