I can’t believe I almost forgot to do my turnover predictions this year! Every year for a good chunk of time, I take a look at the data and predict how the upcoming season will go as it pertains to takeaways and giveaways. Here’s last season’s article.
One of my favorite sayings is that “The only stat that matters is the score, everything else is just context.” That said, one of the most reliable “context” items is turnover differential. This year I have some very bad news for fans of the Buffalo
Bills.
Takeaways
As I love to do for many things, let’s start with a chart. For all of these, the blue line is the year by year data for the Buffalo Bills. Red lines indicate league averages. For the two charts with a black line, that’s a league-based linear trend line to see where things have been going.
Hopefully I predicted something very positive for the Bills last year, because they sure delivered. With 32 total takeaways (16 interceptions, 16 fumble recoveries) it’s the highest number of takeaways in the Sean McDermott era. Let’s just come out and say it. It’s rarified air.
I predicted a repeat of 30 takeaways in 2024 which just on the number guessed alone I did well. To be clear, it’s wild to get 30 takeaways in a single season so my prediction was a little optimistic if we’re talking league trends. Sean McDermott’s teams don’t care about that though. “Regression to the mean” is a phrase they don’t seem to like a whole for this statistic.
Which means I can’t in good faith predict a major drop off but also in good faith can’t predict them going any higher. Teams do achieve higher than 32 on a “not very rare” basis, but you have to go back to 2019 to see anything significantly higher when New England and Pittsburgh had 36 and 38 takeaways respectively.
It’s not ideal that there are some injury concerns out of the gate, a key suspension in Michael Hoecht, and some unknowns like the continued health/productivity of Joey Bosa and Tre’Davious White. All told, I’ll predict 28 takeaways during the 2025 regular season.
Giveaways
I mean, this is nuts right? Eight giveaways for the entire regular season is absurdly good. I’m feeling pretty good about my prediction last year because I remember being pretty optimistic about this. I felt we could get a “safe” Josh Allen still playing at a high level. The reigning MVP clearly delivered.
After giving the numerical prediction last season, I said this “which as I’m typing it out seems incredibly optimistic.” The number I gave was 23. Let’s be clear; that would have been a decent jump downward from the previous two seasons. I was not even close to optimistic enough. At least I chose the correct direction.
I would love, love, love to think that there’s any way this is replicable across seasons but this is comfortably lower than even the uber-conservative Tyrod Taylor years. I’d be insane to predict anything other than regression here too. How far though? All the way to the mean? All the way to the 2022 – 2023 seasons?
Josh Allen has shown how careful he can be to protect the ball. Last season may have been the true Joe Brady arrival. I think they can keep most of the good things rolling and I’ll lock my prediction in with 16 giveaways. That’s a jump, but still well below league average.
Differential
I never used to include this as a chart because the math is easy enough to do from the ones above, but last year I thought it was a valuable addition. This year for sure it is. I had to readjust the scale of the chart this time. Being +24 is insane, a word I’ve used directly or a variant of several times already.
My predictions would still result in the Bills being +12 with turnover differential which is fantastic. Not quite insane. Fantastic. So why exactly are the Bills facing “turnover trouble” as the headline suggests? The data shows reasons for optimism but we’re not using this information in a vacuum.
We’re comparing the 2025 Buffalo Bills with past iterations and where we want them to be not just random data. We want them to be Super Bowl Champions. It’s true that the best differential in the league does not always equal championship trophies but even my optimistic position is still a major shift in the wrong direction for the team. Without these gifted opportunities, the Bills may need to find a little breathing room in some other manner.
It’ll be hard to score more as the Bills 2.92 points per drive was second best in the league last season. They could try to extend the length of drives from a time perspective but not a ton (11th in the league in 2024). The defense could tighten up in other areas. That might be the most likely path to an even better version of the Bills hitting the field.
What do you say Bills fans? Do you think I’m reading the team leaves correctly? And if so, can the Bills overcome this shift in the wrong direction? Feel free to holler at me in the comments below.
