The Buffalo Bills have made loud statements to begin the Joe Brady era. A 36-eruption against the Texans defense in Week 1 followed by a mostly effortless 41-point outburst against the Lions to open new Highmark Stadium 10 days ago.
Today’s game against the Chargers is just as important as those first two contests, as it provides an opportunity for Brady’s bunch to continue to prove it is slightly different than iterations of the team from the recent past.
They don’t want to be that different.
Heck,
the Bills have the most regular-season wins in the NFL since 2020.
Sean McDermott and Co. established a perennial contender. Josh Allen is to thank for a lot of that, of course.
How does this Bills team want to be different then?
First, by doing something the McDermott era never did… earning the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs. And they can do that by avoiding a phenomenon that plagued those past Bills teams — the head-scratching, nonsensical loss (or losses) during the regular season.
It’s only natural to circle the heavyweight clashes on a team’s schedule, particularly for a Super Bowl contender like the Bills.
The McDermott Bills didn’t win all those enormous contests of course. But they elevated their play in many of them, the crowing achievement for the high-magnitude games being that Bills have beaten the Chiefs in five-consecutive regular seasons.
But it was the contests they had very little or absolutely no business losing that separated those Bills clubs from needing one fewer win to reach the Super Bowl. That, to me, is a significantly more valuable luxury of earning the No. 1 seed than being awarded home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
During the prime of the McDermott era, it was those head-scratching, nonsensical losses kept the Bills out of that rightfully coveted top postseason spot.
In 2021, a 9-6 defeat in Jacksonville, which ultimately was the second and final win of the Urban Meyer era for the Jaguars.
A few weeks later, in a game with hurricane-level winds, the Bills lost 14-10 to the Patriots in a game in which featured a 2-of-13, 19-yard passing performance from New England’s rookie quarterback Mac Jones.
That year, the Titans were the No. 1 seed at just 12-5. Those humiliating hiccups from Buffalo were the difference in earning that top playoff seed and having to travel to Arrowhead Stadium for what eventually was 13 Seconds.
In 2022, the Bills lost on the road 20-17 to a non-brutal Jets team that did, in the end, go 7-10 and miss the playoffs. That was the year of the Damar Hamlin game, and Buffalo missed the No. 1 seed based on an unprecedented utilization of winning percentage in the regular season. The 14-3 Chiefs were awarded the AFC’s top postseason spot, just ahead of the 13-3 Bills.
The 2023 campaign was littered with these type of losses. The four-turnover Monday Night Football loss to the Jets when Aaron Rodgers was injured on the second play of the Jets season. A ghastly effort in London against the Jaguars, a defensive collapse in New England against Jones. Then a 12 men on the field penalty to nullify what would’ve been a game-clinching missed field goal by Denver in a bizarre Monday Night Football loss to the Broncos. The Bills went 11-6, and the Ravens took the No. 1 seed in the AFC at 13-4.
Opportunity missed once again for Buffalo.
Even in Josh Allen’s dazzling MVP season, there was very questionable clock management by McDermott that stopped Buffalo’s comeback effort in a 23-20 loss to the Texans, and more of said clock — and timeout — management in a 44-42 track-meet loss to the Rams in Los Angeles.
Last season, the Bills got steamrolled by the hapless Dolphins 30-13 in November, went forward with the wrong game plan against the Texans in Houston, and lost 13-12 to the Eagles on a missed two-point conversion pass attempt from Allen to Khalil Shakir against the Eagles. All those losses led to Buffalo not winning the AFC East for the first time since 2019.
If Brady’s Bills truly want to be different and can only take it one game at a time, they need to make another statement by thoroughly handling business this afternoon against a reeling, banged-up Chargers team.
