Buffalo Rumblings
Well, Rumblers, it happened. We’ve finally tipped the scales a bit in favor of confidence in this season’s Buffalo Bills team. In fact, the percentage of voters confident in the Bills mere hours before kickoff of their playoff game against the Jacksonville Jaguars is the highest it’s been since Week 10.
You may remember that back in Week 9, Buffalo defeated the Kansas City Chiefs. Voters were riding high and confident the Bills were headed in the right direction. Then the Chiefs lost the arrowheads to their spears and missed the playoffs. Meanwhile, Bills Mafia’s confidence nosedived for five weeks thereafter. Fandom is a fickle thing.
Fast-forward to today, and now 56% of voters are confident the Bills are headed in the right direction. It’s still a surprising figure when you consider their continued playoff ways, and entering the postseason with the NFL’s best rushing attack led by the league leader in rushing yards in James Cook III. It’s not just the Josh Allen show this season, but perhaps that has some folks uneasy. The 2025 season hasn’t looked like other recent campaigns featuring Allen, and much of that is due to the mess at wide receiver. Will it come back to haunt them during elimination play?
As you read on below, you’ll discover that while just over half of voters are confident in Buffalo, a much different percentage of those same voters further surprised us in discussing the Bills’ matchup with the Jaguars.
Here’s what our chart looks like after a season’s worth of data and heading into this afternoon’s playoff game against the Jaguars.
Moving on…
It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider the above results, but almost three quarters of voters (73%) believe the Bills will finally get a win over the Jaguars in the playoffs. Somehow, 17% of fans are more confident Buffalo wins in Jacksonville than they are confident in the direction of the team. Fandom is fickle.
Let’s glance at the results from Big Cat Country (BCC), where fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars mill about. It’s been a pie-in-the-sky season for the Jags, and their fans are similarly content with the team. Entering Sunday’s playoff game, 95% of BCC voters are confident the team is headed in the right direction.
And to think they don’t even have Josh Allen or James Cook.
How confident is Duval County? Well… really confident, even if they struggle to fill their stadium. In predicting the outcome of Sunday’s playoff game, 82% of BCC voters believe the Jaguars will win — 48% leads the way with Jacksonville winning by 7+ points; 34% see the Jags winning by 1-6 points.
Jaguars fans aren’t giving the Bills much of a chance in the playoffs, despite their experience. Just 18% of BCC voters see Buffalo winning.
In national polls, voters have a slightly different outlook on Sunday’s playoff game between the Bills and Jaguars. Results have the Bills as favorites to win in Jacksonville — with 55% of votes...
