The second quarter of the Buffalo Bills season has brought the team back down to reality.
A potential powerhouse in the NFL? Contender in the AFC? Not exactly. The way things are looking for the Bills, they’re still stuck right in the middle.
After beating a couple of flawed teams that you’d probably also rank in the middle of a power rankings list, or perhaps below the Bills, Buffalo got the job done. Quarterback Josh Allen looked elite and McDermott potentially a Coach of the Year candidate against the likes of those squads.
Instead, a few weeks, Buffalo is not near that area any longer, and unfortunately, the Bills won’t have a chance to change this narrative for a couple of weeks now. Following a 4-2 start, the Bills have two critical games against divisional foes. In Week 7, the Bills travel to the Jets and then have their first game of the season against the Patriots.
Winning those games should be expected.
And kudos to the Bills for doing so against these types of opponents in the past. Good teams win game they’re expected to take. But they also knock off other good teams sometimes, or at least show signs of life against them.
Versus the Titans, the Bills were blown out. Against the Chiefs, it was really more of the same. The final score was 26-17 but Kansas City’s offensive game plan also took tons of time off the clock because of how much they rushed the ball and ate up the clock. It could’ve been much worse.
So now, after those, and during the morning after, the Bills are back to feeling like that Wild Card team that has a clear path to the postseason. A route the team successfully takes, too. But once they get there, they don’t make much noise. That is the Bills we’ve become accustomed to and the Bills we wanted more from.
Of course that’s much better than the playoff-drought Bills, but per The Athletic, Buffalo is 3-15 under McDermott against playoff teams. What’s one way to describe such a program?
A group stuck in the middle, and the Bills won’t have a chance to come out of that hole for another couple of weeks when they face the Seahawks and Cardinals in Weeks 9 and 10, respectively, before their bye week.
Still, no reason to jump off the bandwagon at this time, no matter how much of a bummer the latest development is. A 4-2 record is still a 4-2 record. There’s time to change this narrative surrounding the Bills, even if they lose to both the Seahawks and Cards.
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