NFL Schedule Offers Good News to Buffalo Bills

The Buffalo Bills won 15 games between the regular season and playoffs last season. They came just four points short of defeating the Kansas City Chiefs for the AFC title and the Super Bowl big that would come with it. But one of the reasons they came up short of their goal was their defense.

Specifically, the Bills pass defense was sub-mediocre all season, ranking 24th in yards allowed with 3,843, and touchdowns, letting 23 opposing receivers into the end zone.

While the Bills were somewhat better at stopping the run, they struggled mightily on third downs against either type of offensive play. Opponents converted third downs at a dangerous 43.8 percent rate. Only three teams were worse — the Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons, and Indianapolis Colts.

Bills Pass Defense Gets an Easy Assignment in 2025

Those three teams won a collective 21 games among them, making it all the more remarkable that the Bills put together 62 percent of that win total on their own while also allowing more than four of every 10 third down plays to turn into a first.

It was no surprise, then, that Buffalo focused heavily on defense in the recent draft, using their first four picks on defensive players, led by first-rounder, 30th overall, Maxwell Hairston, a cornerback out of Kentucky.

But the Bills defense will get another boost from the NFL schedule this year. Though the exact order and dates of games will not be made public until 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, their opponents are already known. Based on that information, Locked on Bills podcast host Joe Marino — who has also authored two books about the Bills — created a ratings of each quarterback the Bills will face.

In fact, using his own system to rate all NFL starting quarterbacks, Marino ranked each team by degree of difficulty in the opposing quarterbacks on their schedule. What he found was that the Bills defense will deal with only the 22nd-most difficult — or looked at another way, the 11th-easiest — set of quarterbacks of any team in the league in 2025.

“The Bills face my number two, three, four, five, nine, 13, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28 and 32-ranked quarterbacks,” Marino said on Wednesday’s podcast. That means, according to Marino’s system, the average ranking of a quarterback facing the Bills this year will be 17.41. That ties them with the Green Bay Packers.

Buffalo’s Travel Itinerary — Light

According to Marino, who gives the Bills’ Josh Allen the No. 1 overall quarterback ranking, the toughest QB the Bills will face is Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals. Burrow is the second-ranked quarterback on Marino’s list. Patrick Mahomes of the defending AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs ranks No. 3, and the Bills will face him as well.

Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, Marino’s No. 4 quarterback, also faces the Bills.

According to Total Quarterback Rating numbers, Allen and Jackson tied for overall top-rated QB last year with a rating of 77.3. Burrow was next at 74.7.

The NFL schedule makers have done the Bills another favor. The Bills should be well-rested all season. They play eight road games and nine home games, and no international games.

Based on their opponents, the Bills have the second-lightest travel burden in the NFL, needing to fly only 10,647 miles all season. Only the Bengals travel less distance, at 8,753 miles in the air.

The Los Angeles Chargers drew the most arduous travel itinerary, flying 37,086 miles — including a trip to Brazil to play their September 5 game in Sao Paolo.