CURTIS HENRY
Sports Editor
There is perhaps no team more infuriatingly inconsistent in the National Football League than the Buffalo Bills.
A 5-2 start to the season had the fans singing praises of the team under new head coach Sean McDermott. McDermott was identified — way too quickly — as the franchise’s savior after nearly two decades of frustration and mediocrity.
Then, in a typical Buffalo Bills of the 2000s fashion, it all came crashing down.
Two ugly losses prompted McDermott to bench Tyrod Taylor for Nathan Peterman, the unproven rookie quarterback whom the Bills selected in the fifth round of this year’s NFL Draft. Peterman looked like, well, an unproven rookie quarterback who didn’t belong. He had statistically the second worst quarterback performance in the history of the league since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, and the Bills got promptly blown out by the Los Angeles Chargers by a score of 54-24.
As a 5-5 team with an unsettled quarterback situation and a defense that had given up 100 points in a two-week stretch, the Bills’ season was effectively over heading into a road game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Until it wasn’t.
Buffalo came out looking like the team that began the season 5-2 and is very much alive for a playoff spot in a lackluster AFC. The defense corrected its woes of recent weeks and held Kansas City’s offense to just 10 points. Tyrod Taylor was Tyrod Taylor; not astounding by any statistical measurement, but he took care of the football and was good enough to win if everyone else did their job. In essence, he was the antithesis of what Nathan Peterman was a week prior against Los Angeles.
The outcome is that Buffalo is one of six teams in the AFC with a winning record and still is positioned to qualify for the playoffs as the number six overall seed. The Bills own tiebreakers with the Raiders, Chiefs, Broncos and Jets in the AFC, all of whom are mathematically alive in the playoff race. The remaining schedule is mixed for Buffalo, as the team plays the Patriots twice, the Dolphins twice and the Colts. Even with a presumed two losses to New England, it stands to reason that Buffalo could reach 9-7 with three wins against teams led by Jacoby Brissett and Jay Cutler/ Matt Moore.
A 3-2 finish would not guarantee a playoff spot for Buffalo, but at the bare minimum it would provide them an opportunity to sneak into the playoffs. The AFC is weaker and less consistent this season than any season in recent memory, so despite 2017 being an alleged “rebuilding year” in Buffalo, the team has its best opportunity to break the drought since 2004.
December will be a month to remember for Bills fans. It will go down as either the most impactful month in the team’s recent history, or another disappointing final stretch in a long line of the team’s failures. Regardless, fans shouldn’t worry; the next three weeks will provide fans both some clarity on the team’s immediate future and the opportunity to break more tabl in Orchard Park.
The Bills start a three game homestand this week against the Patriots.