Buffalo Rumblings
“Well, then, I guess there’s only one thing left to do,“ Jake Taylor said near the end of the first Major League movie.
“Win the whole [redacted] thing.”
Winning the whole [redacted] thing is the only thing left to do for the Buffalo Bills.
A franchise that has an 83-33 regular-season record since 2019 (only the Kansas City Chiefs have more regular-season wins with 84 in that time) has no love left for those particular accomplishments, because the postseason shortcomings burn so hard. An 8-7 playoff record since 2019 includes more than enough “missed it by that much” moments to make any organization crazy — especially an organization that hasn’t won a league title since 1965 in the old American Football League.
The 2025 season ended for the Bills with a typically agonizing loss in the Divisional Round, this time to the Denver Broncos. The 33-30 overtime loss included enough officiating inconsistencies that went Denver’s way to make one wonder if the Bills were (and are) somehow simply cursed. That loss cost them the opportunity to meet a New England Patriots team in the AFC Championship Game with whom they had split their regular-season series, and there was just as much of a chance that Buffalo could have advanced to Super Bowl LX if everything broke the right way.
Of course, with the Bills, that’s always a loaded prospect.
The offseason ramifications were severe. Head coach Sean McDermott was sent packing, replaced by offensive coordinator Joe Brady. New defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard came from the Broncos by way of Wisconsin and Illinois, where he developed into one of football’s highest-regarded defensive minds.
Now, the 12-5 Bills will try once again to mount the horse that has never been bucked in their case.
“Every year you go through something,” Allen recently told Go Long’s Ty Dunne. “Scottie Scheffler talks about it all the time — the absurdism of ‘Why do I want to win this so badly? What’s the point of going out there and winning?’ Because at the end of the day, you win, and it’s on to the next. You’re just trying to win again. Those emotions that go on, it’s like, ‘Damn it. Every year that’s gone by, we haven’t gotten it done.’ The fire inside of me continues to push and want to get over that hump. No matter how crazy it seems. I want to accomplish something. I’ve set my mind to it, and I want to accomplish it, and I’m going to keep trying until I do.”
With all the Sean McVay-led recent talk about how tight ends can be real weapons as never before in 12 and 13 personnel packages, there’s still room in the NFL for TEs who primarily bring the desire to impose their will on opposing defenders as blockers, as opposed to detached big receivers.
The Bills proved this when they selected Georgia Tech’s Jackson Hawes with the 175th pick in the fifth round of...
