Today, the Buffalo Bills have a hilariously dark sense of humor.
Their four-Super Bowl, ring-less history has been so well-documented that “Buffalo Bills…” is shorthand for any repeat effort that comes close but not quite. They spent the first two decades of the 2000s staring down the New England Patriots, winning Division Zero titles between 1995 and 2020. After the Patriots collapsed, the Bills conquered the AFC East five times and counting… only to run into that immovable wall of the Kansas City Chiefs season after season.
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Now that the Chiefs have finally hit the rocks, and now that the road to the Super Bowl has passed through the ashes of Kansas City, look who’s back and once again ready to ruin another season in Buffalo: the newly retooled, very dangerous, 11-win and counting New England Patriots.
It was enough to send Buffalo fans diving into the table without any pregame lubrication to numb the pain.
Everything is looking good for the Bills this season. Buffalo started the year with a huge comeback victory over Baltimore, then won three in a row to go 4-0. Then, the Patriots suffered a comprehensive punch in the face, losing 23-20 on a last-second field goal at home.
Derek Meyer is not Patrick Mahomes yet, but he and the Patriots did beat the Bills earlier this season. (Getty Images)
(Catherine Riley via Getty Images)
Since then, Buffalo has struggled to generate any kind of consistent offense, swinging between impressive wins (Kansas City, Tampa Bay) and incomprehensible losses (Atlanta, Miami). Buffalo hasn’t won more than two games in a row since September, and it really doesn’t look like a sustainable formula for success. They enter the AFC playoffs this weekend for the No. 6 spot, and there’s a lot of uncertainty as to whether this is a good team that commits too many turnovers or a bad team that was rescued by a generation of quarterbacks.
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This weekend should bring more answers. The 9-4 Bills will visit the 11-2 Patriots in a big game on Sunday, a battle for a playoff spot and a division title.
“It’s not going to be easy, this is a really good team,” Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel said of the Bills earlier this week. “There’s a reason they’ve won this division five years in a row. People have a lot of respect for them. They’re never going to quit.”
That’s true, but Buffalo has a way of making things tougher. The Bills needed to rally from a 15-point deficit in the season opener to beat Baltimore and fell behind by 10 points against the Bengals last week.
The offense led by Josh Allen ranks second with 383.7 yards of total offense per game and averages 28.9 points per game. (The Patriots are not far behind at 27.0.) Buffalo’s defense ranks closer to the middle, allowing 307.1 yards and 22.5 points per game. Buffalo’s real problem is turnovers. The Bills are just 1-4 when losing the turnover battle, like they did in Week 5 against New England. Also worth noting: Buffalo is much better at home (6-1, one loss to New England) than on the road (3-3, updated after this weekend).
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New England, on the other hand, is playing a proverbial “hat and shirt” game — like the decisive game of the playoffs, which will be their first since 2021. In a statistic we’re all already out of date with, New England hasn’t hosted a playoff game since 2019 (Tom Brady’s final year with the team). The Patriots have played just one playoff game since then, a 47-17 road win over the Buffalo Bills in the 2021 wild-card season. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most important game in Foxborough since that day four years ago.
After Sunday, Buffalo faces Cleveland before closing out the regular season on the road against the Eagles and Jets. New England will play Baltimore and the Jets on the road before concluding the regular season against Miami. This roster seems to indicate that Buffalo doesn’t have much room for error this weekend to stay in the divisional hunt, and New England has a chance to earn a first-round bye.
Both teams face a lot of risk… plus the weather forecast predicts snow showers and a high of 31 degrees. Bundle up and tune in, it’s going to be a good thing.
