For 20 years, the Patriots took advantage of a bad AFC East, cruised into the postseason and won a whole bunch of games and Super Bowls. The Tom Brady era ended at the same time as the Josh Allen era started in Buffalo, and the Bills took advantage of the same terrible AFC East. Except they never won a Super Bowl.
Unfortunately for the Western New Yorkers, the 2025 Bills ran face-first into a wall of their own making. The Patriots jumped on the opportunity, won the division and are now going to the Super Bowl.
All hope isn’t lost for Buffalo though. They’ve still got the bones of a good team and are a handful of tweaks away from retaking the throne in the division. They've made a few changes so far this offseason as well. Unfortunately, those changes have been pretty boneheaded. That doesn’t mean they can’t correct the course, though. Here are four offseason moves Buffalo must make to rebuild the roster, fix the offense and take back the division.
1. Build a time machine
The first thing that the Bills need to do this offseason is build a time machine. After that, they have some options.
First, they could go back to five seconds after the Bills' season ended. Owner Terry Pegula said that he decided to fire Sean McDermott in the locker room after the game (he also said that he didn’t do it then, but this guy is a loony, so you choose what to believe). Someone should’ve locked him out of that room so he couldn’t make that decision right then.
Did McDermott deserve to be fired? Probably. But the number one rule in life, and especially in the NFL, is that you don’t make decisions immediately after a loss, right after your season ends, or when you’re even a tiny bit emotional. And if that’s when you do make a decision, you certainly don’t admit to it immediately during your next press conference. Pegula did all four of those things.
Second: they could go back in time to when Pegula ultimately decided that McDermott was the only guy to get fired, and then promoted Brandon Beane from general manager to general manager and president of football operations. Regular people don’t know the difference between the two, but the point is that he also didn’t get canned when he definitely deserved to.
By making McDermott the only guy to go, they’re essentially saying that the only problem the Bills have had in the past three or four seasons was their head coach — not the lack of talent that they surround Josh Allen with. Absolutely baffling. Should’ve fired them both.
Third, they could go back to before the end-of-season press conference, where Pegula made himself look like a total ding-dong by interrupting, interjecting, saying dumb stuff and insulting players on his roster. This would be the most selfish use of the time machine because any time owners (read: the most out-of-touch people on the planet) say something publicly, it’s incredibly entertaining.
2. Build a defensive line
You’re not winning a Super Bowl if you can’t stop the run, and the Bills were just about as bad as you could possibly be at stopping the run. DaQuan Jones, Larry Ogunjobi, Jordan Phillips and Phidarian Mathis are all interior defensive linemen who played more than 30% of the defensive snaps. They are not all that good, and they are free agents this offseason.
In a perfect world, the Bills would let all of them walk and replace them with better dudes. But it’s not a perfect world, so one or two of them will probably be back. Regardless, they need guys. They can go after some free agents like Jalen Redmond (Vikings) or Sheldon Rankins (Texans). They can trade for someone like Dexter Lawrence (Giants) or Daron Payne (Commanders). Or they can use a premier draft pick (or a few low-tier draft picks) for a guy.
While they’re at it, get better linebackers, too. You can’t rely on Matt Milano forever.
3. Add a number of wide receivers
So Josh Allen’s a really good quarterback, right? Let's take a look at every leading pass catcher for the Bills since 2018:
Year | Player | Receptions | Yards | TDs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2018 | Z. Jones | 56 | 652 | 7 |
2019 | J. Brown | 67 | 1060 | 6 |
2020 | S. Diggs | 127 | 1535 | 8 |
2021 | S. Diggs | 103 | 1225 | 10 |
2022 | S. Diggs | 108 | 1429 | 11 |
2023 | S. Diggs | 107 | 1183 | 8 |
2024 | K. Shakir | 76 | 821 | 4 |
2025 | K. Shakir | 72 | 719 | 4 |
These numbers came from Pro Football Reference, not some secret website. The Bills have this information. It is absolutely criminal for Beane to go into a season knowing how good the offense can be when Josh Allen has a true WR1 to throw to, and then only pick up Joshua Palmer in free agency.
There are a lot of wide receivers who will be available this spring. If they were smart, the Bills would try to trade for A. J. Brown. The Eagles owe Brown a boatload of money until 2028, so on the money side, he won’t kill you with the salary cap. But you will have to shell out a lot of draft picks. He’s the most dominant X Receiver the NFL has, and he’d be a beautiful target for Allen.
Another option is to go after George Pickens. If he enters free agency, that’ll make life more expensive but less complicated. If the Cowboys franchise tag him, he’ll be a trade target. Other than them, Wan’Dale Robinson is a free agent with great hands, and Alec Pierce is a very sick deep target.
My point is that there are options. And once again, Beane is going to look like a real dummy if he does the same old, ‘The offense is good. We don’t need elite receivers because Josh Allen rocks so much.’
4. Let Joe Brady, and Joe Brady alone, run the offense
Bills fans are not super high on Joe Brady getting the head coaching job. The passing offense that he ran last year was frustrating because it was unimaginative and reliant on high-percentage passes. That can work really well, but when it doesn’t work, it's disgusting, boring and pathetic. And it also doesn’t really play into the strengths that we’ve seen in Josh Allen’s game.
And we're back to where the Bills didn’t change enough of the brains of the offense: They need to let Joe Brady run everything, that way if it goes south again, they know who the problem is. If they get too many cooks in the offensive kitchen, then there’s too much responsibility and blame to go around. If there’s too much blame, then it's hard to dig out the rotten root. If Joe Brady is the root, then he needs to go.
On the other side of that coin, if everything turns out to be peachy, then that means Pegula and Beane are right, and everyone like me looks like a total idiot for calling them idiots. It’s a win-win for those guys.