What It Took for Bills OT Dion Dawkins to Finally Admit He’s in Awe of Josh Allen

Dion Dawkins has spent a decade with the Bills, and he has spent much of that time trying to treat his quarterback like just another guy in the locker room. Then Allen did something on the field that broke the act, and Dawkins finally said the quiet part out loud on the sideline.

The Bills offensive tackle joined Rich on The Rich Eisen Show during Buffalo's bye week, sitting at 5-1 after a two-game swing that started with a Monday night win over the Rams in Southern California and ended with another win in Las Vegas. "We went to Cali, came back with two dubs," Dawkins said.

In between, the team stayed in Newport Beach, which Dawkins described with the wide eyes of a man from Buffalo. "It felt like we were in like a GTA simulator," he said. "Everybody is just like in their glory life driving around in beautiful cars."

Rich suggested a week like that is a massive team bonding experience, and Dawkins agreed, with a caveat. People assume it was a vacation. It was not. "Realistically it's like another week of camp," he said. "Coach is extremely hard on us." The difference was proximity. There was a mall across the street, the players ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together, and Dawkins called it "a consistent force of being around each other," which he saw as a huge benefit.

The NFL, Rich pointed out, rarely gets the extended road trips that the NHL, NBA and baseball live on, and a week like this is the kind teams look back on. Dawkins said the "winning ambiance" of California did a lot for the group. He also has a personal stake in a return trip: the Super Bowl lands on February 14, Valentine's Day, which Dawkins noted is his son's birthday.

That line sent Rich straight to Chris, who was told to write down "winning ambiance" as a future fantasy team name, or possibly a cologne. That opened a detour nobody saw coming. Dawkins does not spray up before games, but he insisted he always smells good, and he has a big-man theory for why. Get in an elevator with a strange smell, and everyone assumes it's the biggest dude. "I can't be no stinky big dude," he said. At 6-foot-5, he added, the average person's nose lands at about chest level, so that is where the cologne goes. He set his own standard at six, seven or eight sprays, and dismissed a TikTok creator's 100-spray minimum as "crazy."

Then the conversation turned to the new man in charge in Buffalo. Asked how things are different with Joe Brady running the show, Dawkins went straight to age and language. "He's just a younger vibe," he said. "He really speaks the same language as the players, but he also speaks the language of a coach."

The key for Dawkins is that it doesn't feel forced. Brady isn't "an older guy trying to be cool," he said. "This is just who you are day in and day out." Dawkins was blunt about why that matters now. "It really, really sucks that I have to say this," he said, but the new age of athletes coming into the league are "drastically different from what it was before." If a coach can't learn that language, Dawkins argued, a team misses out on good players. "As a coach, if you can't connect with your players, that's a huge disconnect."

Rich ran the risk of putting a name to it: Keon Coleman. Dawkins called that "a great example," while being careful not to knock the previous regime. "I'm not saying that Sean McDermott didn't know how to deal with that," he said, "but some things just come off smoother." His analogy was memorable, if geographically adventurous: one guy coming from Africa and another from Antarctica will have a hard time agreeing on whether to wear a jacket. With Brady, Dawkins said, "we're already warm, speaking a warm language."

There was also the matter of Brady, who sounded like he was threatening James Cook's touches during the week. Dawkins said he hadn't seen the sound bite, but he knew the message from meetings: you can't turn the ball over and expect to win. "It's hard to beat an opponent one-on-one with no penalties, with no faults," he said. "But now if you're beating yourself, penalties, fumbles, whatever else comes next, it's extremely hard."

Dawkins called Cook "a champion" and "a pro" who understands his role, and said the running back already fixed it, pointing to a big game with no fumbles. He also pushed back on the demand for perfection this early. "We're still in the first quarter of the season," he said. "We're just glad that it didn't cost us a football game, and we caught it early."

Rich saved Josh Allen for last, admitting the question might sound like glazing and saying he didn't care. After the shovel pass that normally travels 13 inches, not 13 yards, through the air, does Allen know how good he is? "I think Josh knows how good he is," Dawkins said. "I think every day he kind of gets a shocking like, well, I guess I'm a lot better than what I was yesterday, because he gets better every day."

Then he told the sideline story. Dawkins said he tries to act normal around Allen so his quarterback can "be free and be comfortable and let your guard down and just be one of the guys." That play changed things. Before the next series, Dawkins pulled him aside. "I was never really on the bandwagon, 'cause I'm your brother and I'm your older brother," he told Allen. "But I'm on the bandwagon now, kid. That was some crazy stuff."

Allen chuckled. "Yo, thanks, dog. It means the world to me, bro," Dawkins recalled him saying, and then they trotted back onto the field. Dawkins said being around a player like that humbles him. "We are all seeing something crazy in front of us," he said. "It just humbles you to just take a second back and just be like, wow, that's my quarterback."

Rich, who usually asks questions he already knows the answers to, had to bite on one detail: who is Skally? That's Allen. Dawkins explained that everything in his world gets put through his own slang, so Josh Allen becomes "Josh Skallen," or just Skally. "I walk in the locker room every day and I go, 'Skally!'" Dawkins said, "and he puts his hand up." Rich's verdict: it's good to have a Skally on your side. Dawkins upgraded it on the spot to "Skally Stallion."

As for the bye week itself, Dawkins said his plans have changed over a decade with the Bills. Younger Dion wanted Florida or the Bahamas. This time he just wanted to stay in Buffalo, drift his cars, spend time with family and his kids, binge "Snowfall," and catch a movie. He went to see Street Fighter and gave it a double thumbs up, though Rich noticed only one thumb actually went up. "The other one got stuck," Dawkins said.