2024 Bills offense finally offering Josh Allen assistance with yards after the catch

After years of nothing, Joe Brady and company are chipping in.

For almost as long as Bills Mafia can remember during the Josh Allen era, the question has lingered:

“Why can’t the Bills generate any yards after catch (YAC) relative to the rest of the league?”

When he came on board as the starting quarterback in 2018, Allen saw 5.6 yards after catch per completion. Not a bad mark, to be honest. It was 11th in the NFL that year and, combined with his incredibly high average distance of target, led to a lot of big plays that helped give Bills Mafia hope for their rookie quarterback.

But then 2019 came. And 2020. And 2021. And 2022. And 2023. And Allen’s YAC per completion never reached that rookie year mark ever again. 4.9, 4.7, 4.3, 4.4…every one of his marks after 2018 until 2023 was at least 25th in the NFL or worse. In 2023, Joe Brady took over control of the offense from previous offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey during the season and Allen saw his number creep up to 5.1 YAC per completion, which ranked 20th in the NFL.

But while top NFL quarterbacks like Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow were getting meaningful yards after catch from their receivers, the Bills just couldn’t seem to manufacture that production. Detractors of Josh Allen would often point to it being an issue of ball placement and that his throws weren’t being put in a position to give his receiver an opportunity to make something happen with the ball after the reception. Perhaps the scheme was designed to accommodate for Allen’s perceived flaw and the drags and over routes seen in other offenses were replaced by comebacks and hooks to mask Allen’s inability to hit a moving target well enough to generate yards after the catch.

Bologna.

The Bills yards after catch per completion in 2024 has jumped to 6.6, good for second in the league behind the Detroit Lions. Did Allen magically become a better precision passer? Or is the more likely answer logically that the environment around Allen changed?

Thankfully, Ben Baldwin helped put an end to this conversation through the use of correlation analysis. If a quarterback is more responsible for yards after catch production than his scheme and surrounding weapons, that would mean YAC metrics would follow a quarterback when he moves to a new offensive environment (i.e. team).

But that’s not what happens.

Baldwin points out that the correlation coefficient of YAC over expectation for QBs would remain with the same team is notably higher than the correlation coefficient of YAC over expectation for QBs who switched teams.

In short, if you get good YAC (relative to expectation) one year, you’re more likely to have it next year if you stay on the same team than if you switch teams as a quarterback.

Correlation coefficients occur on a range from -1 (a direct negative correlation) to +1 (a direct positive correlation) with 0 representing zero correlation. A correlation coefficient of 0.43 is considered to be just slightly lower than “strong” for most statisticians, while a -0.01 would be considered essentially no correlation.

Yards after catch increases for the Bills in 2024 are far more related to replacing Gabe Davis and Stefon Diggs with Keon Coleman and Curtis Samuel, giving Khalil Shakir more targets, and offensive coordinator Joe Brady calling more plays conducive towards it. Meanwhile, Joe Burrow, in his first year without offensive coordinator Brian Callahan, has seen his YAC per completion drop to 5.0 (27th in the league amongst qualifying quarterbacks).

I’m confident this will come up very soon in the MVP debate, so it’s nice to have the historical context and correlation analysis already done.

…and that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive and look for new episodes of “The Bruce Exclusive” every Thursday on the Rumblings Cast Network — see more in my LinkTree!