Buffalo Rumblings
Can the Bills break the trend?
Like so many recent campaigns before, the Buffalo Bills enter the 2025 NFL season with the highest of expectations. Fortunately for Buffalo, many of their toughest matchups, including several 2024 playoff teams, will be played at home in Orchard Park, NY.
Although many consider the Bills’ schedule to be favorable for the most part, it includes an early Week 7 bye. Historically, the timing of a team’s bye week has appeared to play a role in their postseason success.
So the question becomes: Does a Week 7 bye help or hurt the Bills’ chances of hoisting the Lombardi Trophy for the 2025 season?
The bye week breakdown
Looking at the last 10 Super Bowl champions, only three teams — the 2024 Eagles (Week 5), 2022 Chiefs (Week 8), and 2015 Broncos (Week 7) — have won it all with a bye week before or at midseason (Week 8 or earlier). Most champions over the last decade benefited from later-in-the-season bye weeks:
In fact, six of the last 10 Super Bowl champions had bye weeks during Week 10 or later, allowing them to rest, reset, and make a strong push through the final stretch of the season.
So, What does this mean for the Buffalo Bills?
A Week 7 bye sits on the borderline — not quite early enough to be concerning, but not late enough to maximize rest for a deep playoff run.
Buffalo will need to follow a similar blueprint as the Eagles, Chiefs, and Broncos did to achieve their success in their respective Super Bowl run seasons. That means staying healthy through the latter half of the season, ensuring proper conditioning, and the ability to rely on veteran leadership to help “teach” the newcomers how to manage both the physical and mental fatigue that comes with such a long second half of the season without a break.
Can the Bills shake the trend?
The good news: With depth at multiple positions, they have the roster to do it. Josh Allen remains one of the league’s most dynamic quarterbacks. The defense might be younger but it still features enough talent to be disruptive. The offensive line has returned and was one of the best units on the field last year.
The Eagles proved last year that an early bye doesn’t doom the Bills Super Bowl hopes, it just means the historical trend isn’t on their side. But Buffalo has a bit of history of their own on their side. They are 30-8 in the regular season...
