Buffalo Rumblings
The thought experiment continues
A common refrain among Bills Mafia during the 2023 NFL season and continuing now is the sentiment that Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott should be replaced. By whom? Many don’t seem to care — with the idea that Josh Allen is a generational talent who creates an “easy button” for a head coach.
That got me thinking. What if we plugged Josh Allen into the underachieving Bills teams of the past? For these editions we do rapid fire of all the years that didn’t get a full article.
This season is a great case study for how much impact one player can have. The seemingly easiest path to the playoffs in 2006 was to chase Kansas City and the six seed. Just two games ahead of the 7-9 Bills, that doesn’t seem like a heavy lift. Could Josh Allen have improved the team by three games? That would allow us to dream about catching the five-seed New York Jets. Let’s check out which games might have been flippable.
Buffalo lost by two to the New England Patriots to open the season. They split the series with the Jets, losing by one score in the defeat. They lost by a field goal to the Detroit Lions. One point to the Indianapolis Colts. A field goal to the San Diego Chargers. One point to the Tennessee Titans. That’s six games where one moment of hero ball changes the outcome, let alone a full game of Allen over J.P. Losman. If the Bills take four of these, which I think is probable, they’re now 11-5 and the five seed.
It’s not unthinkable one of those games is the New England Game. In fact, that’s my prediction, which puts the Pats at the same record. It also gives Buffalo the better division record and the four seed.
That puts New England traveling to Buffalo where I do think the Patriots come out on top. That’ll be my official prediction, but at various times in the playoffs all of the other AFC teams showed vulnerability, as did the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl. This season truly could have been a “punch your ticket and see what happens” year, and I would argue Buffalo was one player away.
This year featured one of the worst offenses we’ve ever seen, paired with a defense that with a label of “bad” is still the obvious strength of the team. When this team lost, they often lost big. Of their nine losses, only four seem reasonable to think even Allen changes. They would need three of those to pull even with Tennessee. In that scenario they do win the conference record tiebreaker.
I’m not sure they pull that off. If they did, Tennessee would have been the only team that I think they would have beaten in the playoffs, and that’s the team they’d have booted to get there. My official prediction is 9-7...
