It is really unusual to be at the top of your division in the NFL one year and at the bottom the following.
Something similar would need to happen to a team suffering significant loses to important players, although it has happened before.
Following the cancellation of their Week 17 matchup against the Bills due to Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest event, the Bengals only participated in 16 complete games in 2022.
The Buffalo Bills are the current AFC East division champions, but they have lost a lot, especially to injuries to their receiving corps.
It will be difficult for the Bills to repeat as AFC East winners for four years in a row when they play in the same division as the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets.
It could seem unlikely, but a Bills slide may not be out of the realm of possibility in 2024.
The division’s worst team in 2023, the New England Patriots, made some key acquisitions that could lead them ahead of Buffalo in the AFC East this season.
Here’s why the Buffalo Bills are the most likely team in the NFL to go from first to worst in their division.
If New England could muster 6–7 wins, the Bills could fall under the Pats in the division standings due to their offseason losses on both sides of the ball.
Bills’ 2023 Performance Will Be Hard To Replicate
Buffalo’s performance in the first half of last season could be a sign of things to come.
The Bills were one of the best teams in the AFC at the end of 2023, finishing the season 11-6 and winning a playoff game before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs by a field goal in the Divisional round.
Josh Allen had arguably his most compelling MVP argument to date, posting 4,306 passing yards, 29 passing touchdowns and 15 rushing touchdowns in one of the best campaigns of his career.
Before all of their success at the end of the season, the Bills were just 6-6 entering their Bye Week in Week 13, with losses against the Patriots, Denver Broncos and the Jacksonville Jaguars, all of which Buffalo was favored against.
Before getting hot at the right time, the Bills led many to question if they would even wind up with a winning record by the end of the 2023 season.
Looking back at these performances from Buffalo raises concerns when you see they’ve suffered key losses on both sides of the ball, elevating their chances of starting the 2024 season in an even worse fashion than 2023.
With young teams like New England looking to find their identity early, big wins over division rivals like the Bills could motivate them in games down the stretch, giving them the potential to boot Buffalo to the bottom of the division in 2024.
Bills Losses May Prove Too Much to Overcome
Josh Allen will be forced to do more with less in 2024.
At the height of their powers, the Bills were contenders in the AFC alongside the likes of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals. With Gabe Davis and Stefon Diggs out wide, Allen led one of the most high-powered offenses in the conference.
Defensively, Buffalo had a star-studded secondary with Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer and Tre’Davious White.
Entering training camp of the 2024 season, Buffalo has lost all five of these key Pro Bowl-caliber players. The Bills failed to replace these key contributors, hoping their existing pieces will step into starting roles in 2024, bringing concerns of inexperience to light in the receiving corps, secondary and offensive line.
Asking Allen to lead an offense with a rookie in Keon Coleman as his top option out wide will be tough for the MVP candidate, especially when you factor in the loss of his starting center from last season in Mitch Morse.
Buffalo’s receiving corps will feature Coleman, Curtis Samuel and Khalil Shakur as its projected starting receiving group in 2024.
Earlier this offseason, head coach Sean McDermott made a weird analogy when discussing how the BIlls would need to change their identity on offense a little to continue thriving.
It’s like wearing corduroys. Every couple years, it’s like are corduroys in or are they not? And so… actually you should be wearing them when they’re not in to really be ahead of the curve. Right?
Corduroys aside, with these heavy hits to their roster, Buffalo may have a hard time competing in an AFC East that saw the other three teams get better in the offseason, let alone the AFC conference as a whole.
Read more news on
sportchannel.co.uk
Leave a Reply