Buffalo Rumblings
“You are what your record says you are” is one of Bill Parcells’ most famous adages.
While I was never a fan of Parcells’ coaching demeanor, I certainly respect his longevity and success as an NFL head coach.
However, I wholeheartedly do not agree with Parcells’ trademark adage. A lot of people don’t. It’s significantly flawed.
About four years ago, I discovered that regular-season point differential is a much better indication of a team’s strength or lack thereof than its record.
(I am in no way insinuating I’m the first human being to notice this, but inside #NFLTwitter, I had never seen it mentioned as a strong predictor of Super Bowl winners.)
I’ve been tracking it ever since, and here was the tweet at the outset of the 2025-2026 NFL playoffs.
Striking, isn’t it?
And, with the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl in February, that means 10-straight clubs (and 12 of 13) to hoist the Lombardi Trophy have come from within the Top 6 in point different during the regular season. Seattle’s victory over the Patriots also means 10 of the last 13 Super Bowl champs have been in the Top 5 of point differential.
Even though it’s extremely straightforward, it’s certainly one of the strongest predictors of which team will win the Super Bowl in a given season, that’s for sure. Aaron Schatz’s drastically more advanced DVOA is darn good too.
Ironically, the Bills have been incredible in the point-different department since the start of the Sean McDermott era and especially since 2020. Here are their regular-season point-differential ranks over that time frame:
2020: 5th
2021: 1st
2022: 2nd
2023: 4th
2024: 3rd
2025: 5th
So, yeah, the Bills have been inside the coveted Top 6 in each of the last six seasons… without even a Super Bowl appearance to show for it. And they’re the only team to be inside the Top 6 all six of those years. Sheesh.
While I’m going to venture a guess that Terry Pegula did not consult this metric before deciding to fire McDermott following the team’s divisional-round loss to the Broncos, it does perfectly encapsulate Buffalo’s annual regular-season dominance coupled with playoff disappointments that led to his dismissal.
If it seems like I’ve been overly harsh on McDermott, I’ve not attempted to do so. It was time for the Bills to move on, but he was an incredible, culture-altering coach for a franchise that desperately needed an altered culture. The five-straight AFC East titles are probably widely considered the crowning achievement of McDermott’s nine seasons as Buffalo’s head coach. Those individual feats are banner-able.
But part of why the Bills were exceptional and super-consistent in point differential during the McDermott era — they almost never got blown out. I’d like to nominate this as McDermott’s crowning achievement — the McDermott era Bills hold the NFL record for going 43 straight regular season games without losing by more than six points, a record that I genuinely believe could stand for a very long...
