The Buffalo Bills have a real chance to finish in last place in the AFC East in 2023.
Before you cancel your subscription to The Buffalo News, just know that is the opinion of Pro Football Talk founder Mike Florio, which he shared recently on an episode of “PFT Live.”
“I feel like the Bills are a Jenga tower right now,” Florio said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do this year. I could see them finishing in fourth place in the division.”
Hot take?
Maybe a little bit, but Florio’s reasoning – mainly, the Bills have a shaky foundation and play a brutally difficult schedule – underscores that expectations for the upcoming season are dramatically different than they were a year ago at this time.
Entering 2022, the Bills were the chic Super Bowl pick. It was impossible for the team to play the “nobody believes in us” card … because everyone believed in them.
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That card, however, serves as a primary motivational tool for every athlete. There is no doubt it is available to play this season – the team just needs to fire up the clip of Florio talking about its potential to finish in last place after winning the AFC East for three years in a row to remind them.
Florio is far from alone in projecting the Bills to take a step back. Betting website BetOnline.ag has the Bills at 10-1 to win the Super Bowl ... and 2-1 to miss the playoffs entirely.
So, where has all that love for the Bills gone? It has migrated to Miami, which gets back starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa after his 2022 season was cut short because of concussions. Or it is headed east to New Jersey, where the New York Jets acquired future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the last, biggest piece to what they hope is a championship puzzle.
The Bills, while a nice story for a while, have clearly fallen behind in the AFC arms race, the thinking goes.
The reality is, that thinking is not such a bad thing, especially for a team whose coach punctuates his victory speeches with “Hungry and Humble.”
“It’s great flying under the radar,” tight end Dawson Knox said. “According to everyone else, the Jets have already won everything and the Dolphins are all-whatever. We try to ignore the noise. Obviously, you can’t ignore it all, and you hear bits and pieces here and there. I think it’s very important to focus on us. We know what we can do as a team, and if we’re focused on other things we can’t control, we’re going to fall behind ourselves.”
As much as the Bills may try to “ignore the noise,” as Knox put it, they’re human. They are aware about what is being written and said about them.
“There is a big difference between last year and this year,” safety Micah Hyde said. “We talk to (the media) all the time, so, obviously, we know the hype that was surrounding the team last year. Just being around this team right now, it’s evident that it’s not the same this year.
“I think that we’ve always, around here, had a chip on our shoulder when it comes to that underdog role. We’re happy with where we’re at, throughout the whole training camp process, preseason process. We’re excited to go out and show it in Week 1.”
There is a danger in overreacting to the first week of the NFL season, in either direction. If a team looks great, expectations for the year skyrocket. If a team struggles, the opposite occurs. That is something the Bills experienced a year ago.
“We went in there, kicked the Rams’ (butt) and everyone is saying, ‘The Bills are going to win the Super Bowl,’ ” Hyde said. “It’s a long season, and a lot of injuries happened to us, a lot of crazy things happened to us and we weren’t there at the end.”
Contrast that to the way the 2021 played out. The Bills dropped to 7-6 after a 33-27 overtime loss to the Buccaneers in Week 14, and were in danger of missing the playoffs. However, something clicked in the second half of that game, despite the loss, and the team went on an absolute heater from that point forward, making it to the divisional round against the Chiefs (you know what happened next).
“All the guys I’ve ever talked to about winning a Super Bowl, they’ve all said the same thing: Obviously you’ve got to be playing your best football come the end of the year, but also have got to have a little bit of luck,” Hyde said. “A little bit of luck when it comes to injuries, a little bit of luck when it comes to having the ball bounce your way. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t.”
There is no denying that the AFC East is going to be a grind. The moves the Jets and Dolphins have made should make them better, and Bill Belichick and the Patriots are never going to pushovers. So, yes, Week 1 matters. When there are only 17 games on the schedule, they all do. But the season will not be defined by what happens against the Jets. If this franchise has learned anything over the past three seasons, it is that preseason hype means nothing.
“I can’t answer why there’s not much national buzz,” ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky said. “Sometimes when we get into this sports media world, I sit and I listen, and I’m like ‘Guys, what are we talking about right now?’ I think part of it is the AFC is wildly deep. We know that. There is a great appreciation for how good that conference is. I think, two, maybe because of the noise during minicamp and kind of how the season ended, you know, there is worry that boils over.
“I’ve said this: I think they win the division. I still think they are in the top four in the conference when it comes to Super Bowl contenders.”
That is not to say Orlovsky is without concerns. He mentioned the offensive line as a whole, and the right side in particular, as needing to prove itself, because protecting Josh Allen has to be the franchise’s No. 1 priority. He also questioned how edge rusher Von Miller will look when he rejoins the active roster. Will he resemble the dominant force he has been, or will age start to catch up to the 34-year-old?
Those are legitimate concerns. So, too, is the as-yet-unanswered question of how the team will replace Tremaine Edmunds on defense, and whether the team can tread water if Allen was to miss some time because of an injury.
“That’s a little bit of an unknown, and that might give people some hesitation and reservation to being like, ‘Let’s get on that Buffalo bandwagon,’ ” Orlovsky said. “I still think that this is one of those top four teams, and one of those teams that is built to beat Kansas City, in many ways. … This is a football team that’s really highly regarded. This is a football team that’s been really close. I don’t think people expect them to, like, miss the playoffs. It’s more going about being at their absolute very best when it’s needed the most. In those situations in the division and/or championship playoff games.”
So, Orlovsky is still a believer … even if the current players might prefer otherwise.
“We would rather be under the radar than the other way around,” Allen said. “We don’t really care about anybody’s opinion outside this building, but we’re just trying to work hard and be the best team we can be.
“The less people are talking about us, the better. We’ll talk with our pads on the field.”
