ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Joe Brady has a new title this season in Buffalo, but one thing that's remained the same: the juice he brings to Bills practice.
"Joe's been awesome," said Bills tight end Dalton Kincaid. "In terms of his mentality and energy every day, it's contagious which as an offense as a whole, we all feel that."
"When you're a new guy and you come in, it's like you hit the jackpot," said Bills wide receiver Khalil Shakir. "Like, he's a great dude, great coach, and you want to work hard for him."
Brady is entering his first full season as the Bills permanent offensive coordinator after taking over as the interim midway through last season.
This offseason providing the new OC an opportunity to put his stamp on the offense, but whatever he does, the main thing is setting up QB1 for success.
"This is Josh Allen's offense," Joe Brady said. "We're going to put together the offense around the guys that you've got. For us to say, hey, we're just going to scrap anything, everything was broken, that wasn't the case. So, there'll be some elements of things that I believe in but it's more of tell me who we have on our football team and the guys what they can do well and we're going to do that."
One player who saw success with Brady last season with tight end Dalton Kincaid. Coming off a successful rookie year, he's ready to see Brady's full spin on the offense in 2024.
"The playbook's changed I wouldn't say a ton, but there's a lot of changes and tweaks we've made from last year," Kincaid said. "I think the creativity and freedom he has right now in terms of just testing things out, especially in OTA's, is super helpful just with our playbook. I think he's getting a lot more comfortable as an offensive coordinator in terms of calling plays and creating a playbook around us."
Brady harped on the idea that the offense will be whatever it needs to be based on match-ups week-to-week. That includes how to fill the void left by Stefon Diggs and the 160-plus targets he averaged over his four seasons with the Bills.
"When you played the Buffalo Bills for however many years, you've had to worry about Stefon Diggs and that is different now," Brady said. "But you've also had to worry about Josh Allen and it's a quarterback-drive league."
"At the end of the day, fortunately we still have him and the offense will still run through him," Brady said about Allen. "We'll have to adjust and have to get a feel for how teams are playing us. Obviously we're a few days in, but we feel excited about the group that we have and when we get out there on the 3rd down situations or certain situations, find out who they're going to take away and kind of go from there."
Brady and Allen are working with a lot of new pieces especially at wide receiver.
That's what makes this period of the offseason so important giving Allen time to develop chemistry with a new group of pass-catchers.
"You've got to be really intentional about it because at the end of the day there's only one guy in the receiver room that's caught a ball from Josh in a game," Brady said, referring to Shakir. "So every rep in practice, the individual, there's such an intention to everything we're doing and why we're doing it and for him to get a comfort level with some of those guys. So yeah, your offense is Josh Allen's offense, but it's also about what your players do well. So this is the time right now that your experiment with some things. Can this guy do this? Can this guy not do this?"
"We'll continue to evolve so come September, we're hoping that we'll have a good feel of them."
OTA's at One Bills Drive will wrap up next week before the start of mandatory minicamp on June 11th.