theathleticuk
At 5-1 and alone in second place in the AFC, the Buffalo Bills have plenty to celebrate. Their offense leads the league, and quarterback Josh Allen continues to make spectacular plays week after week. As long as the San Francisco 49ers don't hang 44 points on Monday night, the Bills will enter their Week 7 bye with the NFL's highest scoring average, having bumped it from 32.80 to 32.83 after Sunday's win over the Las Vegas Raiders.
But for all the offensive fireworks—Buffalo has scored at least 33 points in four of six games—a glaring deficiency lurks on the other side of the ball. The defense, which underwent the most dramatic offseason overhaul of any unit, remains the critical flaw that could sink the team's Super Bowl aspirations. That may sound harsh after a 2-0 West Coast swing in which the Bills averaged 35 points, but it's the truth, and the team knows it.
Simply put, this winning formula is unsustainable. Asking Allen, as brilliant as he is, to play nearly perfect football every week sets the Bills up for heartbreak on the grandest stage if they don't figure things out. Bills fans have seen that playoff movie far too often, and that was with defenses that were far superior in the regular season. Gut-wrenching playoff losses have piled up over the years when Allen was usually good enough to win, only for the defense to let him down.
When the Bills revamped their entire defensive structure this offseason—bringing in a new coordinator, a new scheme, and many new pieces—the promise was that things would eventually click. They made it sound like a sure thing. But there is only one sure thing as the Bills head into their week off: when they return for their Week 8 matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, the season will already be in November, and they will still be statistically one of the NFL's worst defenses, surrendering 28.5 points per game.
The promises that it would get better by continuing to do the same things, allowing the scheme to take hold and the players to get more comfortable, can no longer be trusted. It's way too far into the season to keep seeing the same mistakes repeated. There was some defensive progress against the Raiders, with a strong start to the second half—a three-and-out and an interception—and two other three-and-outs forced during the game. But when the snowball starts rolling gradually down the hill on some of these drives, it quickly turns into a full-blown avalanche. The Raiders scored on six of their 10 offensive drives, averaging a whopping 7.32 yards per play on those possessions. The Bills allowed a gain of 10 or more yards on 14 plays, nine of which went for 15 or more.
Defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard has stressed consistency. Head coach Joe Brady has stressed communication. Both have stressed urgency. Brady even spent part of Thursday's practice overseeing a communication drill run by the defensive backs, having a long conversation with Leonhard during those reps. Brady is usually with the quarterbacks and wide receivers during that time, overseeing the routes-versus-air drill. Thursday was one of the only times all summer and fall that Brady, the offensive playcaller, has stepped away from that drill. All of the stressing throughout the week and season hasn't worked. Enough is enough. If the Bills are serious about contending for a Super Bowl, things cannot stay the same on defense, full stop.
In many ways, this contest against the Raiders was the perfect test to gauge the Bills' defensive progress over nearly two months. The Raiders have some really nice pieces on offense. They are a well-coached unit capable of putting drives together but have some critical flaws and are likely a year of offseason additions away from becoming a true weekly threat on that side of the ball. All too often, the Bills failed the test. They even tried some different things with man coverage and mixed in some different late-down packages, but consistency and communication failed them.
The most common question is the age-old scheme versus personnel debate. As the season has gone on, the Bills have become increasingly simplified from a coverage perspective. Leonhard has been bending the scheme to the players on the field. Leonhard certainly hasn't been perfect, but he's not the one blowing assignments or trying to overcompensate for a teammate. Given how much the Bills and Leonhard have already shifted things, this looks like a personnel issue above all else.
The only thing working for the Bills right now is their defensive front—the interior linemen and outside linebackers. Because of a clear drop-off on the depth chart, even they are one injury away from that strength becoming a potential weakness. However, the real issue is what's happening in the middle of their defense. The Bills have repeatedly told everyone they feel great about their inside linebackers. The film tells a different story: a team that gets manipulated out of its zones in coverage far too often and struggles to shed blocks consistently in the run game.
The troubling part is that, even with the deficiencies of starters Terrel Bernard and Dorian Williams, rookie Kaleb Elarms-Orr can't consistently get through a full drive designated for him to gain experience because he makes a critical error. That happened Sunday on a 3rd-and-13, when Elarms-Orr allowed Michael Mayer to get behind him and the Raiders popped a big play for 28 yards. He was replaced the next play.
Nickel corner Dee Alford has not performed as planned, either. He hasn't been as big a problem as some other spots, but he certainly hasn't been the player the Bills hoped they'd get after he played well in training camp. Even with the struggles at those two spots, what's happening at safety might be the worst of all the issues. C.J. Gardner-Johnson was brought in as a locked-in starter, and his output has left the Bills vulnerable far too often. It's been a double whammy, because the shine Cole Bishop showed in the second half of 2025 hasn't returned, largely because he's played more conservatively than the instinctive safety he was last year. Gardner-Johnson's play has been too uneven, mostly veering toward taking too many chances that allow for big plays. His high-risk, high-reward style is akin to a home run slugger with a .177 batting average.
All of this came well before he got ejected for spitting on an opponent Sunday. His play is undisciplined, his after-whistle activities are undisciplined, and he was dangerously close to taking a backbreaking personal foul call against the Los Angeles Rams in overtime after the Bills had stopped the Rams' progress. The lack of discipline has to be addressed, according to Brady, who was as red-faced and flustered as he's ever been in a news conference Sunday. There really is only one way to address it: a benching, at the very least, should be considered for Gardner-Johnson. Damar Hamlin is not an NFL starting-caliber safety, which should carry even more weight for what I'm about to type. The Bills are probably better off with the far more predictable, safer Hamlin than with Gardner-Johnson in the lineup.
But the Bills shouldn't stop there. Safety should be number one in bold lettering for what they need to address at the trade deadline. If they can at least limit explosives down the middle, then they can start working inward to improve inside linebacker and nickel corner. If anything should empower the Bills to make personnel changes, it's that the one they have made—replacing Maxwell Hairston with rookie Davison Igbinosun as the starting cornerback—has worked out quite well over the last two weeks. They are in a far better place now than they were at the beginning of the season with Hairston. But there isn't an in-house answer like Igbinosun at every spot. There certainly isn't one at safety, and there may not be one at inside linebacker.
The Bills owe it to Allen, to how well the offense is playing, and to their recent playoff history to get quite aggressive in trading for defensive players ahead of the Nov. 10 deadline. Holding on to picks to extend the timeline only makes sense if you have a long runway ahead with your franchise quarterback. Allen is 30, and who knows how many more years they'll have of him healthy and playing at this level. The Bills are entering a critical time, with a full week off to self-scout and have difficult conversations as a staff. And when they come back, there need to be changes. Even if it isn't immediate trades, personnel changes need to happen just to reaffirm what they do need to trade for at the deadline. What has gone on through the first six games is not good enough. Answers in the middle of their back seven are paramount. If they don't find them, the Bills risk ending the year the same way all the others have: heartbreak, and yet another year of Allen's prime slipping away. The time to act is now.
Originally reported by theathleticuk.