You do not want to miss your Super Bowl window. I am going to say it now: Whoever does not make it to the Super Bowl this year out of the AFC between the Baltimore Ravens and the Buffalo Bills missed their golden opportunity. It if ends up being the Arrowhead Invitational with the Kansas City Chiefs cake walking towards another shot at at the Lombardi, then the Bills and Ravens will totally blown it.
One of the most frustrating things about watching the Bills collapse in on themselves seemingly every postseason, outside of the stage continually looking too big for head coach Sean McDermott, is can we get Josh Allen some help, please? He is built like an ox, but we have seen fellow superstar quarterbacking bovine beasts like Cam Newton and Ben Roethlisberger deteriorate fast physically.
What I am getting at is why were the Bills not trying to trade for mercurial wide receiver George Pickens in a deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers? He ended up going to the other conference in the Dallas Cowboys, but Pickens was ripe for the picking. It may have cost the Bills more draft capital to deal for him in-conference, but they could have downgraded a fringe playoff team to being out of it.
The could be other reasons the Bills come up short in 2025, but I would hate for it to be wide receiver.
Buffalo Bills missed out on George Pickens trade to help Josh Allen out
The thing that I keep going back to is so many NFL franchises fail to realize where they are in their respective competitive life cycles. I am going to remove a team like Dallas from the equation, mostly because the Cowboys will always be screwy as long as Jerry Jones is calling the shots. This was a great pickup for his franchise, but I expect for their run of being perpetually mediocre to continue.
Buffalo is one of a handful of teams whose Super Bowl window is open, but it is closing. I would argue that teams like Baltimore, the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers are in this group. Other teams like the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams may be in denial that theirs is mostly closed. Others like the Houston Texans and the Washington Commanders seem to be opening up.
Pickens may not have been the right fit for the Bills, but you still have to do something, anything to try and keep pace with the biggest of baddies in the better conference right now that is the AFC. Allen is not a kid anymore. He is engaged and is pushing 30. You need to make exceptions for exceptional people, such as the reigning NFL MVP. I feel that the Bills missed a golden opportunity with Pickens.
He led Georgia to its first national title in 41 years, so raising Buffalo's first Lombardi was not a tall ask.