The Bills’ 2019 season will let the world know whether Josh Allen is actually a franchise quarterback

The exuberance of the Bills’ 2017 playoff run wasn’t meant to last. Buffalo’s surprise postseason appearance that winter — its first in nearly two decades — was built on unstable ground, led by a soon-to-depart Tyrod Taylor and a handful of aging stars.

A prospective 2019 playoff run would be different.

The Bills modestly outplayed expectations last season, rallying to six wins despite fielding the league’s second-least efficient starting quarterback. Buffalo’s crash back to the unhappy side of .500 wasn’t enough to deter one of the world’s most unbreakable fanbases, and general manager Brandon Beane put in work this offseason to reward their faith.

Through several low-key free agent additions and one of the year’s top drafts, the Bills are in position to make it back to the playoffs — though so much depends on their 2018 first-round quarterback.

At 5-6, Josh Allen had a better winning percentage as a starter than Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan, Cam Newton, Matthew Stafford, or Aaron Rodgers did in 2018. That’s a mostly meaningless stat, but it’s one you’ll hear a lot from firmly entrenched Bills fans.

There’s no doubt Allen was the best option of an impressively terrible quarterback rotation, and Buffalo clearly played better with him in the lineup (though not as well as it played behind Matt Barkley ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ):

This was still a six-win team that went 0-7 against playoff teams last fall, so there was plenty of work to be done once the league calendar flipped over to 2019. The Bills had several holes to fill this spring.

Allen needed targets and an offensive line stable enough to keep him from scrambling for his life inside a quickly collapsing pocket. The team also needed defensive line help — both against the run and in the pass rush — and some extra defensive back depth behind Tre’Davious White and Micah Hyde.

A big part of Buffalo’s offseason plan has been to follow the Rams’ and Bears’ lead and surround its budding young quarterback with weapons, though with fewer big names than either of those teams. The Bills were active in free agency, enhancing Allen’s blocking with a cache of offensive linemen (Mitch Morse, Ty Nsekhe, Spencer Long, Jon Feliciano, Quinton Spain, and LaAdrian Waddle). A whole bunch of reliable, if not super exciting veteran skill players followed.

Cole Beasley, John Brown, and Andre Roberts are all new members of the receiving corps, giving Allen a wide range of slot targets and deep threats. Tyler Kroft came over from Cincinnati to fill the tight end void left after Charles Clay’s release. T.J. Yeldon and Frank Gore will work to spell LeSean McCoy and keep a top-10 rushing offense afloat.

Adding those useful vets isn’t quite the Robert Woods-Cooper Kupp-Josh Reynolds the Rams gave Jared Goff or the Allen Robinson-Trey Burton-Taylor Gabriel that led Mitchell Trubisky to a breakout season in Chicago, but it’s a definite step in the right direction.

What the Bills didn’t get was a clear-cut No. 1 receiver, though this year’s weak market and flawed, but deep, draft class didn’t provide many options there. Instead, the Bills will hope some of the young talent already on the roster can grow into that role with the proper supporting cast. 2017 second-round pick Zay Jones and 2018 undrafted free agent Robert Foster, the latter of whom exploded for 511 receiving yards and more than 20 yards per receptions in the final seven games of his rookie year, will be counted on for improvements.

That’s a lot of old blood for a rebuilding team, and it put a ton of pressure on the Bills’ draft to plug holes and build new stars.

Things worked out exceptionally as the pieces slid into place this April. Thanks to some reaches and expected drops, the Bills were able to fix two of their biggest remaining holes in the first and second rounds of this year’s draft.

First came a ready-made replacement for retired Pro Bowl defensive tackle Kyle Williams. While Ed Oliver isn’t the same kind of blocker-absorbing moose Williams was, the Houston star is an absolute dynamo who brings amazing versatility and potential to the center of one of the league’s least-talked about defenses. With the No. 9-overall pick, Buffalo added one of 2019’s best defenders to a unit that was able to do this one year prior:

Oliver can slide right into a starting role and create chaos from the interior of the line, collapsing pockets from the inside-out and forcing opposing quarterbacks to throw into underdeveloped windows in a strong secondary.

But the team’s second-round pick may be even more valuable. Oklahoma offensive tackle Cody Ford may have stumped Bills fans in Nashville:

But his selection early on Day 2 gave Buffalo a first-round talent who immediately upgrades a unit that was clearly a priority this offseason. Ford played both guard and tackle in Oklahoma’s spread passing offense. Per Pro Football Focus, he allowed pressure on just 1.6 percent of Kyler Murray’s dropbacks at right tackle last fall. And now he goes from one running quarterback with a penchant for deep balls to another in Allen.

Ford will settle in for a revamped line that allowed Allen to be sacked on 8 percent of his passing downs last year — eighth-worst in the league. In one offseason, the Buffalo offensive line has gone from this:

LT: Dion Dawkins
LG: Vlad Ducasse
C: Russell Bodine
RG: John Miller
RT: Jordan Mills
Swing tackle: Jeremiah Sirles

To looking something like this:

LT: Dawkins
LG: Quinton Spain
C: Mitch Morse
RG: Spencer Long
RT: Cody Ford
Swing tackle: LaAdrian Waddle or Ty Nsekhe

Wow! That’s a lot of change. And while there’s still room for improvement, it’s easy to see how Allen will have significantly more time to scan his options downfield. He also got some extra offensive weapons thanks to third-rounder Devin Singletary (66 rushing TDs in three seasons at Florida Atlantic) and 96th-overall pick Dawson Knox, an underused tight end who averaged nearly 19 yards per catch last season at Ole Miss.

Singletary’s profile, even with a mid-major like the Owls, suggests he can be a productive pro in the middle of an aging tailback platoon. Taking Knox out of a receiver-heavy offense with the Rebels and pairing him with Allen should be a boon, and it’s not difficult to see a season in which Buffalo’s top four picks all contribute significantly as rookies.

Allen was a great running quarterback in 2018. He averaged more than seven yards per carry. He scored eight touchdowns. He broke one of Michael Vick’s rushing records for a quarterback along the way. He single-handedly outscored the Vikings during an upset win in Minneapolis.

He was also an objectively terrible throwing quarterback.

Allen completed only 52.8 percent of his passes as a rookie. He threw for fewer than 100 yards in 25 percent of his appearances. He finished the season with more interceptions (12) than touchdowns (10), and his 67.9 passer rating was only better than fellow first-year starter Josh Rosen (66.7).

Yes, there were caveats to this awful performance. Allen didn’t get much help from an understaffed receiving corps. While Jones grew in his second season and Foster was an outright burner as an undrafted rookie, neither was a reliable full-time target. Jones, in particular, caught fewer than 55 percent of his targets and his 6.4 yards per target ranked 109th among qualified receivers. Clay was kinda-sorta the reason why Buffalo didn’t win a Week 13 game against the Dolphins.

The blocking, as previously mentioned, wasn’t great either.

That doesn’t fully excuse Allen’s shining crapulence as a passer last season. There were open windows he failed to recognize in the pocket and open targets he either overthrew or under-led. The issues that haunted him at Wyoming persisted as a pro.

But the Bills are doing everything they can to remove obstacles on his path from junior college star to franchise quarterback. He’ll have more time in the pocket than he did as a rookie, allowing him to plant his feet more often and more confidently while making his strikes downfield. He’ll go from question-filled wideouts atop a barren depth chart to veterans who can make the adjustments to haul in imperfect passes — even if there still isn’t an elite receiver on the roster.

The 2019 season will be a much more meaningful missive on his NFL talent than an often-bad rookie year was, but if Allen can’t show signs of life with all the upgrades around him then it probably means the Bills are in for another rough five years.

The pieces are in place for the Bills to improve in 2019. The blocking will be better, the skill players are a heady mix of reliable veterans and potential-filled prospects, and an already strong defense have got major boosts in the form of Oliver and free agent defensive backs Kevin Johnson and E.J. Gaines.

The over/under on Buffalo wins this season is only 6.5, but with games against the tanking Dolphins (twice), Giants, Bengals, Jets (twice), Broncos, and Washington, it’s easy to see a path back to .500 or above this season.

The deciding factor will be Allen. The question is whether he is capable of riding the Bills’ offseason momentum, or if he’ll be the governor that keeps the engine of what looks like a very solid team from maxing out.