Life is all about perspective. So is football.
How you view the Buffalo Bills right now is almost completely dependent on your natural outlook.
They’re owners of the most explosive offense in the league. They’re averaging the most points per game. Josh Allen is the MVP favorite. James Cook is averaging 5.6 yards per carry. Greg Rousseau is having an All-Pro caliber season. Deone Walker looks destined for future All-Pro distinctions himself.
But they’re allowing the fifth-most points per game. The third-most
yards. They have a -4 turnover differential. Their young cornerbacks have mostly struggled on the outside.
The Bills are 4-1.
But opinions of them feel extremely divided.
Last week, on the Bills postgame radio show I host, six of the eight callers had negative takes on the air. After THAT victory over the Rams.
The object of these games is to win them.
Yet the collectively raised intelligence of football fans and media today can very easily understand that living dangerously can’t be sustained across a long, arduous season in the NFL or, especially, in the playoffs when all contests comes against quality opponents.
I know teams aren’t exactly what their record says they are. That’s silly.
But I happen to be a glass half full kind of guy. Did nature or nurture provide me that outlook? Probably a little of both. Even if you view the glass as half empty, that’s fine. There’s no right outlook.
At this point of the season, I view the Bills as a team still trying to find itself.
Most of that identity-searching is on the defensive side of course, but the passing offense hasn’t been right since Week 2, and DJ Moore being in and out of the lineup probably has much to do with that.
Many teams are still looking to find themselves and by mid-October are 0-5, 1-4, or 2-3.
With how incredibly thin margins between wins and losses have gotten in the modern-day NFL, clubs can’t apologize nor feel shameful about a winning record. These Bills certainly shouldn’t.
There’s simultaneously plenty to rave about right now and clear flaws that need to be corrected.
I don’t necessarily believe the Bills offense will continue to be as extravagantly awesome as it’s been through these first five games, although the presence of Allen strongly suggests Buffalo’s offense will be one of the league’s best.
I don’t necessarily believe Cook will stay on an 1,800-yard pace. Early-season on-pace figures are pretty silly too. I don’t think he’ll continue to fumble at more than twice the league average either.
And I don’t think the Bills defense, five games into the Jim Leonhard era, will continue to be as porous against the pass as it’s been to date. There are too many youngsters learning a brand-new defense for me to believe they won’t get better with time and on-field experience.
Maybe you feel differently. And it’s fine if you do.
But the Bills can help the strange split among fans and media regarding just how good this team is, or how sustainable its current dynamic is, today in Las Vegas.
Now, do I think a convincing victory over the Raiders would persuade all those who don’t believe the Bills are very good that they indeed are?
Probably not.
What I do know about a Bills win today — it’d move them to 5-1, and they’d enter the bye week in one of the prime positions for the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs, which, to me, is the ultimate goal of the regular season.
And, at 5-1, I’d say this Bills team would be pretty damn good.
