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Buffalo Bills 2025 NFL Season Preview and Picks: How Does This Team Ever Get Over the Hump to a Super Bowl?

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar27/08/2025 - 08:24 am
osh Allen #17 of the Buffalo Bills
(Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the Buffalo Bills are coming off a playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, and they’re still on a short list of favorites to win the Super Bowl this year as Josh Allen and company try to get over the hump in the AFC.

Talking about the Bills in 2025 should be similar to how the team was viewed in 1994 after they lost their fourth-straight Super Bowl, an NFL record you’ll likely never see matched again.

Those K-Gun teams of the 90s were resilient, led by a Hall of Fame core and coach Marv Levy.  But even that team could only take so much heartbreak. In 1994, the Bills finished 7-9 and missed the playoffs, sparing the world another Buffalo Super Bowl blowout as they likely had no shot against the 49ers that year if they did get back.

The Bills haven’t been back to the Super Bowl since, but no one is really viewing January’s latest loss in the AFC Championship Game as the end of the run for these Bills, who are going into Year 8 for Josh Allen and Sean McDermott. Even Jim Kelly and Marv Levy only spent 11 seasons together.

In fact, the Bills have the third-best odds (+750 at FanDuel) to win Super Bowl LX. They’re heavily favored to win the AFC East for the sixth year in a row, and they have the highest odds of any 2025 team to earn a No. 1 seed (+260 at FanDuel).

But the sky is not the limit for this Buffalo team. Not when the Chiefs still sit at the top of the mountain after winning the AFC in five of the last six seasons. Just as the NFC used to turn away the Bills in every Super Bowl, the Chiefs are 4-0 in the playoffs against Buffalo since 2020 despite the fact that Buffalo has won the last four meetings in the regular season.

There’s no precedent for a rivalry like this, going 4-0 against a team in the regular season and 0-4 in the playoffs over the last eight meetings. But going 0-4 is kind of Buffalo’s thing. Both runs even have their own version of “Wide Right” attached to them.

While the 1990-93 Bills couldn’t escape facing the superior NFC in the Super Bowl during a run where the NFC won 13 straight Super Bowls in 1984-96, maybe the 2025 Bills can find a way to avoid Kansas City in January if they’re going to get to a Super Bowl.

Fortunately, the 2025 schedule just so happens to favor Buffalo being able to put themselves in the best position to avoid the Chiefs. Also, they overachieved a bit last year, so there is real room for improvement with this team, especially on offense in the second full year with offensive coordinator Joe Brady.

Let’s look at Buffalo’s latest case of coming up short in January, how they can avoid turnover regression and claim a No. 1 seed, and the best Bills bets for 2025.

Previously on BILLS: “It Was Supposed to Be Our Year” Episode IV  

Expectations were still high for Buffalo in 2024 after the trade of No. 1 wide receiver Stefon Diggs to Houston. In fact, when I wrote the Buffalo preview 13 months ago, I used the Diggs trade to make the case for Josh Allen winning his first MVP in 2024 as that’d be part of the narrative that he’s doing it without Diggs.

After a 3-0 start, that played out perfectly with Allen lighting up the Cardinals, Dolphins, and Jaguars (three losing teams). However, the Bills were crushed 35-10 in Baltimore and Allen completed 9-of-30 passes in a loss in Houston, including three straight incompletions that helped the Texans set up a game-winning field goal.

At that point it was clear that the Bills didn’t have enough ammo to compete with contenders without Diggs. They got rid of Marquez Valdes-Scantling and traded for veteran Amari Cooper, but whether it was injury or not grasping the playbook, Cooper had a marginal impact, averaging 37.1 yards per game in Buffalo.

The truth about Buffalo in 2024 is that Allen’s MVP case really never passed the sniff test.

For starters, the Bills used him less than in previous years while the offensive line and running backs never played better for Buffalo. Beyond James Cook rushing for 1,009 yards and 16 touchdowns, Ty Johnson and Ray Davis provided some great receiving options, especially on mismatches down the field.

Allen finished No. 1 in EPA/play on passes to backfield targets, but he was No. 9 to wide targets, No. 16 to slot targets, and No. 11 to tight targets according to NFL Pro. Of all the MVP-winning seasons since 2018, Allen’s is the only one that didn’t rank top 8 to slot targets, and his average rank over those four categories (9.25) was the worst of all MVP winners since 2018. Even as a runner, Allen’s 31.2 rushing yards per game was his fifth-best season.

The passing game had some flaws without Diggs that the rest of the circumstances in Buffalo were able to cover up. Still, you have to think there’s room for improvement in 2025:

  • The Bills were masters at winning the turnover battle (more on that below), leading to the best average starting field position for Allen’s offense.
  • Buffalo finished No. 7 on third down, its lowest ranking in the last five years.
  • Allen’s passing success rate (49.1%) was the fifth highest of his career.
  • Beyond Cooper’s struggles, newcomer Curtis Samuel also had a marginal impact at receiver.
  • Rookie Keon Coleman had some good moments but also some mistakes for a young player as you’d expect, and he didn’t create much separation, supporting the worries about his scouting report.
  • Tight end Dalton Kincaid’s numbers took a step back from his rookie year as his catch rate sunk from 80.2% to 58.7%, and he only averaged 6.0 yards per target.
  • Even Khalil Shakir, who saw his targets more than double as the new WR1, saw his efficiency numbers drop like a rock in his larger role – he’s still their best wide receiver and played well, but his success rate dropped 20.3 points and his yards per target dropped by 5.4 yards.

Throw in Buffalo finishing with a 2-3 record against winning teams, and it sounds a bit mad that this season was framed as Allen’s best to win his first MVP. But the moment he turned that 4th-and-2 against the Chiefs in Week 11 into a game-clinching touchdown run, that basically clinched his MVP award right there.

The media only built him up from that point, and CBS’ Tony Romo even let the cat out of the bag in a Week 16 game that the MVP tiebreaker is Josh has never won the award while Lamar Jackson, the other favorite, already has two, so you’ll side with the guy who doesn’t have any yet.

You know, diversify the winner’s list, make the MVP equitable for all, and make sure the list of MVP winners in this era is inclusive of every elite quarterback like it’s a lifetime achievement award.

Sure enough, Jackson won the first-team All-Pro honor at quarterback. But enough of those same 50 voters – namely Dan Orlovsky, Emmanuel Acho, and Chris Simms – went against logic and voting standards to switch their MVP vote to Allen, giving him the award in a 27-23 upset. Not sure how you can justify the most valuable player not being the best quarterback in the league too, but that’s what some of them did. That’s why it’s fair game to call 2024 a charity or DEI MVP for Allen.

Months later, people are still talking about it.

Not to get sidetracked by the 2024 MVP again, but the 2024 Bills stood out so much in some key statistical areas that it led me to creating a new metric during the playoffs called Fraud Alert Rating (FAR) that looked at strength of schedule, turnover margin, and average starting field position on offense. There had to be some explanation for why the Bills could score so many points despite not being nearly as dominant or efficient as most teams who score over 500 points are.

Sure enough, the 2024 Bills led all teams in FAR (+5.86), and they rank No. 5 out of all 736 teams since 2002. They smoked an inexperienced Denver team in the wild card, then watched the Ravens shoot themselves in the foot with three turnovers and a dropped 2-point conversion to sneak away with a 27-25 win in the divisional round.

That set up the rematch with Kansas City in the AFC Championship Game, and things were supposed to be different this time. It was a tight game again, but Allen came out very erratic with some near turnovers, and the Bills ended up recovering all five of the game’s fumbles to win another turnover battle 1-0.

But after being so unstoppable on the Tush Push throughout the year, the Chiefs repeatedly stuffed Allen on those plays, including a 2-point conversion stop, and the big one in the fourth quarter at midfield on a 4th-and-1. The Chiefs allegedly saw he was always going to his left on these plays, so they were ready for it. You’d think after barely converting one in the fourth quarter, the Bills would try something else like a play-action pass or naked bootleg, but they kept trying to sneak Allen on maybe the worst game any quarterback has had on these plays:

Even with all of those mistakes, the fact is the Bills had a fourth-quarter lead before the defense was shredded for 11 more points as the Chiefs scored a season-high 32 points. The fact is Allen got the ball back in a 32-29 game with 3:33 left, and instead of leading his first fourth-quarter comeback of the season, he moved the ball 17 yards and the Bills turned it over on downs. The offense never got the ball back and the Chiefs ran out the clock to advance to another Super Bowl.

On the pivotal 4th-and-5, the Chiefs had the right blitz call ready, and the Bills didn’t have a quick hitter or anything to counter, so Allen ended up scrambling to throw up a prayer for Kincaid, who had to turn the opposite direction to make a diving attempt for the ball, which didn’t work out, an end to his painful second season.

Just like that, the Bills’ dream season ended. Who knows if they get past the Eagles in New Orleans, but this was supposed to be the year the Chiefs were vulnerable. They had left guard Joe Thuney at left tackle and the Bills, unlike the Eagles in Super Bowl 59, were unable to exploit it.

Better luck next year? But at some point, you can’t keep trying the same things and expect to get a different result.

How Do the Bills Get Over the Hump for a Super Bowl?

We don’t want to say the Bills only have a Kansas City problem, because there was that home playoff loss to the 2022 Bengals that wasn’t even close. But the Bengals struggle to make the playoffs, and the Ravens still struggle in January. Unless a new challenger arises in the AFC, it’s likely coming down to these three teams again in 2025.

So, what can the Bills realistically do to get over the hump and get one of these strong regular seasons to lead to a Super Bowl appearance and maybe even that elusive championship win?

NFL Bills Josh Allen Patrick Mahomes
Sinners (2025).

Option No. 1: Get a First-Round Bye with the No. 1 Seed

One path we haven’t seen Buffalo try during this Allen-McDermott era is to get a first-round bye by winning the AFC’s No. 1 seed. Not that a home game in Buffalo guarantees anything after the Bills lost in 2022 (Bengals) and 2023 (Chiefs) at home, but they were 10-0 at home in 2024, including a regular-season win over the Chiefs.

But stop being a bridesmaid who gets the No. 2 seed. The Bills always lose some inexplicable game(s) in the regular season that hurt them for the No. 1 seed:

  • In 2021, it was the 9-6 loss in Jacksonville and the 14-10 loss to New England where the Patriots threw three passes in the wind.
  • In 2022, it was Allen fumbling at his goal line when trying to run out the clock on the Vikings.
  • In 2023, take your pick of turnover parades against the Jets and Broncos, or losing in overtime to the Eagles, or making Mac Jones look clutch for the Patriots on a late touchdown drive.
  • In 2024, it was giving away the game in Houston and giving up 44 points to the Rams.

Fortunately, the 2025 schedule looks like a godsend to the Bills with the way the home games break down:

  • The Bills will face four top 10 contenders based on Super Bowl odds, and all four of those games are in Buffalo against the Ravens (Week 1), Chiefs (Week 9), Bengals (Week 14), and Eagles (Week 17).
  • Beyond that, the Bills also host Tampa Bay (Week 11) and will get a few extra days to prepare for the Steelers in Pittsburgh (Week 13) after playing on a Thursday night in Houston.
  • We know the Bills own the AFC East, but they also get to play arguably the weakest NFC division with the South.
  • That trip to Cleveland in Week 16 should be light work before a big one, a potential Super Bowl preview, with the Eagles in Week 17, so there’s a good chance to get some tape on the Eagles and how they match up.

It would be hard for Buffalo to dream up a better schedule than this if the No. 1 seed is the ultimate goal this regular season. The Week 7 bye is a little early, but that’s why you want to get the first-round bye instead of having to play some No. 7 seed again.

The Bills have had a lot of injured defenders late in the season each year, so extra rest could really pay off in keeping everyone healthier. Then it’s just two home wins to get to the Super Bowl. That top seed must be the goal this year, and they can thank this schedule for giving them a great opportunity to make it happen.

Option No. 2: Luck Out and Avoid the Chiefs in January

If you can’t beat them, avoid them. That’s not in your control most of the time, but it’s happened before in NFL history. The Steelers had a lot of struggles with the Patriots, but they avoided them in all three of their Super Bowl runs in 2005, 2008, and 2010, or else Ben Roethlisberger may have ended up like Allen as a quarterback with no Super Bowl appearances in his first seven seasons (or ever).

In 2005, the Broncos took care of the Patriots in the divisional round while the Steelers upset the top-seeded Colts the next day as a No. 6 seed. In 2008, the Steelers beat the Patriots without Brady in the regular season, helping that team to miss the playoffs despite an 11-5 record. In 2010, the Jets had Pittsburgh’s back with a massive upset in the divisional round in New England.

If you’re the Bills, you’re hoping the AFC West hype is real for a change and that Denver or the Chargers are ready to take down the Chiefs, who have won that division nine years in a row. Forcing the Chiefs to be a wild card team and bottom three seed would certainly be a huge change for them.

If the Chiefs are the No. 2 seed, then maybe you can force them to beat a team like Baltimore in the divisional round before having to come to Buffalo for the AFC Championship Game.

It’d be even better if the Chiefs took a step back, as 15-win teams often do, and finished as the No. 3 seed. Then they’d likely have to beat the AFC North winner on the road before even getting to Buffalo.

Things could also backfire and a wild-card Kansas City team could end up coming to Buffalo right out of the gate in the divisional round. Maybe McDermott blows the preparation after never having a bye before, and the Chiefs smoke the Bills again.

But the best result for Buffalo would just be for another team to step up and take down the Chiefs. They’ve had four chances to do it themselves, and Bills fans are still stuck on “13 Seconds” as the one that got away. Three seasons have been played since then and you’ve had more chances.

Maybe just hope another team slays the dragon. Like how Brett Favre didn’t have to beat Dallas in 1996 when he won his only Super Bowl.

Option No. 3: Man Up, Play Better, and Close

Occam’s razor, the Chiefs aren’t going anywhere, so the Bills just need to man up and play better to beat them. They’ve done it four years in a row in the regular season, so why can’t they for once do it in the playoffs? Just once make Mahomes look ordinary as some NFC teams have done in Super Bowls.

By now, we know the Mahomes blueprint is to never blitz and get pressure with four-man rushes. The Bills were ahead of the curve when they never blitzed him once in their first meeting with Mahomes in the 2020 COVID season, a 26-17 loss at home where Mahomes still solved them on a crucial 3rd-and-12:

There goes the No. 1 seed that year, and that was the start of this rivalry. Just once the Bills need to make the crucial stop on defense, and Allen needs to have his legacy drive on offense. Not just 13 Seconds either. One that puts the game away. One that doesn’t even let Mahomes touch the ball again as he’s done to Allen in that game and to Brock Purdy in overtime of the Super Bowl.

Allen (0-6) is still seeking his first overtime win in his NFL career.

Steve Young and the 49ers had to get past the Cowboys in 1994 to win their Super Bowl. Peyton Manning’s Colts had to beat Brady’s Patriots in 2006 to get to their Super Bowl. It would only be fitting that Allen must conquer the Chiefs in January if he’s ever going to get to a Super Bowl.

He needs his moment, and he’s already lost out on several good opportunities to do it. How many chances can you realistically get in a career?

Buffalo Bills Battling the Five-Year Rule and Turnover Regression in 2025

As our final AFC team preview for 2025, we’re hitting on a variety of topics for the Bills, a contender with a deep history of close calls. We know what this team is about fundamentally, so it’s not so much about what’s changed or what needs fixed. It’s about making the next opportunity count, because these Super Bowl windows don’t stay open forever.

We touched on some of these topics in the Baltimore Ravens preview, another important piece of this 2025 NFL story. Two things the Ravens and Bills share in common is that this is Year 8 for their coach and quarterback duo, and both offenses had very few turnovers last year and will try to avoid turnover regression.

Let’s look at each topic in more detail.

The Five-Year Rule: Time Running Out for Sean McDermott?

Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott looks on during the NFL Preseason 2025
(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

The Five-Year Rule is that no team has ever won its first Super Bowl by starting the same quarterback for the same coach for more than five seasons. This actually goes back to 1950, so that’s 75 years of championship history. If it’s going to happen for your duo, it usually happens fast or not at all.

We know Allen isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it’s really on Sean McDermott to get the job done or he may end up getting replaced by someone who can. This is already Year 8 for McDermott and Allen, so that’s really pushing it as far as duos go.

As we already showed in the Baltimore preview, Allen-McDermott and Jackson-Harbaugh will be the 14th and 15th duos to make it at least eight seasons together without a Super Bowl win together. But of those first 13 duos, they all peaked by Year 6 together with eight of them losing at least one Super Bowl.

With Allen already making the playoffs six times, that means he’d tie Peyton Manning this year as the only quarterbacks to need more than five postseason appearances to reach their first Super Bowl, both doing so in their seventh postseason trip.

But Manning got there with his second head coach, Tony Dungy. We’ll see how much longer the Bills want to go with McDermott leading the charge if he keeps producing the same results that keep coming up short in January.

Buffalo’s Turnover Regression Warning

A few things we know about turnovers in the NFL is that they’re less frequent today than at any other point in NFL history with the way offenses call safer, shorter, quicker passes and stress ball security. We also know they tend to have a fluky nature and regress to the mean on both sides of the ball, and it’s even harder to keep getting takeaways on defense than it is to avoid them on offense.

But the 2024 Bills had a historic year for winning the turnover battle that it would be a shock if there wasn’t some regression this year. Let’s review the list we looked at in March for the 2024 Bills:

  • The 2024 Bills tied the 2019 Saints with a record-low 8 turnovers for the season, but they did it in a 17-game season while the Saints played 16 games.
  • Including the playoffs, the 2024 Bills finished with 8 giveaways in 20 games, a record low for any 20-game span in NFL history.
  • The Bills have not lost the turnover battle (finished positive or neutral) in 22 straight games, the longest streak in NFL history and an active one they carry into 2025. The 1952-53 Rams had a 21-game streak.
  • The 2024 Bills easily led the NFL with a +24 turnover margin, which is tied for the 13th-best mark in history and the seventh best mark since 1966.
  • The 2024 Bills were +14 in lost fumble recoveries in the regular season, tied for the second best since 2000. They led the league in 2024 with 16 fumbles recovered and 2 fumbles lost.
  • Including the playoffs, the Bills were a staggering +17 in fumbles.
  • The 2024 Bills are the only offense since at least 1992 to have zero lost fumbles by non-quarterbacks as Josh Allen had both of their lost fumbles.
  • Buffalo did not turn the ball over in the final five games of 2024 (playoffs included), tied for the fourth-longest streak in NFL history, and they can become just the fourth team to do it in six straight games in Week 1 of 2025.

This is astounding stuff, but it’s not something you can rely on to happen again in 2025. If you want to know why Allen still ranked highly in advanced metrics like EPA and QBR while not doing so hot in other areas, it’s because of the lack of turnovers (and sacks) in his 2024 season. Allen had just 25 of those plays all season (14 sacks, 6 interceptions, 5 fumbles, 2 fumbles lost).

Try as they might to dish out blame for those plays, those advanced metrics hate negative plays like fumbles, interceptions, and sacks even if they sometimes are context-based like a Hail Mary on 4th-and-20, or a tipped ball that takes a bad bounce.

While Allen is one of the hardest quarterbacks to sack and has a great offensive line, which should keep that number low again, I don’t think the Bills suddenly figured out how to avoid all negative plays. Lord knows they tried to turn it over several times against the Chiefs in the AFC title game.

Here are some of the safest bets of 2025 that I wish a sportsbook would give me odds for:

  • Some Buffalo player(s) not named Allen will lose a fumble this year.
  • Allen will likely throw more than 6 interceptions this year.
  • The Bills will not be +14 (or +17 including playoffs) in fumble recoveries this year.
  • The Bills will lose the turnover battle in a game (or multiple games) in 2025.
  • The Bills (+24) will not lead the NFL in turnover margin again as no team since 1970 has been able to lead in that stat in back-to-back seasons.

That’s all going to happen this season, and that last point just proves how real turnover regression is. You’d be hard pressed to find another stat that no team has been able to lead in consecutive seasons since the merger.

But as is always the case with turnovers, it’s about limiting their damage and avoiding the costliest ones. But if the Bills go -3 in turnovers on opening night against the Ravens as payback for January, they’re probably going to lose that game and lose their edge on home-field advantage.

So, let’s see how the Bills, among other offenses with historically-low turnovers in 2024, manage this in 2025. Unless they learned something secret about the bounce of the ball that no one else has in over 100 years of professional football, the fumble luck regression alone should knock them out of the top spot in turnover differential.

Buffalo Bills Offseason Review

The Bills retained their coordinators and extended running back James Cook to a very favorable deal for the team at $12 million per season. We’ve already covered so many talking points about the Bills and what could change statistically, so let’s look at the few new players that will also impact their season.

Offense: Better Receivers?

Buffalo didn’t change much offensively, and that may not be a bad thing. The offensive line is intact after everyone played at least 85% of the snaps last year, so that’s great news for Allen and the backs.

Amari Cooper (Raiders) and Mack Hollins (Patriots) are gone, and that’s not really a bad thing either after low impact last year. The Bills signed Josh Palmer from the Chargers. He’s not Stefon Diggs, but he was a solid target for Justin Herbert with career averages of 64.5% catch rate, 8.1 yards per target, and he’s gone over 580 yards in each of the last three seasons.

If Palmer is just your WR3 and fourth-leading receiver as planned, that’s a good player for that role. They also signed Eljah Moore (Browns) for depth, and Curtis Samuel is back for a second season.

But this is really about Dalton Kincaid and Keon Coleman stepping up as young players the Bills have spent high picks on the previous two seasons. Coleman had 3 catches for 22 yards in the playoffs. There’s no more rookie excuse. He has to step up and become a more reliable target for Allen the way Shakir and Palmer can be.

With Kincaid, was the second-year decline just injury related? He missed four full games and played 7 percentage points fewer snaps over his rookie year. But he hasn’t shown he can be a red-zone weapon with 2 touchdowns in each season, and 6.0 yards per target last year is a poor number you can’t really afford from your TE1.

If the Bills can’t foster big leaps for those players, it’s hard to see this offense coming close to last year’s scoring clip with the expected regression in turnovers and field position.

Defense: Where’s the Big Pass Rusher?

If there was a team that should have gone all out to acquire a top-tier edge rusher, it was the Bills. That’s the player you need to cause havoc against those quarterbacks like Mahomes and Burrow. The Bills tried it a few years ago with Von Miller, but he unfortunately was another Buffalo defender to get injured back in 2022. For what it’s worth, Miller had no sacks in five playoff games for the Bills in 2023-24.

Unfortunately for the Bills, teams like the Browns (Myles Garrrett) and Raiders (Maxx Crosby) ended up paying their superstars record-setting money this offseason, so no deals could be struck there.

The Bills settled for Joey Bosa from the Chargers. Maybe not the best sign your biggest addition on each side of the ball is a player the Chargers didn’t want anymore, but Bosa is a 5-time Pro Bowler with 72.0 career sacks. The problem is he was the last first-round pick of the San Diego team, and he seems to carry that curse of bad durability and missing in action when you need him most.

Basically, Bosa is the type of player who could have a huge impact on the November matchup with the Chiefs, then go missing with an injury in January when it’s time for the playoff rematch. He’s 30 and coming off a season with 5.0 sacks in 14 games, the same number of games he played in 2022-23 combined. His best days are behind him, but maybe if the Bills do some load management with him, he could make some important plays for the pass rush.

Speaking of injured Bills, corner Tre’Davious White is back and likely a starter again. It’s been a long road to recovery since his season-ending injury on Thanksgiving in the 2021 season. He’s played sparingly since and things didn’t go well with the Rams in 2024 before he finished the year in Baltimore, even playing in the playoff loss in Buffalo. We’ll see if he can turn back the clock, but the Bills aren’t getting the vintage White.

Otherwise, the Bills look very familiar on defense with the likes of Ed Oliver, Greg Rousseau, Matt Milano, Christian Benford, etc. all returning. Shaq Thompson joins the linebacker depth after a decade with the Panthers.

The Bills used their top five draft picks on defense this year, but some of those players like second-round tackle T.J. Sanders (South Carolina) and third-round end Landon Jackson (Arkansas) are likely depth players and potential starters down the road.

The Buffalo rookie to (maybe) watch this year is first-round corner Maxwell Hairston from Kentucky. He’s got an unsavory legal history, but if he’s cleaned up his act, he could be a solid player for them. Just don’t expect to see him in September as he’s landed on injured reserve to start his rookie year. But maybe he can be an impact player come January.

Best Bets for the 2025 Bills    

We’ve already gone over how the schedule is so favorable to Buffalo with home games against all the right teams. Even if this team faces some turnover regression, we’ve seen them win games in spite of that before. We’ve seen them lose playoff games with no turnovers too, so again, it’s about avoiding the costly ones.

But since the Bills are going to get to host all those teams like the Ravens, Chiefs, Bengals, Buccaneers, and Eagles this year, and since I don’t believe in the Jets, Dolphins, or Patriots as 2025 contenders, the Bills should go over 11.5 wins and win the AFC East for the sixth year in a row.

I’m also going to go with the Bills to win the AFC’s No. 1 seed, though this could be a year where that only takes 12 or 13 wins to secure unlike the 15 the Chiefs had last year. We don’t see any AFC team winning 15 games this year (or 14 for that matter).

But am I going to go against history to pick the Bills to reach the Super Bowl and possibly win it? That would mean I’d have to believe in McDermott getting it done in the playoffs every week. That would mean I’d have to expect Kincaid and Coleman to play great with Allen this year. That would mean Bosa, White, and Hairston are impact players for the defense, and no one important gets hurt for the playoffs again.

No, I’m not convinced those things will all happen for this team. I think “13 Seconds” was supposed to be the moment for Allen and McDermott, and they won’t get to where they went until something changes there.

And you know the quarterback is staying put.

  • NFL Pick: Buffalo Bills over 11.5 wins (-160) at FanDuel
  • NFL Pick: Buffalo Bills to win AFC No. 1 seed (+260) at FanDuel

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar27/08/2025 - 08:24 am