Buffalo wasn’t supposed to do anything this year other than tank, but now they’re a legitimate threat to win the AFC East.
Plenty of teams have surprised this season, but few have pulled off what the Buffalo Bills have. Somehow the team has gone from looking like it was a few years away from being competitive to on a journey to end an almost two-decade playoff drought.
Buffalo, you could argue, is the Hollywood story of the AFC. Just like the Los Angeles Rams, the Bills have found a way to turn a season that almost everyone assumed would be a lost one into something that has the team way ahead of schedule.
It’s becoming one of the most tired cliches in sports, but no team personifies being ahead of schedule more than the Bills. What makes it fit is that no one really had a schedule for the Bills, at least one that wasn’t loose at best. Sean McDermott was an unproven head coach, the team traded (and is still trading) away veterans on the roster as a means of stockpiling draft picks.
All of that is still true, it’s the fact that Buffalo is one of the best teams in the AFC that has people baffled.
[The Bills] are so far ahead of schedule they’re playing with house money in a winning season
Fans in Buffalo aren’t baffled, they might be the only ones who saw this coming. LeSean McCoy is one of the league’s best dual-threat players, and Tyrod Taylor is criminally underrated. The defense will swarm and smother, and McDermott has installed a can’t quit spirit that has helped Buffalo remain in games previous versions of the Bills would have laid down in.
Buffalo, a team that so far ahead of schedule it’s playing with house money in a winning season, has humbled darling quarterbacks like Jameis Winston, Derek Carr, and reigning MVP Matt Ryan.
The team not only is entertaining to watch but are now a legitimate threat to win the AFC East. After Week 8, the Bills sit just a half game behind the Patriots in first place, with two key matchups against New England slated for the final stretch run of the season.
Even if Buffalo doesn’t win the division, the team is almost a mortal lock to snap a playoff-less streak that started in 1999. Fun aside: If Tennessee doesn’t shoot themselves in the foot we could be looking at a rematch of the Music City Miracle in the Bills first trip back to the playoffs since it happened.
No matter how the seemingly inevitable playoff berth happens, Buffalo is going to be a hard out. The way New England’s defense is unable to stop anyone, a matchup in Foxboro in January could be one ripe for an upset.
Next: Every NFL Team's Biggest Draft Whiff Of All-Time
Bills Mafia won’t deem it an upset so much as an arrival. Buffalo has willed itself into a winning season through grit, and there’s no better way for this team to begin realizing it’s potential.