The Buffalo Bills head into the 2025 NFL season as a top contender in the AFC. They’re a good team made of hard-working players and an accomplished head coach. The Bills also boast a perennial NFL MVP candidate in quarterback Josh Allen, who has led Buffalo to six straight playoff appearances and five consecutive AFC East titles.
Coming off a 13-4 record in 2024 and averaging 30.9 points per game, the Bills are expected to dominate the regular season once again. Despite last year’s success and the schedule
that follows such campaigns, Buffalo’s 2025 schedule is currently ranked as the fifth easiest based on Vegas win totals. To be clear, the rest of the AFC East hasn’t done much to slow down the Bills and Allen.
However, for all their regular-season success, Buffalo’s postseason story has been one of heartbreak, particularly in four losses to the Kansas City Chiefs since 2020. The biggest question for 2025 isn’t whether the Bills will win 12 or 13 games — fans expect that.
The question is whether Josh Allen, whose playoff performances have been elite, will finally get the support he needs from his coaching staff, playmakers, and special teams to overcome past failures and deliver a Super Bowl. With new additions on offense, a revamped defense, and some coaching staff additions, the Bills aim to address these shortcomings, but the answer won’t come until January.
Regular-season dominance: A familiar story
Buffalo’s regular-season prowess is undeniable. Since 2020, they’ve averaged 11.7 wins per season, with Allen throwing for 4,262 yards and 40 touchdowns in 2024 while adding 763 rushing yards and six scores. Analysts project another strong campaign, with Buffalo favored to go 12-5 or better and secure another AFC East title.
The offense, led by offensive coordinator Joe Brady, has new weapons in wide receivers Joshua Palmer and Elijah Moore, joining second-year wide receiver Keon Coleman (56 catches, 689 yards in 2024) and the always reliable Khalil Shakir (76 catches, 821 yards, four touchdowns). Running back James Cook, fresh off an 18-touchdown season, anchors a ground game that ranked fifth in rushing yards per game (141.1) last year.
Defensively, the addition of edge rusher Joey Bosa and a new draft class focused on that side of the ball aims to bolster a unit that went through a revamp in 2024. But will that group finally be able to make a difference when January arrives?
The 2025 schedule offers winnable games against teams like the New England Patriots, Atlanta Falcons, and New Orleans Saints, with Buffalo projected to dominate divisional rivals like the Miami Dolphins (5-2 at Hard Rock Stadium since 2018) and New York Jets. Regular-season wins over tough opponents like the Houston Texans or Kansas City Chiefs — such as last year’s 30-21 victory over KC — will boost confidence but reveal little about playoff readiness.
The Bills’ shift from a pass-heavy attack (63% pass plays in 2020) to a balanced, run-focused offense (51% pass plays in 2024) has reduced turnovers (from 19 in 2020 to 11 in 2024), but also limited explosive passing plays. This ground-and-pound identity, while effective when playing lesser regular-season opponents or when playing with a lead in the postseason, may not translate to the biggest games of the year, where it’s close and more aerial firepower and game-winning drives are often needed. Those are the times they have to rely on Allen’s arm and, as we saw in the last couple of years, the passing game hasn’t produced enough when it mattered the most.
The postseason problem: Where Josh Allen’s support falters
Josh Allen’s playoff performances are Super Bowl worthy. Across 13 playoff games, he’s thrown for 3,359 yards, 25 touchdowns, and just four interceptions, with a 101.7 passer rating.
In 2024, even though those weren’t his best career performances in the postseason, largely because of the direction the coaches have decided to go on offense, he did his job against the Baltimore Ravens, taking care of the football, avoiding mistakes, and contributing to the run game with two scores on the ground in a 27-25 Divisional Round win. He added 276 yards and two scores against the Chiefs in a 32-29 AFC Championship loss.
Allen’s dual-threat ability — averaging 6.8 yards per carry in the postseason — makes him a nightmare for defenses. Yet, despite playing at a Super Bowl-caliber level, Allen has been let down by his coaching staff’s decisions, lackluster play makers, and special teams miscues in critical moments.
The most glaring example is the “13 seconds” loss to the Chiefs during the 2021 playoffs, where Buffalo’s defense allowed a 44-yard drive in 13 seconds to force overtime, resulting in a 42-36 defeat. Head coach Sean McDermott and defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier’s failure to adjust to Kansas City’s quick-strike passing game (coupled with a clear indecision about what should be done before the last kickoff) gave the Chiefs optimal field position and enough time on the clock to move downfield and tie the game — truly massive coaching and special teams failures.
In 2023, with a clear shift in the offensive approach from the previous years and coordinators, becoming more of a run-first/ball-control unit, the Bills’ 27-24 Divisional Round loss to the Chiefs saw Allen throw for just 186 yards and a touchdown. As soon as the Chiefs figured out how to stop Buffalo’s ground attack, it stagnated. A missed 44-yard field goal by Tyler Bass and a lack of reliable targets (several big drops) killed a potential game-winning drive.
The 2024 AFC Championship loss followed a similar script: without a dominant run game and failing to win the battle in the trenches, Buffalo couldn’t convert key short-yardage situations and didn’t have an explosive passing game to help them out. Allen threw for 237 yards and (during the biggest play of the game) wasn’t put in a great situation and couldn’t fix it pre-snap, having to work his magic post-snap to miraculously put the ball anywhere he could to convert the fourth down — only for tight end Dalton Kincaid drop it. The defense, allowing 6.8 yards per play in the second half, also didn’t help.
Failure to significantly re-invest in the passing game, through questionable player additions and a major focus on creating a strong ground-and-pound offense, has been a recurring issue. In the 2023 and 2024 playoffs, Buffalo’s receiving corps struggled to create separation against Kansas City’s aggressive man-coverage schemes, forcing Allen to rely on checkdowns or low-percentage throws.
Even when he still had Diggs as his WR1, that production waned in big moments (3.0 yards per catch in the 2023 loss). The Bills’ running game, while effective early in games (Cook averaged 4.9 yards per carry in 2024), has often become irrelevant in the fourth quarter of close playoff games, where clock management forces a pass-heavy approach.
In the last two postseason losses to the Chiefs, the Bills’ pass-to-run ratio spiked to 68% in the fourth quarter, compared to 51% for the full 2024 season, exposing the lack of reliable targets and enough efficient passing plays for game-winning drives. As the offense got better at running the ball, the passing game lost its mojo and hasn’t been feared at all as it was in the past. It’s inadmissible when you have Josh Allen leading the offense.
Defensively, Buffalo has struggled to adjust against elite offenses. The 2024 loss saw Kansas City exploit mismatches, with Patrick Mahomes throwing for 315 yards and three touchdowns. In 2023, Steve Spagnuolo’s defensive schemes limited Allen’s time in the pocket, forcing 13 incompletions.
Special teams have also faltered, with Bass’s missed field goal in 2023 and a blocked punt in the 2022 playoffs against Cincinnati costing valuable points. These failures — coaching, offensive play makers, defense, and special teams — have left Allen carrying an unfair burden.
A New Hope: Coaching and roster changes
The 2025 season brings changes that could address these shortcomings. On the coaching front, defensive coordinator Bobby Babich enters his second year after a 2024 campaign where the Bills ranked 13th in points allowed (21.8 per game). Babich’s aggressive, blitz-heavy approach showed promise against the Ravens in 2024, limiting Lamar Jackson to 54 rushing yards, but second-half adjustments faltered, allowing Baltimore to nearly erase a 17-10 deficit.
The addition of Ryan Nielsen as defensive line coach and senior defensive assistant is a significant move. Nielsen, who turned the Atlanta Falcons’ defensive line into a top-10 unit in 2023, brings expertise in generating pressure, which could help Bosa, Greg Rousseau, and the young additions improve Buffalo’s sack rate (2.1 per game in 2024, 15th in the NFL). If Babich and Nielsen can craft a defense that adapts to elite offenses and, in particular, has a plan for the Chiefs, it could alleviate the pressure on Allen. One of the new guys becoming a true difference maker wouldn’t hurt either.
Offensively, the additions of Palmer (49 catches, 684 yards in 2024 with the Chargers) and Moore (59 catches, 558 yards with the Browns) aim to give Allen more reliable targets. Coleman’s development (19.2 yards per catch in 2024) and Shakir’s consistency provide depth, but neither is a proven WR1 capable of dominating in crunch time. The development of tight end Dalton Kincaid is key here.
The shift to a ground-and-pound identity has made the offense less mistake-prone — Allen’s interceptions dropped from 18 in 2023 to six in 2024 — but it’s also reduced explosive plays and passing TDs from 35 or more in the 2020-22 stretch to 29 and 28 in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Buffalo’s passing yards per game fell from 258.1 in 2020 (second in the NFL) to 210.2 in 2024 (12th), and their 20+ yard completions dropped from 68 to 52 over the same span.
Is it worth having fewer turnovers at the expense of losing the very thing that makes Josh Allen great? This conservative approach may win regular-season games but struggles in playoff scenarios requiring quick-strike scoring. The answer is never in the extremes so, a better balance must be achieved.
The 2025 Question: Can Buffalo’s support system deliver?
The Bills’ Super Bowl odds, third-best behind Philadelphia and Baltimore, reflect their talent but also the weight of past failures. Allen’s brilliance — projected to throw for 37 touchdowns and rush for 13 in 2025 — will likely carry Buffalo to another 12-win season. The defense, with Bosa and Nielsen’s influence, could improve its pressure rate and limit opponents to under 20 points per game. Palmer and Moore may create some separation, giving Allen more options on critical drives.
Yet, these improvements don’t guarantee postseason success. The regular season, with very winnable games, won’t test whether Babich can outsmart Spagnuolo or whether Coleman can make a contested catch in the clutch. Even if they can do that against the best teams, we’ve already seen it in the past. We know they can beat anybody during regular-season play.
The Bills’ playoff losses reveal a pattern: There’s a lack of adjustments made against top offenses, unreliable play makers and schemes in the passing game, and special teams miscues. McDermott’s 3-6 playoff record, compared to Reid’s 22-16, underscores the coaching gap.
The 2024 Ravens game showed flashes of potential, with McDermott’s great initial game plan, and Babich’s defense and Brady’s offense clicking early. But the second-half collapse raised familiar concerns. Until Buffalo faces Kansas City or another elite team in January, the question remains: Can the coaching staff, playmakers, and special teams step up to support number 17? He’s not perfect, nobody is, but Josh Allen’s playing like he deserves a ring. He can’t do it alone, though.
Waiting for January
The 2025 regular season will likely see Buffalo dominate, with Allen dazzling and the defense improving under Babich and Nielsen. The new receivers may spark the passing game when needed, and Cook’s running ability paired with a stout and well coached offensive line could control games.
But regular-season wins won’t answer whether the Bills can overcome their postseason demons. The shift from an unstoppable passing offense led by the best QB in the game and some elite weapons at WR to a run-first unit without a clear WR1, plus the defensive struggles against elite offenses, and the lack of special teams reliability all remain concerns.
Allen has been at his best when it matters the most, but he deserves better support. Whether it’s McDermott out-coaching Reid, Babich and Nielsen neutralizing Mahomes, or one of his weapons making a clutch catch, the answers lie in the playoffs.
Until then, Bills fans will hold their breath, hoping 2025 is the year Allen finally gets the help he needs to bring a Super Bowl victory back to Buffalo.
