How do I handle being blamed for bugs when I don't test the code myself?

You used to find the flaw yourself. The satisfying catch, the bug caught before it shipped. Now you answer for quality through a team, and when something ships broken, the blame comes to you for a mistake your own hands did not make. That is the raw deal of leading QA: accountable for everyone's misses. Accept the accountability, but reshape how you carry it. You cannot catch every bug anymore, so your job is to build the system that catches them, the process, the coverage, the culture that makes broken releases rare. When one slips through, the question is not who to blame but what in the system let it pass. That mindset protects you and your team both. Keep your hands in the testing enough to stay sharp and credible. And when something ships broken, own it upward without throwing your team under the bus, then fix the gap that allowed it. That is how a QA lead earns trust, and how you sleep at night despite carrying the misses of many.