Buffalo Rumblings
I can’t believe I almost forgot to do my Buffalo Bills turnover predictions this year! Every year for a good chunk of time, I take a look at the data and predict how the upcoming season will go as it pertains to takeaways and giveaways. Here’s last season’s article.
One of my favorite sayings is that “The only stat that matters is the score, everything else is just context.” That said, one of the most reliable “context” items is turnover differential. This year I have some very bad news for Bills Mafia.
As I love to do for many things, let’s start with a chart. For all of these, the blue line is the year-by-year data for the Bills. Red lines indicate league averages. For the two charts with a black line, that’s a league-based linear trend line to see where things have been going.
Hopefully I predicted something very positive for Buffalo last year, because they sure delivered. With 32 total takeaways (16 interceptions, 16 fumble recoveries) it’s the highest number of takeaways in the Sean McDermott era. Let’s just come out and say it. It’s rarified air.
I predicted a repeat of 30 takeaways in 2024, which, just on the number guessed alone, I did well. To be clear, it’s wild to get 30 takeaways in a single season, so my prediction was a little optimistic if we’re talking league trends. Sean McDermott’s teams don’t care about that though. “Regression to the mean” is a phrase they don’t seem to like a whole lot for this statistic.
That means I can’t in good faith predict a major drop off, but also in good faith can’t predict them going any higher. Teams do achieve higher than 32 on a “not very rare” basis, but you have to go back to 2019 to see anything significantly higher when the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers had 36 and 38 takeaways respectively.
It’s not ideal that there are some injury concerns out of the gate, a key suspension in Michael Hoecht, and some unknowns like the continued health/productivity of Joey Bosa and Tre’Davious White. All told, I’ll predict 28 takeaways during the 2025 regular season.
I mean, this is nuts right? Eight giveaways for the entire regular season is absurdly good. I’m feeling pretty good about my prediction last year because I remember being pretty optimistic about this. I felt we could get a “safe” Josh Allen still playing at a high level. The reigning NFL MVP clearly delivered.
After giving the numerical prediction last season, I said this “which as I’m typing it out seems incredibly optimistic.” The number I gave was 23. Let’s be clear; that would have been a decent jump downward from the previous two seasons. I was not even close to optimistic enough. At least I chose the correct direction.
I would love, love, love to think that there’s any way this is replicable across seasons but this is comfortably...
