What an embarrassing loss for these Buffalo Bills. There’s no excusing a blowout defeat at this point in the season. But that only tells half the story in losing 30-13 to the Miami Dolphins. To be clear, Miami was ready, and they play a pretty great game of football most of the afternoon. The score somehow still doesn’t tell the full story of just how awful the Bills played.

The defense has been an issue all season, so expecting magic two weeks in a row was essentially a lottery play. When you consider the massive amount of injury bleed, the writing was on the wall for a potentially awful outing. Yes, giving up a back-breaking 59-yard house call to running back De’Von Achane is inexcusable, but this loss is squarely on the offense — and coaching. Then defensively late, as they wilted to contact. From penalties to turnovers, every promising moment seemed to be wiped away by mistake after mistake.

Looking for silver linings still? It’s best to head over to the Buffalo Bills official coverage for anything other than the fact that this hurts the Dolphins’ first-round pick next April. You could also always turn on Heidi.

Why does this Bills team struggle so much?

It’s not any one thing, and the concerns will be difficult to wash away completely in one offseason. It’s not going to be a fun week for general manager Brandon Beane. There will be calls for his job after failing to land a trade for wide receiver Jalen Waddle, the guy who just torched rookie cornerback Maxwell Hairston and Buffalo’s defense for five catches, 84 yards, and a touchdown.

What unfolded in South Beach is ultimately on head coach Sean McDermott. He’s the one person with the longest tenure outside of ownership. To go in at halftime down 16-0 meant McDermott had to give a speech that rallied his players, and coached some real and positive urgency in their play. It seems that happened, at least with running back Ray Davis who shot out of a cannon on the kickoff return out of halftime. But remember, that return was nullified and penalized thanks to a costly penalty by usually trustworthy tight end Jackson Hawes.

Offensive coordinator Joe Brady seems lost in his game plan, and doomed when tight end Dalton Kincaid isn’t available (which is trending too often). When the best wide receiver is only catching swings and screens at the line of scrimmage, it demands a lot of work after the catch. It doesn’t make a ton of sense when Josh Allen’s arm exists, but the truth is that no wide receiver is consistently or reliably catching downfield passes. That’s why Kincaid is so important, and why his current injury-prone status is a concern.

Further on Kincaid, many believe that his emergence would see the team move on from tight end Dawson Knox. That doesn’t seem wise to me, even when considering the cap savings. Tight ends are too important to this team’s run game, and Knox is just far more available than Kincaid until proven otherwise.

The lack of fire and urgency was rampant on Sunday afternoon. Were they just uninterested in playing a game in warm weather? There’s no excuse for running clock to end the third quarter when every snap meant so much to struggling outfit. They weren’t winning the game on that play, but deciding those seconds didn’t matter spoke a lot about how serious they approached the situation.

Let’s also take a moment to call out the two-point try issues. There may be no other team as unlikely to convert a two-point conversion as the 2025 Bills. There’s zero creativity and a clear lack of killer mentality in these moments. Against the Dolphins, Allen had a clear lane to the end zone if he tucked the ball and ran. Instead, he asked Khalil Shakir to make a lot of magic happen in the field of play before he could even sniff the end zone. That’s unacceptable. Whether due to play calls or execution, none of it’s good and all of it needs to change. It’s essentially the overflow from Buffalo’s clear struggles in short yardage situations this season.

Similarly, why is running back Ray Davis the go-to for an onside kick attempt? It’s all too cute. It needs to end.

Common themes in Week 9 were that of unpreparedness and being outmatched in almost every facet. At some point, there will be major questions to ask when wondering what’s in store for the legacy of this era’s most significant Bills players and coaches.

A fair warning to those looking to clean house in the front office: It can and often does get much worse than what McDermott and Beane have accomplished with the Bills. McDermott is in Marv Levy territory for what he’s meant to the franchise’s success. Fans, however, must be willing to accept early playoff exits and tough salary cap situations. Moving on from one or both could hurt their chances as much as folks are ready to believe it will fix the issues. It would shock me to see co-owner Terry Pegula move on from McDermott and Beane, knowing what he’s found as owner of the Buffalo Sabres. There’s no right answer at this point, but it may be a topic to revisit down the road.

Josh Allen is in a real slump

The reigning NFL MVP isn’t having the best season of his professional career. Josh Allen has played a lot of ugly football in 2025, but most weeks have seen him able to rise above the roster limitations. There have also been a number of incredible moments, such as his fourth quarter against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 1, and a classic Allen game in Week 9.

Ahead of that victory against Kansas City, I wrote that the Bills needed Josh Allen to play MVP football. He responded with his most complete performance of the season. What followed in Week 10 sure feels a lot like regression, even if his stats don’t read a terrible tale.

There are clear and obvious concerns in the wide receivers room. We’ve spent a lot of digital ink on the subject, and we’re likely to continue doing so until the results look different on a consistent basis.

The time for overused refrains is over. Saying one needs to play better early in the season is one thing, but showing everyone that’s true halfway through a campaign is concerning. Look, Josh Allen is still the incredible quarterback that all of Bills Mafia adores. He’ll have far better days than this one, and he’s the reason Buffalo has any business talking about Super Bowls. But what’s clear this season is that when he’s off, they don’t have the team to lift others up around him.

It’s likely that if Allen wants some better options to catch passes from him, a pay cut may be in order. We’d discussed that angle before in these spaces, and some saw it as a faulty narrative that ignored the coaching and front office management elephants in the room. Sure, there’s a lot to question there, but at the end of the day when you consume as much of the salary cap as Allen does each season, there’s going to be less opportunity to chase bona fide talent in free agency (and we know they’re not a team destined to pick early in any draft while Allen is playing).

Allen snapped out of his slump big time against the Chiefs, but it was simply a band-aid for the bigger issues plaguing a troubled offense in 2025. Someone needs to turn Allen’s playoff switch back on, and quick.

Maybe wide receiver Gabe Davis can help?

The Bills go as James Cook III goes

For Buffalo, the 2025 season has been all about James Cook III. He’s been as hot a topic out of One Bills Drive as Allen, and he’s put together an incredible campaign in tandem with fullback Reggie Gilliam and the starting offensive line.

Where Cook has failed to dominate this season, it seemed to be mostly due to how he was utilized by Brady and also Allen. That wasn’t the case in Miami. Instead, the Dolphins just had a solid game plan to limit the damage he caused. It was disappointing that Cook fumbled when the team was actually putting together a good offensive drive, but sometimes defenders make really good plays.

It’s idiotic to me that this team believes its best move is to send Cook to the bench in the fourth quarter when in pass-heavy mode. Cook should be the guy they turn to in that moment, especially this season. Saying that he doesn’t fit the profile they need as a pass blocker is a poor excuse for his mismanagement. He showed capable as a pass chipper/blocker against the Chiefs, and he’s even caught a few passes for good gains the last two games. Yet somehow Brady still doesn’t value what he brings to the table in these moments.

It feels like another one of those “cute” situations that McDermott spouted off about a few weeks ago.

The Bills need more from starting LBs

Week 9 was all about what didn’t go right, and with that comes the play by linebackers Terrel Bernard and Matt Milano. At one point I found myself wondering if Milano was even playing. With a defense so hammered by injury up front and in the backfield, it was up to Bernard and Milano to step up in Week 9. Instead, they simply served as revolving doors to Achane’s date with daylight.

It hasn’t been the best season for Buffalo’s starting linebacker duo, and the Bills may need the best they’ve ever played to be able to competently dig out of this defensive hole. Don’t agree? There’s this to consider:

Destiny isn’t calling the Bills

If Buffalo needed a wake-up call, it came in Week 9 — at least they better hope that’s true. It sure looks like the Bills were lost in their Week 9 win against the Kansas City Chiefs a bit longer than necessary. Leading up to this game, I spoke to the importance of winning against the Chiefs, and what it meant for the postseason. What was true then of Kansas City losing, is now the same for Buffalo. Focusing on each other and ignoring the surrounding competition could find one or both home for the playoffs.

The New England Patriots are coasting through the league’s easiest remaining schedule, now two games ahead of the Bills. Yet for all anyone wants to groan about New England’s schedule, it’s important to understand that Buffalo carries the third-easiest remaining schedule. The big concern for the Bills is their divisional losses to the Patriots and Dolphins.

There was zero room for error at losing at home to New England early in the season. It’s troubling that Buffalo didn’t appear to take Week 9 as seriously as was required. There are no more important games than those in one’s own division. The East crown is most likely heading back to Foxborough, MA early in January, unless the Patriots find their way to a massive losing streak.

At 6-3, Buffalo is unlikely to win the AFC East a sixth-consecutive season. To say it’s impossible for the Bills to retain their AFC East crown and that divisional dominance is unwise. It’s just that fans haven’t seen this type of adversity since Allen took over. They have no one but themselves to blame.

There is a bit of a reward for such divisional incompetence: Buffalo is staring at a 2026 NFL season where they won’t face a first-place finisher schedule. Silver linings, right?

Buffalo Bills at Miami Dolphins Week 10 game stats (courtesy of NFLGSIS)