Amid the 2023 NFL season, fans of the Buffalo Bills heckled Miami Dolphins supporters because the divisional foe hadn't beaten teams with a winning record. They surged to a 9-3 record and looked dominant in the process, but then lost three of their last five games. They won one game all season against a team with a winning record, which is part of the reason they gave up the division lead to the Bills late in the year.
Fast forward to the 2024 campaign, and in what is perhaps a cruel twist of fate, Buffalo has an impressive 8-2 record... but it's defeated only one team that has a winning record through 10 weeks of the season. Rival fans have already posed the question, so we'll attempt to answer it: are this year's Bills along the same line as last year's Miami squad?
The Dolphins were blowing folks out last year, winning seven of their 11 games by more than one score. Likewise, of the Bills' eight wins this year, five of them have come by more than one score, and their lone win against a team that currently has a winning record (the Arizona Cardinals in Week 1) came in a contest in which Buffalo had to come from 14 points down to win by six. The correlation between the 2023 Dolphins and the 2024 Bills is eerie, but Buffalo has a four-game stretch coming up (with bouts against the Kansas City Chiefs, San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Rams, and Detroit Lions) that will tell us a great deal about this team.
At 8-2, the Bills are off to their best start since 1993, but as we've made clear, they haven't really played anyone. Their two losses also came against generally agreed-upon AFC contenders in the Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans. Advanced analytics indicate that Buffalo is good regardless, as the Bills rank as one of the top teams in the NFL, but again, it's easy to have good stats when the competition is inferior.
The short answer to the posed question is, no, the Bills' start isn't overrated, and that's largely because of Josh Allen. There are some major concerns along the defensive line given the group's porous run defense and inconsistent pass-rush, and the league's better teams and quarterbacks will make them pay if they can't get adequate pressure. This will come into play over the next four games when Buffalo faces Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purdy, Jared Goff, and Matthew Stafford; the team certainly isn't bereft of concerns, but it's difficult to call any team that has a world-beater such as Allen under center 'overrated.'
We need to see this team get it done against stronger, better teams than what we've seen so far. Yes, they have dominated teams they were expected to dominate, but they also got dominated by the Ravens, and if Houston wideout Nico Collins hadn't gotten injured in Week 5, that game could have been much worse, too. Buffalo’s record doesn’t necessarily indicate that the team is overrated, but it may be perhaps deceiving, as there are genuine concerns one could have about the team. That said, the Bills are talented enough to solve and overcome said issues as the season progresses.
The team’s health on offense figures to improve as the season goes along, and All-Pro linebacker Matt Milano is set to return sooner rather than later. The Bills aren’t overrated, but there are some things to clean up as the postseason approaches. They have a tremendous opportunity to show the rest of the league they're not overrated this Sunday as it hosts the undefeated Chiefs.
