1. Diversity and unpredictability have become assets for the offense
In their Week 8 victory over New England, the Bills offense ran the ball 38 times rolling up 190 yards on the ground and had three rushing touchdowns. Their exploits with their run game had Seattle head coach Pete Carroll and his defensive staff convinced the Bills were going to establish the run game against them in Week 9.
The Seahawks could not have been more wrong. Buffalo threw the ball 28 times on their first 31 plays and rolled up 415 yards through the air in their 10-point win against the Seattle.
That kind of diversity in their offense makes the Bills a very unpredictable side as RB Devin Singletary sees it.
"It shows how tough we are to deal with, whatever we do," said Singletary. "We're tough to deal with so that just shows what we're on our way to, and what we want to be."
Teammate Cole Beasley echoed Singletary's opinion.
"When a different game calls for us to do different things, we can adapt and play different types of football in order to win those games," Beasley said. "So it's good to be able to evolve as an offense. Every defense has different strengths and different weaknesses and if we can take advantage of it no matter what those are it definitely helps. So being able to attack in multiple ways is huge."
And the weapons the Bills seem willing to utilize on offense appears to be expanding.
"There are a lot of opportunities out there for everybody," said Beasley. "You love to see (the opportunities) spread out and everybody gets some love and some of the ball. That's going to be when we're at our most dangerous. When they've got to defend everybody on the field it just spreads the field out for everyone. So, it's good to see guys like Isaiah Mackenzie and Gabe (Davis) getting involved, getting a lot of touches as well."
2. Frazier sees Edmunds game rounding into form
Defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier has witnessed some of the struggles that middle linebacker Tremaine Edmunds dealt with in the first half of the season as he battled his way through a nagging shoulder injury. But those problems seem to be steadily melting away allowing the defensive captain to get back to the kind of standard of play coaches and teammates are used to seeing from him.
"I think there was some things, due to the shoulder where he had developed some poor habits, fundamentally that he's worked through and Bob Babich, our linebackers coach, really has done a good job and just honing in on the fundamentals of his play," said Frazier of Edmunds. "And I think that showed up in the game on Sunday."
In the win over the Seahawks last week, Edmunds posted a team-leading 11 tackles, a sack, two tackles for loss, a quarterback hit and a pass breakup.
"He had a really good week of practice, really took charge, had a few words to say to the defense," said Frazier. "Then he carried that over to the game. He was aggressive in his play, showed great leadership, tackled with some force, got his hands in some balls so it just mirrored what he had done in practice during the week and you know we expect to see that the remainder of the season.
Perhaps most encouraging is Edmunds' shoulder is in the best shape it's been in weeks allowing him to play with the fervor that's usually seen from the aggressive linebacker.
"He's probably as close to 100 percent that he's going to get right now," Frazier said. "That shoulder is feeling much better. He's passed some of those technical flaws that were hurting this play. So I think, we're going to see the ascension in his play as we go forward."
3. How Stefon Diggs bonded so quickly to his Bills teammates
He walked in the door as the number one receiver following the trade with the Vikings in March, but Stefon Diggs focused on building relationships with his new teammates just as much as he focused on his craft.
The result has enabled him to demand more from his teammates because the bond between them is one built on trust and sacrifice.
"Ever since of the Zoom meetings, we had those Zoom calls in our season, kind of growing and getting to know guys throughout those calls and we had a certain amount of talks going into training camp where we learned a lot about each other just in the receiver room specifically and guys talking a little bit about their story," Diggs said. "Where they came from, their background, and you learn about a guy personally. So that's where you kind of gain the most respect from them outside of football. You see a guy out there put a lot of time and effort into their craft. And then just building on a foundation of a bond and a brotherhood so it kind of started from there."
That translated to the field and the meetings rooms where they focused on being as consistent an offensive unit, and on a larger scale, a team as possible.
"We went into the season with a mindset of kind of like doing everything that we can to jell as far as learning about one another on and off the field. So spending that time on the field, whether we're playing around or running routes or whatever, it's having those investments. And it's intentional, everything I do, I mean it. It's about becoming more of a brother than any anything at this point. So now that we're kind of inching toward more than a halfway point, we just want to continue to excel, continue to play some good football."
