The Buffalo Bills are heading to Los Angeles on Monday night coming off a frustrating loss to the New England Patriots. Meanwhile, the Rams are sitting at 2-2, and I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what to make of them after four games.

Los Angeles entered the season with Super Bowl expectations, but injuries, slow starts, and some questionable offensive performances have kept the Rams from looking like the team everyone expected. Of course, they also just pulled off a fourth-quarter comeback against the Philadelphia Eagles, so there’s that.

For this week’s Behind Enemy Lines, I reached out to Evan Craig, staff writer at SB Nation’s Turf Show Times, to get a better understanding of what’s happening with Sean McVay’s team.

We discussed Matthew Stafford’s turnovers, the Rams’ improved secondary, the matchup against Buffalo’s run defense, and the organization’s willingness to take big swings to win championships.

That last topic is particularly interesting to me because of the ongoing debate among Bills fans about Brandon Beane’s approach to building a championship team. The Rams have demonstrated that you can trade premium draft picks, pursue established stars, win a Super Bowl, and still find ways to remain competitive.

Here are seven questions with Evan Craig.

Evan Craig: I think the Rams have the potential to be much better than their record, but at this point in time, I don’t think that they are.

Forget the season-opening loss to the 49ers, which the coaching staff essentially treated as a preseason game given their ridiculously boneheaded decision to travel to Australia a day before the game. Los Angeles has yet to play a complete game this season. They started slow against the Giants in Week 2 before piling it on in the second half against poor Jameis Winston. Then, the following week, they looked great to start things off, taking a 16-0 lead into halftime. Unfortunately, the Rams got outscored 30-10 after the break in a frustrating game.

Finally, against the Eagles, the team stunk it up to high heavens for three quarters until they finally decided that they had enough losing to the Eagles for one lifetime and came back to win 24-20. There have been some good things in each of their games (besides the one against the Whiners — that one just sucked). It’s just a matter of putting it all together.

Injuries have been a major reason LA hasn’t looked like a Super Bowl contender so far. Truthfully, I think some fans might be getting some PTSD from the 2022 season in the early going, considering how many injuries to key players there have been through the first month. Star wideout Puka Nacua has already missed more games in the first few weeks than he did all of last season. Prized offseason acquisition Myles Garrett hasn’t played since the opener. Jaylen Watson, another key offseason addition, suffered an injury that thankfully isn’t expected to be serious. Second-year tight end Terrance Ferguson was placed on IR. Even Aaron Donald has been banged up, though he’s expected to play on Monday. So yeah, it hasn’t been a fun month on that front.

Combine that with the Rams being notorious for slow starts under Sean McVay, and you get this stomach-churning rollercoaster of a season to date.

While I do expect this team to “get its act together” once many of its key pieces return, I have to caution fans that maybe this team isn’t the unstoppable force many projected it to be entering the season. Even then, I still think they can be very good, and that will be enough in the NFC.

The best teams in the conference reside in the NFC West, as other potential playoff hopefuls like the Eagles, Packers, Lions and Buccaneers have really declined, so there shouldn’t be many obstacles outside their division in the way if the Rams wind up making a late-season surge. Still, this is the NFL, so crazy things could happen, as LA nearly found out against the Panthers in last year’s playoffs.

Evan Craig: Man, that was quite a comeback on Sunday, wasn’t it? Matthew Stafford helped save the Rams’ season, though he also tried to end it prematurely with two bad interceptions against the Eagles. His play also contributed to the collapse against the Broncos a couple weeks ago.

Stafford can clearly still sling it, as you said. However, his decision-making this season hasn’t been as crisp as it was during last year’s MVP campaign. Through four games, he has nearly as many picks (6) as he did all of last season (8). It’s like we’re seeing more of his gunslinging, hero-ball style of play returning compared to the efficient field general he was in 2025.

And we should’ve seen this coming, considering Stafford is coming off a season where he had the NFL’s best interception luck. According to PFF, Stafford threw 21 turnover-worthy passes across 716 dropbacks, yet finished with just nine interceptions, a total which includes the playoffs. The dam was bound to break eventually, and it’s contributed to some of LA’s misfortunes this season.

Despite that, nothing’s really changed about how Sean McVay is using him. Only, Stafford’s been forced to pass way too much in the last two games, so the offense has been extremely unbalanced.

The veteran has thrown an insane 106 times to the team’s 48 runs. I’m no math whiz, but that’s less than a 50/50 distribution, and it made zero sense. The Broncos and Eagles have leaky run defenses, and LA has a great one-two punch at running back.

It doesn’t make sense to steer away from something that was working and put more on Stafford’s plate. Yes, he’s fully capable of it, but he shouldn’t have to do it all.

Evan Craig: After failing to invest much in the secondary since Jalen Ramsey was shipped out of town, the Rams doubled-dipped at corners from the Chiefs. First, LA traded for Trent McDuffie and later signed Jaylen Watson in free agency.

McDuffie has been spectacular in coverage, since Pro Football Reference says he’s allowed just a 22.5 passer rating in coverage four games into his Rams career. He keeps up this stellar play, and he’ll easily be earning All-Pro honors yet again this season. Already he’s made the most of the monster extension the team signed him to upon his arrival.

Los Angeles also re-signed safeties Kamren Curl and Quentin Lake, who have been wise investments. Okay, forget Lake was absolutely Mossed by the Eagles’ Darius Cooper on Sunday. I can’t find the link to the clip because it’s, ahem … broken. Don’t you dare YouTube it! Anyway, Curl and Lake have been good players for the Rams, and they were rightfully rewarded for their efforts.

One player who deserves more attention is cornerback Josh Wallace, who’s filled in for Watson while he was out with an injury. Wallace was called for a controversial pass interference call against the Broncos, which eventually helped Denver steal the win.

While he was the scapegoat in that one, he played much better in Philly. It helped that the Eagles were short-handed at wideout, but still. Watson is trending to be back this week. If the Rams experience any other injuries or Watson isn’t ready to return, Wallace will be the guy to step up.

Evan Craig: I don’t know how many times this has to be screamed at the TV, but Sean McVay’s team struggles to get off to fast starts.

Maybe this should be expected, since the Rams aren’t generally quick starters under McVay, especially as of late. Slow starts and playing complete games were an issue at the start of last season as well before LA went on a seven-game winning streak from Weeks 6-12. It’s just a bit of a problem that’s resurfaced again.

Through the first four weeks, the Rams have scored just two touchdowns in the first quarter. That’s not great, Bob … er, Joe.

Overall, they’re much better once they get out of the quarter and have actually outscored their opponents 47-33 in the first half. If they could start just a tad quicker, beginning with the Bills coming to town, it would not only show they mean business, but it could lessen the possibility for hiccups later in the game.

Evan Craig: McVay has to be salivating over his run game against the Bills’ lackluster run defense. Kyren Williams and Blake Corum should have a field day against Buffalo, if McVay opts to run the ball more than he has the last two weeks.

Williams and Corum have combined for an average of 114 rushing yards through the first four games. The Bills have allowed 116 rushing yards a game, which is about middle of the pack in the league.

Buffalo has also given up over 120 rushing yards in three of their four games. The only reason their average isn’t worse is because they gave up just 66 yards on the ground to the Lions, but Detroit was forced to pass considering they fell behind early and had to try their best to keep up with Josh Allen.

Otherwise, their run D isn’t anything the Rams coach should be losing sleep over.

So needless to say, I love the dynamic duo’s chances against this defense, as long as there’s no Jokers to interfere.

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Evan Craig: Many fans think the Rams are reckless and don’t care about the future, which couldn’t be further from the truth. A great way to describe them is that they’re calculatedly reckless — there’s a slight difference.

Their short-term goal is obviously winning the Super Bowl. However, they do still care about the future, and this offseason proved it.

The front office first invested in upgrading the secondary with the McDuffie trade and then signing Watson. Those were much-needed fixes to issues that plagued the team last season. Then, in the draft, the Rams selected Stafford’s future successor: Ty Simpson.

Fans actually cried the blues after the draft, thinking the team hadn’t done enough to return to the Super Bowl. Well, the Myles Garrett trade in June quieted most fans still upset over the Simpson pick.

The Simpson selection showed the NFL that yes, the Rams will hand out draft picks like Halloween candy a lot of the time, but they understand things will come crashing back down to earth soon enough, so it’s better to get ahead of the curve now, not later.

Also, when LA didn’t have many early-round picks, particularly in the first round, they hit on many players in later rounds. They had no choice but to hit on many of their late-round picks.

Players like Puka Nacua, Kyren Williams, Byron Young and Kobie Turner were all taken in the third round or later. Each of them has helped the Rams return to contention after the season from hell that was 2022.

The organization didn’t need to rebuild because they trusted their scouts’ belief in each of those guys, and they’ve been rewarded with three straight playoff trips, getting one round deeper in each of those appearances.

Evan Craig: I think teams can try to imitate the Rams, but an exact carbon copy won’t happen, of course. LA has made some trades over the years that would’ve been ballsy even in Madden!

Even when trades or signings fail to pan out, which hasn’t happened much in the Les Snead-Sean McVay era, the team hasn’t stopped cutting its losses and trying again.

That is the main reason that aggressive approach has worked so well. The front office is simply unafraid, and you can’t say that about any other team in the league.

There have been instances in the last few years of teams that have tried LA’s method, including the Packers’ move for Micah Parsons, a blockbuster stunner I never would’ve expected from them of all teams. Usually though, if teams try to copy the Rams, it’s more of a one-off, and then they return to reloading picks.

While many teams prioritize or stockpile first-round picks, the Rams were trading them away.

This is certainly not an approach for the faint of heart, as again, first-rounders and other draft picks are gold to most teams, so they fear dealing them when the Rams don’t.

That fearless mindset will continue if the Snead-McVay brain trust has their way, even if the Garrett trade or other offseason moves blow up in their faces.

Needless to say, being in contention and making a playoff appearance year after year is great and all, but sometimes taking a big swing is worth it to try and get over the hump.

If it doesn’t work out, that shouldn’t discourage anyone from doing it again, even if it causes pain in the short term.

Pain is temporary, but the scars from a missed opportunity are forever.

A big thank you to Evan Craig of SB Nation’s Turf Show Times for taking the time to answer these questions and provide some insight into the Rams.

You can read more of Evan’s work through his personal website, which includes links to his Turf Show Times articles and other writing.

The Bills are heading to Los Angeles for Monday Night Football, and this is one of those games where I think the opponent is a little harder to figure out than its record.

The Rams are 2-2, Buffalo is 3-1, and both teams are coming off completely different kinds of Week 4 games. Buffalo lost 29-26 to New England, while Los Angeles came back to beat Philadelphia 24-20. The Rams haven’t necessarily looked dominant for four straight weeks, but there are enough things on this roster that concern me, especially with Puka Nacua back and a defense that has been much better than I expected.

So here are four things I’m looking at with the Rams, a few advanced numbers that stood out to me, and then three completely random Bills-Rams games that I still remember.

Four Things to Know About the Rams

1. Puka is back, and that changes everything

This feels like the biggest thing to me.

Puka Nacua missed the previous two games with an injury and then came back against Philadelphia and basically picked up where he left off. He finished with nine catches for 125 yards and also scored a rushing touchdown. When Nacua is on the field, Matthew Stafford has that guy he trusts when everything else around him starts breaking down.

That worries me against this Bills defense because Buffalo has had stretches where the pass rush gets home, but quarterbacks still find answers. Stafford has been doing this forever. If Buffalo shows him exactly what it is doing before the snap and Puka has one-on-one opportunities underneath, Stafford is going to take those throws all night.

The Bills don’t necessarily have to completely erase Nacua because very few teams do. They just can’t let him turn third-and-7 into eight yards over and over again.

2. The Rams defense might actually be the bigger concern

When I think Sean McVay and the Rams, I automatically think offense. That might not be the biggest story with this team right now.

Los Angeles held Jalen Hurts to 93 passing yards Sunday and Philadelphia went an absolutely ridiculous 0-for-12 on third down. The Rams also stopped three of Philadelphia’s four fourth-down attempts, including a fourth-and-goal from the two-yard line.

They were extremely aggressive doing it. Los Angeles blitzed Hurts on 60.6 percent of his dropbacks, its highest blitz rate in a game under Chris Shula, and generated pressure on 13 of those 18 blitzes.

That makes the Josh Allen part of this game fascinating.

Do the Rams try that against Josh? Because blitzing Josh Allen can also become a very dangerous game when he recognizes it, escapes it and suddenly there are fewer defenders behind the rush.

3. Don’t sleep on the Rams running game

Kyren Williams is still really good, but this isn’t just him anymore.

Through four games, Williams has 294 rushing yards on 54 carries, while Blake Corum has added 162 yards on 33 carries. That’s 456 yards from those two backs alone, and Los Angeles is getting consistent yardage before contact from both of them.

This matters because the worst possible situation against McVay and Stafford is constantly giving them second-and-5.

Now the whole offense is available. They can run it again, use play action, move Stafford, attack the middle of the field or take a shot.

Buffalo needs to make this offense play from behind the chains. If the Rams can run it on first down all night, I don’t like that matchup nearly as much.

4. Matthew Stafford is still Matthew Stafford

Stafford is 38 years old now, which sounds completely insane to me because I still think of him as the young quarterback on those terrible Lions teams.

He’s also still willing to throw the football down the field.

Through four games, Stafford has attempted 162 passes, and his average intended air yards is 9.4 yards per attempt. He hasn’t just become a dink-and-dunk veteran quarterback trying to survive.

The interesting part is that Stafford hasn’t faced a ton of pressure so far. Pro Football Reference has him pressured on only 17.4 percent of his dropbacks through its latest advanced-stat update.

That’s where Buffalo has to change the game.

If Stafford can stand there clean, eventually somebody is going to get open. If Buffalo can make him move, especially without having to constantly send six guys, that’s where I think the Bills can force some mistakes.

5. Random box score stats between Bills and Rams

Five Advanced Nerdy Rams Numbers

60.6% — Blitz rate against Philadelphia

This is the craziest number I found.

The Rams blitzed Jalen Hurts on 60.6 percent of his dropbacks Sunday. Even more impressive, they generated pressure on 65 percent of those blitzes. A

I don’t know if they are going to try that against Josh Allen because that’s a completely different challenge, but this is clearly a defense that isn’t afraid to bring people.

If I’m Buffalo, I’m preparing all week for pressure.

0-for-12 — Philadelphia on third down

I don’t care who you’re playing, holding an NFL offense to zero conversions on 12 third downs is ridiculous.

The Rams kept Philadelphia from extending drives and then also went 3-for-4 stopping them on fourth down.

This might be where Buffalo’s offensive line becomes the biggest part of the game.

Give Josh time and I think there will be plays. Let Los Angeles consistently create third-and-long, and suddenly you’re playing exactly the type of game the Rams want.

582 — passing yards allowed

The Rams have allowed just 582 passing yards through four games, which puts their pass defense near the top of the NFL. They held Philadelphia to just 68 net passing yards Sunday.

That’s going to make the Josh Allen matchup a really good measuring stick.

Buffalo hasn’t played many games during the Josh era where I’m saying the opponent’s pass defense might actually be the strength of the matchup.

This could be one of them.

Rams Defense vs. Tight Ends

Through four games this season, the Rams have allowed 264 receiving yards to tight ends, averaging 66 yards per game, with two touchdowns surrendered. Over their last three games, opposing tight ends have recorded at least 67 receiving yards each time. This could be an opportunity for Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox to make an impact against Los Angeles.

Rams Defensive EPA Per Play

The Rams rank third in the NFL in defensive EPA per play at -0.132. They are also allowing just 4.18 yards per play, the second-best mark in the league. Despite their struggles against tight ends, Los Angeles has one of the NFL’s most efficient defenses. Josh Allen and Joe Brady will need to find favorable matchups rather than rely on explosive plays.

The Last Time These Teams Met: The 44-42 Insanity

The last time the Bills played the Rams was December 8, 2024 in Los Angeles, and that game still annoys me because Buffalo scored 42 points and somehow spent most of the afternoon chasing the Rams.

Josh Allen was ridiculous. He accounted for 424 total yards and six touchdowns — three passing and three rushing — becoming the first player in NFL regular-season history to do that in the same game. Buffalo scored on six of its nine possessions, and once the offense got rolling, Los Angeles basically couldn’t stop it.

And they still lost 44-42.

This is also one of the games I think about whenever we have the larger Sean McDermott/Joe Brady conversation about how much Buffalo wants to run the football.

Because I remember coming away from that game pissed off at McDermott as he complained that the Bills didn’t run the football enough. The Bills had just scored 42 points. Josh Allen was doing completely insane Josh Allen things. The offense was not the reason they lost the game.

The defense was.

The Bills only had the football once all day while trailing by fewer than seven points after the opening stages of the game, because the defense could never create the stop that allowed the offense to actually catch up.

And this is where I think you can find some ammo for the theory that McDermott naturally wanted Joe Brady’s offense to remain more run-oriented.

If Josh Allen is on fire, let him be on fire.

Three Random Bills-Rams Memories

October 16, 1989 — Who the hell is Frank Reich?

This is probably my first real Bills-Rams memory, and I was a kid.

It was Monday Night Football. The game started at 9:00, which already felt like the middle of the night when you’re nine years old, and the Rams came into Rich Stadium undefeated at 5-0. Jim Kelly wasn’t playing, and instead Buffalo was starting some backup quarterback named Frank Reich.

My memory of it is basically that nobody thought the Bills were winning this game.

I certainly didn’t.

Los Angeles was undefeated, Jim Everett was the quarterback, they had Flipper Anderson and Henry Ellard, and Buffalo had this guy Reich making his first NFL start.

The Rams led 10-6 going into the fourth quarter, and then everything got nuts.

Buffalo eventually went ahead 16-13 on a one-yard touchdown pass from Reich to Thurman Thomas. Then after the Bills fumbled after trying to run out the clock, Jim Everett hit Flipper Anderson for a 78-yard touchdown, and now the Rams were back ahead 20-16.

Game over, right?

Nope.

Reich took Buffalo back down the field and hit Andre Reed for an eight-yard touchdown with 16 seconds left. Bills win, 23-20.

And this was years before the Houston comeback.

Before Frank Reich became synonymous with the biggest comeback in NFL history, he was already doing Frank Reich stuff on Monday Night Football against an undefeated Rams team.

September 6, 1992 — Thurman scores four, Lofton makes history and Steve Tasker kills somebody

Buffalo won 40-7 at Rich Stadium. Thurman Thomas scored four touchdowns, rushing for three and catching another from Jim Kelly. He finished with 103 rushing yards, and Buffalo was up 27-7 by halftime.

This was peak Bills football.

They had already been to two straight Super Bowls, everybody knew who they were, and sometimes they would just run somebody out of the stadium.

But the thing I always remember about this game is James Lofton.

Lofton entered the game chasing Steve Largent’s all-time NFL receiving yardage record, and he finally broke it on what might have been one of the most boring record-breaking plays ever.

A four-yard catch.

That’s it.

Buffalo is destroying the Rams, Lofton catches a little four-yard pass late in the game, and suddenly he becomes the NFL’s all-time leader in receiving yards.

Four yards. Not gonna lie…kind of weak record breaking if you ask me. Reminds me of when Reed became the 2nd in NFL history in catches and was pissed off because they threw screen passes at him in the final moments of his last regular season game in Buffalo.

And then there is Steve Tasker.

Whenever you see any type of footage of Tasker on ESPN or NFL films, the hit on Vernon Turner is like the 2nd clip they show. You’ve definitely seen it.

The other story point was this Chuck Knox was coming back to Buffalo to coach against his former team. Hey, welcome back! Here’s 40. The defeat was the worst loss Knox had in 19 years. I don’t know how Bills fans think of Knox in terms of sticking the middle finger up to Ralph and quitting as this was before my time. Also, is Knox the only ex-Bills head coach to face Buffalo while coaching 2 different teams? Someone Google if the Bills faced Mularkey with the Jags and Titans.

So that game had Thurman scoring four touchdowns, James Lofton becoming the NFL’s all-time receiving leader and Steve Tasker trying to take somebody’s head off.

Pretty good season opener.

October 9, 2016 — The Tyrod-Rex Bills go into Los Angeles

This one feels like it happened about 40 years ago even though it really wasn’t that long ago.

Rex Ryan was coaching the Bills.

Tyrod Taylor was the quarterback.

LeSean McCoy was the running back.

Jeff Fisher was coaching the Rams.

And the Rams had just returned to Los Angeles.

Jared Goff had already been drafted first overall, which is probably why I remembered him being involved in this game, but he wasn’t starting yet. Case Keenum was the quarterback.

Buffalo went into the Coliseum and won 30-19.

And Shady was awesome.

McCoy rushed for 150-plus yards, while Tyrod only threw for 124. This was a very Rex Ryan-era Bills victory. Run the ball, play defense, make enough plays at quarterback and try not to screw anything up.

The biggest play came from Nickell Robey-Coleman. This was a year after Robey decided to add Coleman to his last name. So this isn’t the Nickell Robey game…it is the Nickell Robey-Coleman game..

With the game tied 16-16 in the third quarter, Robey-Coleman jumped a Case Keenum pass and took it 41 yards for a touchdown. Buffalo suddenly led 23-16. The Rams kicked another field goal to make it 23-19, but they eventually tried a fake punt that went nowhere.

Buffalo took over, Shady ripped off another big run, and Tyrod hit Marquise Goodwin for a six-yard touchdown to put it away.

Bills win, 30-19.

Of course, while looking through the archives, Jerry Sullivan who had a giant man crush on Fitzpatrick but had a never-ending hard on against Tyrod Taylor, decided to take out his red pen.

Such a random snapshot of that era.

Rex Ryan. Tyrod Taylor. Case Keenum. Jeff Fisher. Nickell Robey-Coleman. The Coliseum.

And somehow it was only ten years ago.

That’s what I like about doing these Rams memories because there really isn’t some massive Bills-Rams rivalry.

There isn’t one defining playoff game or decades of hatred between the teams.

Instead, you get these completely random little snapshots of Bills history.

You get nine-year-old me staying up for Monday Night Football wondering who the hell Frank Reich was.

You get Thurman Thomas scoring four touchdowns while James Lofton quietly becomes the NFL’s all-time receiving leader and Steve Tasker tries to kill a punt returner.

Then you jump ahead 24 years and somehow Rex Ryan and Tyrod Taylor are beating Jeff Fisher and Case Keenum at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Now it’s Josh Allen, Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay on Monday night.

Different era.

Same two teams.

And hopefully one more random Bills-Rams game worth remembering….but I don’t think it will be.

PREDICTION

There are certain Bills players who, when you think back on them, almost feel bigger than they actually were.

Kiko Alonso is definitely one of those guys.

The year was 2013, and the Bills had gone what felt like a decade without having a defense that was legitimately exciting. There had been good players here and there, but not a unit where you could look at the numbers and say, yeah, this defense is actually really good. Then Mike Pettine arrived, the Bills set a franchise record with 57 sacks, and right in the middle of everything was this rookie linebacker from Oregon named Kiko Alonso.

Kiko was everywhere.

He was a little unconventional for what you pictured when you thought of a middle linebacker, he flew around the field, and more importantly, he made splash plays. In 16 games as a rookie, Alonso had 159 tackles, four interceptions and two sacks. He finished third in the NFL in tackles and finished second in Defensive Rookie of the Year voting.

I remember being at the Bills-Ravens game that season because I had won tickets, and Alonso made one of those plays that immediately becomes part of the mythology around a young player.

He had two interceptions of Joe Flacco that afternoon, including that ridiculous fingertip interception late in the game.

I remember watching it and thinking the same thing almost everybody else was probably thinking.

The Bills struck gold.

This guy was going to be a stud for years.

And Bills fans absolutely loved Kiko. There were Kiko jerseys everywhere, the “Legend of Kiko Alonso” basically became its own thing, and yes, there was even that infamous parking-lot story involving what someone was supposedly willing to do for a Kiko jersey.

It sounds ridiculous now, but that was Kiko Mania.

Then came the summer of 2014.

I remember sitting on my cousin’s couch looking at my phone when the news came across Twitter that Kiko had blown out his ACL. I always remembered it as happening around OTAs, but it was actually July 1 during a personal workout in Oregon.

It was heartbreaking.

Maybe that sounds dramatic when we’re talking about a linebacker getting hurt, but if you lived through that era of Bills football, you know exactly what I mean. It just felt like another #BecauseItsBuffalo moment.

Something finally went completely right, and before we even got Year 2 of it, something went wrong.

Alonso missed the entire 2014 season.

The funny thing is the Bills defense didn’t miss a beat. It actually got better under Jim Schwartz, and that became important because suddenly Buffalo had to ask whether Kiko Alonso was really indispensable.

Then came one of the wildest trades of that entire era.

The way I remember Jim Monos telling the story on his podcast with Ty Dunne, there was a group that included Monos, Doug Whaley, Rex Ryan and Terry Pegula together on a boat, having some drinks, when the possibility came up that Philadelphia wanted Kiko Alonso.

And the return was LeSean McCoy.

Straight up.

Kiko for Shady.

Looking back now, it seems laughably one-sided.

McCoy became one of the faces of the Bills, made three straight Pro Bowls in Buffalo and gave them several excellent seasons, while Alonso never became the star we thought he was going to become.

But I can tell you right now that I had second thoughts about it at the time.

McCoy was already 26 and played running back, which is a position where you’re always wondering how much tread is left on the tires. Kiko was only 24 and had already had this incredible rookie season, so part of me thought, are the Bills really trading away a potential defensive star who hasn’t even reached his prime yet for an older running back?

I was wrong.

Alonso played 11 games in Philadelphia in 2015, then went to Miami and eventually New Orleans. He had productive stretches, but the player everybody imagined after 2013 never really came back.

And injuries kept following him.

After missing all 16 games in 2014 because of the ACL, Alonso played only 11 games in 2015. He missed another game in 2016, one in 2018 and three in 2019, then another ACL injury at the end of the 2019 season essentially wiped out 2020 as well. In the six regular seasons in which Alonso actually appeared in an NFL game, he played 86 games, and that doesn’t even include the entire 2014 season he lost or his lost 2020 season while trying to come back from the second ACL.

His career didn’t disappear overnight.

It slowly got chipped away.

And one of my lasting memories of the later version of Kiko is actually Josh Allen making him look completely helpless in space during Allen’s rookie season.

That’s pretty much where the Kiko Alonso story ended for me.

Which brings me to Terrel Bernard.

Because lately I keep thinking the same thing.

Have we already seen this movie?

The measurements aren’t identical, but the profile feels eerily similar.

Alonso was listed at 6-foot-3 and 239 pounds. Bernard is 6-foot-1 and 224. Bernard was actually the smaller player, which made the questions about whether he could hold up physically in the middle of an NFL defense even louder.

When Buffalo drafted Bernard in the third round in 2022, this wasn’t one of those picks where everybody immediately said Brandon Beane had found his next star linebacker.

There were questions.

He was small.

Could he hold up?

Was he really going to be a three-down NFL linebacker?

Then Tremaine Edmunds left.

Edmunds was a solid, good player for Buffalo, and I actually think history has probably been a little kinder to him than Bills Twitter was at the time. But the criticism of Edmunds was almost always the same.

Where were the splash plays?

Then Bernard took over in 2023 and seemingly did nothing but make splash plays.

He had 143 tackles, 6.5 sacks, three interceptions and two fumble recoveries while starting all 17 games.

And this is where the Kiko comparison starts getting a little weird.

Kiko Alonso in 2013:

159 tackles.
4 interceptions.
2 sacks.

Terrel Bernard in 2023:

143 tackles.
3 interceptions.
6.5 sacks.

Different players, different defenses and obviously different eras, but the feeling was almost exactly the same.

Who the hell is this guy, and how did the Bills find him?

Neither guy entered the league with the expectation that he was going to immediately become the centerpiece of Buffalo’s defense.

Then suddenly he was.

And then came the injuries.

Bernard played all 17 regular-season games during his breakout 2023 season, but hurt his ankle in the playoff win over Pittsburgh and couldn’t play the following week against Kansas City.

Then in 2024 he played only 13 games.

He missed time with a pectoral injury, then dealt with an ankle injury and later a quad issue.

In 2025 it got worse.

Bernard appeared in only 12 of Buffalo’s 17 regular-season games. There were ankle problems, an elbow injury that cost him games and then a calf injury late in the year. That calf injury also kept him out of Buffalo’s Wild Card playoff game.

So since becoming Buffalo’s starting middle linebacker in 2023, Bernard has already missed nine regular-season games because of the physical issues that have accumulated over the last two seasons, plus multiple postseason opportunities affected by injury.

That is the part of the comparison that bothers me.

In 2023, Bernard played every regular-season game.

In 2024, he played 13.

In 2025, he played 12.

So far in 2026 he’s played all four, but when I watch him, I don’t feel like I’m watching the same guy I watched in 2023.

Maybe that’s unfair.

Maybe it’s scheme.

Maybe he’s still feeling the accumulation of all those injuries.

Maybe it’s just what happens when you’re a 224-pound middle linebacker repeatedly taking on NFL offensive linemen.

Maybe I’m Mr. Boxscore Scout.

Hell, maybe it’s the jersey change.

But the splash plays aren’t showing up at the same rate.

Through four games this season, Bernard has 29 tackles, a pass defended, a fumble recovery, no sacks and no interceptions.

And that’s where I keep coming back to Kiko.

Kiko’s rookie season was the best season of his career.

Bernard’s 2023 season, through three years as a starter, is still very clearly the best season of his career and he never started before that season.

Kiko arrived unexpectedly, made splash plays immediately, became a fan favorite and looked like Buffalo had found its linebacker for the next decade.

Bernard arrived unexpectedly, made splash plays immediately, became the quarterback of the defense and looked like Buffalo had found its linebacker for the next decade.

Then both started getting hurt.

Now, I don’t want to make the comparison unfair to Bernard.

Kiko’s injury history was much more catastrophic. He tore his ACL twice, lost an entire season immediately after his rookie year and eventually had his career essentially derailed by his body.

Bernard isn’t there.

Not even close.

He’s 27 years old, he’s still starting, and he has plenty of football left if he can stay healthy.

But that’s really what has me thinking about this.

When Kiko Alonso exploded onto the scene in 2013, I didn’t think we were watching the best version of Kiko Alonso.

I thought we were watching the beginning.

When Terrel Bernard exploded onto the scene ten years later, I thought the exact same thing.

Maybe Bernard turns this around, stays healthy and five years from now this comparison looks completely stupid.

I hope it does.

But Bills fans have seen the undersized, instinctive, splash-play linebacker who arrives out of nowhere, becomes a star almost immediately and then starts losing games and explosiveness because his body won’t cooperate.

His name was Kiko Alonso.

And right now, Terrel Bernard is beginning to remind me an awful lot of him.

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The Bills are going to Los Angeles on Monday night, and I have to believe Brandon Beane is at least a little annoyed about it. The Rams represent a team-building philosophy he has warned against, and they also happen to be the team that fans like me keep pointing toward whenever we’re frustrated with Buffalo’s approach. That combination feels tailor-made for a guy who, in my opinion, has some of the biggest rabbit ears in the NFL.

Back in April 2023, Beane talked about avoiding the kind of teardown that comes when a team can no longer carry its expensive roster. “We’re trying not to do that, we want to be competitive every single year,” he said. He never mentioned the Rams by name, and maybe he wasn’t specifically taking a shot at them, but coverage at the time certainly connected those dots. Los Angeles was coming off a miserable season after winning the Super Bowl, and its aggressive approach had become a convenient cautionary tale.

The part that always got me was that the cautionary tale included winning the fucking Super Bowl. I understand there were consequences, and I understand nobody wants to spend years digging out of a hole, but you can’t discuss what the Rams sacrificed without discussing what they actually got for it. They took their swings, won a championship, and gave their fans something they could keep forever. I imagine a few people in Buffalo would take that deal.

And that’s why Monday night feels like Brandon Beane’s personal Super Bowl. One regular-season game won’t settle which front office has the better philosophy, but I’d bet Beane understands exactly what this particular opponent represents to the people questioning him.

Beane has done some great things, and I don’t have to pretend otherwise to criticize him. He drafted Josh Allen, helped build a roster that brought Buffalo back into contention, and has made moves that deserve credit. He has also said things that I think are complete bullshit, and sometimes his explanations sound more like a defense of his decisions than an honest accounting of why they haven’t worked. Both things can be true, even if every discussion about him eventually turns into an argument about whether you’re sufficiently grateful.

And the irony is that the Rams were part of what helped build the whole “Big Baller Beane” persona in the first place, when he sent Sammy Watkins to Los Angeles in a deal that brought back a second-round pick. That was controversial at the time, and I wasn’t a fan of it, but it ended up being an incredible deal for Buffalo, and Beane deserves credit for that. So there’s something funny about looking back at a trade with the Rams as an example of the bold decision-making we celebrated, and now looking at those same Rams with envy because we want Buffalo to show more of that nerve.

And the man hears the criticism.

We’ve seen the public defensiveness, and there’s also the PFF podcast account about him being angry with their grading and allegedly threatening to pull business from the company. My impression is that he’s far more aware of what fans, media members and assorted idiots like me are saying than he would probably like us to believe. So I have a hard time imagining he has somehow missed all the Rams envy.

Because that’s what it is, and I have no problem admitting it.

I know I’ve said this before, because I’ve tweeted some version of “be like the Rams” numerous times, and I’m hardly the only Bills fan who feels that way. Then you see Myles Garrett go there, and your reaction is basically, “What the fuck, how do they keep doing this?” I want to be the fan celebrating that move instead of sitting around explaining why my team couldn’t make it. We can debate the cost and the contracts all day, but the Rams keep giving fans like me a reason to look at Buffalo and ask why we can’t have that, too.

They appeal to the Madden player in all of us, because they’re willing to trade picks and make the kind of move that has you immediately picturing what Sundays could look like. Obviously, running an actual franchise is more complicated than pressing a button on your controller, but I don’t think fans need that lecture every time they want their team to pursue somebody great. We know there’s a cost, and sometimes we’re saying we think the player is worth it.

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And I’m sorry to peel back another layer of annoying Brandon Beane explanations, but hearing Josh Allen’s contract brought up as a reason to be careful gets old.

Beane explicitly connected paying Allen with the danger of becoming too top-heavy, while explaining his reluctance to take a one-year, all-or-nothing approach. I understand the accounting behind that, but having Josh Allen is also the best argument for doing everything you can to improve the team around him.

Meanwhile, Matthew Stafford isn’t exactly playing for a gift card, and the Rams still find ways to pursue players who make you stop scrolling. Their circumstances aren’t identical to Buffalo’s, and nobody is suggesting every contract can be copied and pasted, but that doesn’t make the comparison meaningless. When one team keeps finding ways to do the things you’re told are difficult, eventually you start questioning the explanations.

The Rams have had to reset, and pretending they’ve never dealt with the downside of their decisions would make this argument too easy to dismiss. They’ve also shown a willingness to change direction and take another swing, which is what I admire. I don’t need a general manager to promise there will never be a difficult offseason, but I would like to feel that avoiding one isn’t becoming more important than maximizing the opportunity we already have.

And Buffalo has had that opportunity for a long time. Every season with Allen gives us another chance, but it also uses up another year of his career, and I think that’s where a lot of the impatience comes from. Fans aren’t asking for a reckless move just so they can win an argument on the internet, although I’m sure some of us would enjoy that part. We want the move that might finally make the difference.

I also know Beane has taken swings, which is why the question can’t simply be whether he’s willing to spend money or trade a pick. The question is whether he’s making the right bets, and whether all the talk about sustainability has delivered enough when the games matter most. Being consistently good has value, but it shouldn’t make the people asking for more sound unreasonable.

So when the Bills go to Los Angeles, I’ll be watching the football game, and I’ll also be thinking about all those arguments we’ve had over the years. Beane will have a chance to see his roster beat the team that fans like me keep holding up as an example, and I suspect that would feel pretty satisfying to him. He’ll probably go on Pat MagaFee’s show to pound his chest out and talk how great everything is while Pat’s peanut gallery will hoot and go oooooooo when he says something that’s borderline arrogant.

And if the Rams win, he probably won’t need to open X to know what we’re saying, because we’ve been saying it for years.

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As I woke up Monday morning to take Andy to school, I did what I always do: checked X to see what was going on. A clip from WGR’s morning show came across my feed asking whether the Bills have a little bit of a Josh Allen problem in the final two minutes. I didn’t look at the mentions, but I’m going to assume they weren’t pretty. Or who knows? Maybe everyone had a thoughtful discussion and wished each other a wonderful Monday.

On this site, I like to operate under the philosophy that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. There might be a stupid answer, and I’ve probably supplied a few of those over the years, but asking the question is fair game. I also like going down wormholes, which is why this piece is called ‘The Wormhole.’ Something catches my attention, I start looking into it, and suddenly I’m digging through play-by-play logs when I should probably be doing something else. This morning, the question was whether there’s actually anything to this Josh Allen discussion.

As an NFL Primetime mark, I always think of that old saying Berman used to say: once is a mistake, twice is a trend, three times we have a problem. I don’t know where Allen falls on that scale in these situations, which is why I wanted to look. There have been some epic moments, and there have been endings that make you want to stare at the ceiling for an hour. Sometimes he’s delivered what should have been the winning score, only for the defense to give it back. Sometimes he’s had the ball with a chance to save the day and hasn’t gotten it done.

So I widened the question from the final two minutes to the final three and included overtime. Going back to the 2020 season, including the playoffs, how has Allen performed when the Bills were tied or trailing by one to seven points before the snap? And how do those numbers compare with Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff, Jalen Hurts and Matthew Stafford? I wanted to see what the numbers said before deciding what the story was. Down the wormhole we go.

Before we go year by year, here are the rules: three minutes or less remaining in the fourth quarter, plus all of overtime, with Buffalo tied or trailing by one to seven points before the snap. Postseason games are grouped under the season they belonged to. These are Allen’s numbers only in those situations, not his full-game stats. Eight-point deficits, two-point attempts and plays wiped out by penalties don’t qualify. Spikes and kneel-downs count, and the cutoff is October 4, 2026.

2020: Two late touchdown drives, two very different endings

Rams: Allen threw the winning touchdown to Tyler Kroft with 15 seconds remaining. Buffalo needed him to rescue a game after letting a huge lead disappear, and he did.

Arizona: Allen threw the go-ahead touchdown to Stefon Diggs with 34 seconds left. Then the Hail Murray happened, which is your first reminder that a loss in this chart doesn’t automatically mean Allen failed.

That’s a pretty good opening chapter. He completed 73.3% of his passes in this sample, threw two touchdowns without an interception and put Buffalo ahead late in both games. The Bills won one of them. If you’re using the record alone to judge the quarterback, you’ve already lost part of the story.

2021: The record looks worse than the quarterback

Tennessee: Allen went 4-for-5 for 70 yards in the window, moving Buffalo into scoring position. The fourth-down sneak came up short.

Jacksonville: He completed four passes for 41 yards, but the final possession ended without points. A sack helped derail the drive.

New England: The wind game ended with three qualifying incompletions and no winning score. This one belongs in the missed-opportunity pile.

Tampa Bay: Allen helped Buffalo get the tying field goal and force overtime. The overtime possession produced no points before Tampa Bay won.

Kansas City, playoffs: Two touchdown passes in the final two minutes, including the go-ahead score with 13 seconds left. He never touched the ball in overtime.

The Bills went 0–5 in these games, but Allen had a 99.3 passer rating in the situations we’re measuring. That doesn’t erase Jacksonville or New England. It does make lumping those games together with “13 seconds” pretty ridiculous. There were failed finishes, there was a drive that forced overtime, and there was a playoff performance that should have been enough.

2022: Productive late, with an overtime blemish

Miami, first meeting: Allen went 4-for-9 in the window, and Buffalo couldn’t finish either late opportunity with the points it needed. The final completion came with too little time left to get another play off.

Baltimore: Three completions on three attempts helped position Buffalo for the winning field goal. The seven rushing yards include kneel-downs used to manage the clock.

Kansas City: Allen contributed 43 passing yards and 14 rushing yards in the window. The touchdown pass to Dawson Knox delivered the winning score.

Jets: A holding penalty erased a completion, and Allen was strip-sacked on the final drive. Buffalo recovered the fumble but couldn’t produce the tying points.

Minnesota: Allen helped force overtime, then threw the interception that ended it. His earlier goal-line fumble is excluded here because Buffalo was leading before that snap.

Detroit: A touchdown pass to Diggs put Buffalo ahead, and another completion to Diggs helped set up the winning field goal after Detroit tied it. Allen also added 12 rushing yards.

Miami, second meeting: The qualifying passing line was only 0-for-1. Buffalo still won on a field goal, with runs and a defensive pass-interference penalty doing much of the late work.

This is another season where the quarterback’s passing line and the final result don’t always tell the same story. Allen’s best work in this window included wins over Kansas City and Detroit. Against Minnesota, he did enough to extend the game and then made the throw that ended it. Miami in December is the opposite kind of reminder: you can win without producing a pretty passing line.

2023: The passing efficiency starts to drop

Jets: Allen helped Buffalo reach the tying field goal, but the offense went nowhere in overtime. The Jets won on the punt return.

Jacksonville: Only one Allen pass qualifies, on the desperate final possession. That tiny sample doesn’t capture the larger comeback attempt because plays while down more than seven are excluded.

New England: Allen ran for a go-ahead touchdown before the Patriots answered. His final scramble ended with a lost fumble.

Denver: His six-yard touchdown run put Buffalo ahead. Denver subsequently won on a field goal.

Philadelphia: Allen threw a go-ahead touchdown late in regulation and helped produce a field goal in overtime. Philadelphia answered with the winning touchdown.

Kansas City: Allen was 1-for-4 for one yard in the qualifying window. Buffalo got the field goal it needed and held on.

Chargers: He completed both qualifying passes for 26 yards. Buffalo finished with the winning field goal.

Kansas City, playoffs: Allen’s two qualifying passes were incomplete. The possession ended with the missed tying field goal.

Now there’s something worth discussing beyond the record. Allen completed fewer than half his passes in this season’s sample, although his two rushing touchdowns matter when you’re evaluating the entire performance. Buffalo also lost three games here after he supplied a late go-ahead touchdown: New England, Denver and Philadelphia. You can question the passing efficiency and still acknowledge that he gave his team chances to win.

2024: The smallest sample, and the ugliest passing line

Houston: Three incompletions on Buffalo’s final possession gave the ball back. Houston won with a field goal.

Miami: Allen’s line includes a spike, and penalties helped Buffalo advance. Tyler Bass finished the job with the 61-yard winner.

Kansas City, playoffs: Allen’s 13-yard scramble contributed to the final possession, but he completed only one of four qualifying passes. The fourth-down throw to Dalton Kincaid fell incomplete.

Three completions for 16 yards is ugly however you arrange the columns. It’s also 14 attempts spread across three games, so I’m not using it to explain an entire MVP season. But if the question is whether there have been stretches when the late passing production hasn’t been good enough, here’s one. The Miami win doesn’t magically make that passing line better.

2025: Some big completions, some painful endings

Baltimore: Allen completed all four qualifying passes for 71 yards. His zero net rushing yards include kneel-downs.

New England: He completed one of four qualifying attempts for 13 yards. Buffalo couldn’t get the late answer it needed.

Houston: Allen produced 70 passing yards in the window but also took two sacks. The interception ended the final opportunity.

Philadelphia: He contributed 68 passing yards and a rushing touchdown. The unsuccessful two-point attempt is separate from these statistics.

Jacksonville, playoffs: Four completions on four attempts, plus 12 rushing yards and the winning rushing touchdown. This is one of the cleanest finishes in the entire sample.

Denver, playoffs: Allen helped Buffalo get the tying field goal before regulation expired. His overtime interception ended Buffalo’s possession, and Denver eventually kicked the winner.

The zero in the passing-touchdown column needs the rushing column next to it. Allen scored on the ground against Philadelphia and Jacksonville, and those touchdowns count just as much on the scoreboard. Still, the Houston and Denver interceptions were costly. This season contains both the kind of finish you want from your franchise quarterback and the kind that keeps the argument going.

2026: Two qualifying games, two different answers

Houston: Allen completed four of five passes for 82 yards in the window. The touchdown to Joshua Palmer delivered the winning score.

New England: A completion to Kincaid and a scramble preceded the interception intended for Palmer. An incompletion erased by an illegal-contact penalty does not count as an attempt.

This is where the Monday-morning conversation started. Against New England, you can’t make that YOLO throw into double coverage when a field goal can tie the game. But Houston is also sitting right there, three weeks earlier, with a winning touchdown drive. Seven attempts aren’t enough to establish a season-long trend, even if the most recent one makes you want to throw your phone.

Next up beyond the shameless promotions section is how Josh Allen does by comparison to the best in today’s league..

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Where Allen ranks against the other quarterbacks

Using the exact same conditions for everyone, here’s the passing comparison.

Allen ranks sixth in passer rating among these seven quarterbacks. That’s a real finding, but passer rating leaves out a pretty significant part of his game. Here’s the rest of the comparison.

Allen leads this group in rushing touchdowns and has taken fewer sacks than everyone except Goff. Burrow has the best passer rating but an 8–19–1 team record in the qualifying games. That alone should make you careful about calling this a quarterback win-loss statistic. We’re looking at individual production inside games whose outcomes depend on plenty of other people.

The overtime difference

Then there’s the overtime split, which sent me down another hallway in this wormhole.

In regulation’s final three minutes, Allen has a better passer rating than Mahomes in this particular sample. Add overtime, and they switch places. Allen is 8-for-19 for 56 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions in qualifying overtime situations; Mahomes is 41-for-56 for 483 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. Those are different-sized samples, but the difference in production is substantial. And remember: the Kansas City playoff loss after “13 seconds” contributes no overtime attempts to Allen’s line because he never got the ball.

And then more galaxy brain stuff…

Including the playoffs, Allen is 0-7 in Overtime games. The last time the Bills won an OT game was 2017 in the snow game against the Colts.

So was the question worth asking? Absolutely. Allen’s late passing efficiency has had some rough stretches, particularly from 2023 through 2025, and his overtime numbers here are poor.

There have also been winning drives, rushing touchdowns and losses after he put Buffalo ahead. After going through the games, I’m more interested in why the production varies so much than in slapping “clutch” or “choker” on the whole thing.

1

Do The Bills Care About The Smart Marks of Bills Mafia?

As you guys know, I’m someone who loves bringing the Bills and football into the WWE world, because weirdly enough, there are a lot of parallels.

One of the biggest WWE tropes you hear all the time is that they don’t book the show for the Internet fans. They don’t care what the hardcore wrestling message boards are saying, what wrestling Twitter is complaining about, or what the so-called “Internet marks” think about every storyline. Their obsession has always been the casual fan, the person flipping through channels, somebody who maybe watches WrestleMania every year but isn’t sitting there breaking down a random Monday Night Raw in October.

I would view smart marks for wrestling, not just as those who spend money on WWE, but as people who know everything about the behind the scenes drama. The underground punk scene before it got commercialized.

And the logic is pretty simple. The hardcore fans are probably going to be there anyway. You can piss them off, ignore them, make fun of them, whatever, and most of them are still watching next week. So WWE spends a lot more energy trying to grab the person who isn’t already completely invested, because that’s how you grow the audience.

And in a weird way, I sometimes think that’s how the Bills operate.

The Bills know the diehards aren’t going anywhere. The people who have spent their entire lives watching this team, buying tickets, buying jerseys, sitting in traffic in Orchard Park, arguing about the backup left guard in June, those people are locked in. You can annoy them, make something inconvenient, charge them more, give them a corporate answer they hate, and chances are they’re still going to be watching Sunday.

So sometimes it feels like the organization is much more interested in the fan they’re still trying to win over than the fan who has already given them 30 or 40 years.

And from a business perspective, I understand it. You don’t grow by only selling to the same people forever. You want the casual fan. You want younger fans. You want somebody who doesn’t know who Steve Tasker is to suddenly care about the Bills.

But WWE has also learned this lesson the hard way over the years: just because your hardcore audience probably isn’t leaving doesn’t mean you should treat them like they don’t matter.

Because eventually there’s a difference between knowing somebody is loyal and taking advantage of that loyalty.

And at times, I probably have to admit that I fall into the hardcore sicko category myself. When I’m writing this site, I have a tendency to write for the extreme hardcore smart mark Bills fan, the person who notices every little thing, reads every story, follows every account and gets pissed off about shit that probably never even registers for most people.

I mention that because I have text threads with Bills fans I’ve grown up with, people who I know love this team, and you know how many of them have brought up the water policy, the arrogance of the Bills stadium Twitter account, obstructed seats, or the fact that the new stadium won’t have a grass field?

Zero.

Not one.

They’re Bills fans, but they aren’t the smart marks of the Bills universe. They’re probably much closer to the casual fan WWE is always talking about. They watch the games, they want the Bills to win, they might buy a jersey or go to a game, but they aren’t spending Tuesday afternoon reading about whether somebody in Section 436 is staring at a fucking concrete pillar.

They also don’t care that the old Aud Club, which was actually super busy, is being replaced by a fucking Michelob Ultra bar that looks like it was built on the set of Back to the Future Part II when Marty goes into the future.

I care about that stuff. A lot of you reading this probably care about that stuff. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the average Bills fan does.

And you can see the same thing with how the Bills approach media.

They seem way more interested in getting Pat McAfee or Bussin’ With The Boys to amplify Bills talking points than they are in having somebody from the organization go on your favorite local podcast and talk directly to the people who obsess over this team every single day.

Again, from a business standpoint, I understand it. McAfee has a gigantic audience. Bussin’ With The Boys has national reach. If your goal is to grow the Bills brand beyond Western New York and beyond the same group of sickos who already know who the sixth defensive tackle is, those are obviously attractive places to go.

But it’s the exact same WWE philosophy.

Why spend all your energy catering to the smart marks when the smart marks are already watching?

WWE has operated the same way forever. They don’t give a shit what Dave Meltzer thinks. They’re not sitting around worried about whether the hardcore wrestling press gave the show three stars or four and a quarter.

But if you’re some terrible comedian with a national podcast and a huge audience? Get ready for comps.

That’s the audience they want. Not necessarily the person who knows every wrestler on NXT or can tell you why a match finish from six months ago made no sense. They want the person who can put WWE in front of a few hundred thousand people who might not otherwise be watching.

The Bills feel very similar sometimes. Your favorite local Bills podcast could spend 365 days a year talking about the team, know the roster inside and out, and have an audience full of people who actually buy tickets and merchandise. But if a national show with a much bigger platform comes calling, that’s where the attention goes.

It’s not really about who knows the product best. It’s about who can put the product in front of the most new eyeballs.

And that brings me back to something I noticed last week.

I saw some people on Bills X annoyed with how much Brad Riter and Tim Graham were talking about the water story. And Bills X is probably the closest thing we have to a focus group for the hardcore fan base, although I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.

Because I kept thinking about the person who isn’t on Twitter all day.

Imagine some Bills fan getting in their car, turning on the radio, hearing 20 minutes about water bottles at the new stadium and thinking, “What the fuck are these guys talking about?”

They didn’t spend the previous 48 hours watching people argue about it on X. They didn’t see every reply. They didn’t read every quote-tweet. They have no idea that this became the outrage of the day.

And the response from people like me will always be, “Well, people want to know what’s happening. Everyone is pissed off about this. Look at social media.”

But that’s where the rub lies.

Is social media actually an accurate representation of what Bills fans want to talk about?

Or are we just listening to the smart marks?

Because wrestling has dealt with this exact question forever. The loudest people online can make something feel like the biggest issue in the world, but then you walk outside that bubble and realize millions of people consuming the product have absolutely no idea the controversy even exists.

That doesn’t mean the water story isn’t worth covering. It doesn’t mean obstructed seats aren’t worth covering. It doesn’t mean fans shouldn’t be pissed when they feel like they’re being treated like an ATM.

But maybe we should stop pretending that whatever Bills Twitter is furious about at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning automatically represents what Bills fans as a whole care about.

Maybe Bills X isn’t the audience.

Maybe Bills X is the smart marks section of the audience.

And if that’s true, suddenly a lot of the decisions the Bills make — who they talk to, what media they prioritize, what complaints they respond to and which ones they basically shrug at — start making a lot more sense.

The uncomfortable part is that I’m probably one of those smart marks too. And if you’re reading this column, there’s a decent chance you are too.

Buffalo viral moment of the week

The headline definitely got a lot of people on X very excited about the possibility of Jessica Pegula eventually running the Bills. And I get it. Of Terry Pegula’s kids, she’s obviously the most recognizable because she’s spent years as one of the best tennis players in the world.

• Laura Pegula, who is Terry’s daughter from a previous marriage, has basically been a Marvel Easter egg in every Bills or Sabres embedded series. By all accounts, she’s replaced Kim or at least is helping Terry more.

• Matt Pegula pops up in the draft room every once in a while, and whenever the Bills release some terrible hat that looks like somebody spilled semen or some mysterious liquid all over it, I personally just assume Matt had something to do with it.

• Kelly Pegula has also been around the organization publicly at different points, dated the third-string tight end, and used to post party photos that made me wish I was young again and getting shitfaced.

Jessica is the one everybody knows.

What was more interesting to me, though, was how whimsical Jessica sounded about the whole thing. She said it would be exciting if she got to help with the organization one day and that she always thought she’d stay in the sports world when her tennis career was over.

That’s not exactly, “I’m being groomed to take over the Buffalo Bills.” It sounds more like, “Yeah, maybe that would be cool someday.” Maybe she’s just being coy. Maybe there’s a detailed succession plan sitting in Terry Pegula’s desk somewhere. But based on what she actually said, there’s still a giant gap between wanting to be involved and being the person running the franchise.

And then there’s the Taylor Gahagen part of this that I think is really interesting. Jessica’s husband didn’t just marry into the Pegula family. He worked inside Pegula Sports and Entertainment for nearly a decade, starting in 2013 and eventually holding jobs including Director of Brand Strategy and Development and Director of Corporate Development. He was literally listed in Bills media guides as part of the Pegula Sports & Entertainment staff. Then he left in 2023, right around the time PSE itself was being dissolved and reorganized.

Maybe I’m reading this incorrectly, but when Tim Graham wrote about the transition in 2024 to where Laura Pegula was getting a percentage of the Bills, the timeline of events from Jessie releasing a piece on what happened to her mom to power/money being transferred to her step-sister, and then her husband getting canned was quite timely in a “here’s your receipt”

Maybe there’s absolutely nothing to that. Companies reorganize, people leave, and he has gone on to work in investment and wealth management. But when we’re suddenly talking about Jessica someday helping run the Bills, I don’t think it’s crazy to wonder about it. It’s another piece of a succession puzzle that, from the outside, still feels pretty murky.

I also wonder about the relationship between Jessica and Terry. During so much of her tennis career, it felt like Terry was constantly popping up in the box or there were photos of them together. You don’t seem to see nearly as much of that anymore and I can’t recall the last time she was at a Bills game. And yes, she’s a tennis star and Terry has said he tries to get to her matches, but she’s been playing tennis since the Pegulas bought the team and she was definitely walking the sidelines before games.

Again, that proves absolutely nothing, and I’m not going to turn fewer public photos into some family conspiracy. But combined with Taylor leaving the organization and Jessica talking about the Bills like something she hopes she might be involved with someday, it makes me wonder what the actual conversations inside that family look like.

And I already know the response from some Pegula flunky is going to be, “OF COURSE TERRY HAS A PLAN. HE’S A BILLIONAIRE. HE’S NOT STUPID.”

Okay.

You know who else was a billionaire? Jerry Buss and Pat Bowlen. Two owners who were pretty damn good at owning professional sports teams, and their franchises still went through complicated succession fights after they were gone. Being rich and successful does not automatically mean your kids are all going to agree on who gets the keys.

That’s really the part of this story I find fascinating. Laura already has an ownership stake and Jessica now says she’d like to help someday and reportedly doesn’t want the family selling the teams. But who is actually the lead dog if the Bills stay in the family? Jessica? Laura? Matt? Some combination of them? Do they hire somebody outside the family to actually run the business while they retain ownership? We have no idea.

And as uncomfortable as people get whenever succession comes up, Terry Pegula is 75 years old. Eventually this becomes a real question.

Maybe everything is mapped out perfectly behind closed doors.

Or maybe someday we’re getting the Western New York version of Succession, except instead of Waystar Royco everybody is fighting over who gets Terry’s seat in the Bills draft room.

Stathead of the day: 18.2%

Since the start of last season and including the playoffs, the Bills are 2 of 11 on two point conversions for a success rate of 18.2%. It is the 3rd worst rate percentage in the league over that time. Strangely enough they were pretty good at it from 2020-2024.

Dad shots

—Pat Moran told me I went too easy on Max Hairston in my recap. He was awful and then seeing this tweet made me more furious

Ugh. Come on! Better effort. Then he decided to storm out of the locker room and beat traffic or go the Parker Brothers tailgate. Normally, I wouldn’t care if an athlete left the locker room without talking to the press. I’ve explained why plenty of times: A lot of the questions aren’t great, the answers rarely tell us anything we don’t already know, and the whole thing can feel rushed as we are trying to get out of there. If Josh Allen or James Cook had a rough game and decided they didn’t want to talk afterward, I could shrug and say, “OK, shit happens.” They’ve built up enough goodwill with me to get that kind of leeway.

But when your résumé is basically that one time you kept up with Worthy against the Chiefs, getting hurt, and changing your number to 1—which I actually think looks cool—you don’t get that same latitude. You haven’t done enough on the field for me to shrug off what you do afterward.

—I knew the Sabres/Blue Jackets had all the makings of a bad Sabres opener. Andy was legitimately excited to watch hockey and lost interest about five minutes in, which honestly might make him the smartest person in the house.

By the time we got to bedtime — me back in my usual spot laying on the floor waiting for him to fall asleep — the Sabres were down 3-1 and Sabres social media was already ready to exile UPL from Western New York.

The power play remains an issue, which has basically been an issue since Moses wore short pants. Buffalo went 0-for-5, including somehow getting nothing out of a FULL TWO-MINUTE 5-on-3. That almost feels harder to do than scoring.

And because I need to find something positive before Game 2, Owen Power had two assists, becoming just the third Sabres defenseman since 1990-91 to have multiple assists in a season opener.

Andy checked out after five minutes. Maybe next game I should follow his lead.

—I did not watch the home opener. But they won. Hooray.

—The Bills are spending a lot less time with the football this season. Through four games, Buffalo ranks 22nd in offensive plays per game (59.5) and 29th in time of possession (28:06).

Last year, they ranked fifth in plays per game (64.3) and led the NFL in possession. That’s nearly five fewer offensive snaps per game for Josh Allen and company. Obviously you can point to the Bills are moving the ball on chunk plays or that the Bills defense can’t get off the field for reason for this stat. Four games don’t define a season, but going from controlling the clock to sitting near the bottom of the league is a pretty noticeable change.

—So I found a loophole to watch the MSG broadcast in Buffalo, which means I also get all the local commercials and TV spots. Honestly, that might be half the fun.

I got a kick out of Dwayne Carter carrying what I can only describe as Temu Mahomes into a McDonald’s to get his free Big Mac. Then I stumbled onto some Bills show with Maddy Glab and Chris Brown. I don’t have much to say about the actual content outside of a pretty aggressive ball-washing segment about the art in the new stadium, but I do have one question:

Why the fuck do teams insist on putting their broadcasters in team gear?

It looks stupid.

This isn’t even about objectivity or pretending team-employed broadcasters are independent journalists. My eyes have just been trained by decades of watching sports television to expect the people on the desk to look like they’re working. Suit. Tie. Jacket. Something resembling television.

The Sabres crew still dresses like they’re broadcasting a professional sporting event. Meanwhile, the Bills crew looks like they’re five minutes away from handing out Jägerbombs at a charity golf tournament in smedium Nike polos.

And I know this has become normal across sports. Teams want everything branded. The desk is branded. The microphones are branded. The backdrop is branded. Apparently the human beings now also have to dress like they work the pro shop.

But it makes the entire production look cheaper.

Chris Brown does not need to wear a Bills polo for me to remember I’m watching Bills programming. I figured it out from the giant Bills logos, the Bills highlights, the Bills studio and the fact that everyone has been discussing the Bills for 28 straight minutes.

Dress like broadcasters.

End team gear on television.

—There aren’t many broadcasters I can think of who had a bigger rise and harder fall strictly from a content standpoint than Tony Romo.

And now, on Friday, CBS and Romo officially agreed to part ways after nine years together. Go back to 2017. Romo was fucking great. The guy felt ahead of his time. He wasn’t waiting until after the play to tell you what happened. He was looking at the formation, identifying what the defense was doing and basically saying, “Here’s what’s coming.”

And then it would happen.

There was a stretch where watching Romo felt like getting access to the quarterback meeting room. That version of him was legitimately fascinating television.

Then somewhere along the way, it disappeared.

There have been a million theories about why. Did he stop studying as much? Did CBS tell him to stop predicting plays because it stepped on the broadcast? Did he just get comfortable after getting the gigantic contract? I have no idea, and unless somebody involved actually tells the full story, neither does anyone else.

But the difference was noticeable.

The guy who originally sounded like he had watched 30 hours of film before kickoff eventually became the guy making noises, laughing with Nantz and yelling “Ehhhhhh, Jim!” while Twitter tried to figure out what the hell he was talking about.

The only comparison I can really think of is Joey Styles.

When Joey started in ECW, he was incredible, different, loud, and was emotional. He felt like he belonged to that product because the entire presentation was built around letting Joey Styles be Joey Styles.

Then he gets to WWE and it just wasn’t the same. He was reportedly told to tone down some of the yelling and adapt to a much more controlled television environment, and once you start sanding down the things that made somebody unique, sometimes you’re just left with another announcer.

That’s what Romo eventually felt like.

2017 Romo felt completely different from everybody else doing NFL television.

Then, little by little, the things that made him different seemed to disappear.

And whether that was Romo, CBS or some combination of both, I’ll always find it fascinating because for a little while Tony Romo looked like he was going to change football broadcasting.

Then somehow Tony Romo stopped broadcasting like Tony Romo.

—Please give my niece Sofia a follow at @fianixtattoos!

If you’re looking to get some tattoo work done, she’s an incredibly talented artist and definitely worth checking out. She’ll also be doing some original artwork for the Joe from Queens site, which I’m really excited about.

Go show her some love and give her a follow!

—AEW completely fumbled the Acclaim. I don’t know what happened in terms of separating them, but they were hilarious and had “it”.

—I guess I’m supposed to have a take about whichever goon or tough guy decided to pick a fight with Metsa and the Sabres didn’t do dick about it. I swear, we have this discussion once a year, where the hockey boomer dads of America demand retaliation because of “the code” — which, at this point, really should be an actual book — while the rest of us uncivilized hockey fans apparently just don’t understand.

And I guess you know where I’m leaning.

1999 Joe would’ve wanted blood. Somebody hits your guy, you send somebody out there to beat the shit out of him. Message sent. Honor restored. The code has been satisfied.

2026 Joe is a reformed father of two who mostly wants the power play to fucking work. If somebody takes a cheap shot, make them pay for it. Score on the power play. Win the game. I’m not sure I need somebody getting five minutes for fighting just so we can all agree afterward that the Sabres “stood up for each other.”

Maybe this is maturity. Maybe I’ve gone soft.

Or maybe the best retaliation in hockey is finally having a power play that scares somebody.

—Memo to young broadcasters, media people, politicians or basically anyone who thinks there’s even a 1% chance they might become publicly known someday:

Delete your damn Twitter account before you get famous.

The Trail Blazers just hired Braiden Bell as their new TV play-by-play voice and then fired him hours later after old tweets resurfaced from 2012 and 2013, when he was around 15 years old. You work your entire career to land an NBA play-by-play job, get announced, probably have every relative you’ve ever met texting congratulations and before dinner, you’re fired because somebody scrolled back 14 years.

And that’s why I don’t understand why anyone keeps the same social media account they had as a teenager.

I am pretty positive that if you had Twitter, Instagram or Facebook at 15, you posted some terrible shit. Maybe not career-ending shit. Maybe just embarrassing, stupid, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny teenage shit. But probably something you don’t need sitting there forever waiting for somebody to discover it the second you get a big job.

There is zero historical value in preserving 40,000 tweets from sophomore year.

Delete it. Start a new account.

Leave your teenage opinions, awful jokes, subtweets, drunk pictures and whatever else you thought was hilarious buried in the same place as your old AIM screen name.

You do not need the engagement history that badly.

And apparently your future employer might eventually go looking anyway.

—-“We are fucked as a television industry” might still be an understatement.

Paramount swallowing Warner Bros. means another massive chunk of television, film and news is being consolidated under one roof. CBS News and CNN are about to have the same owner. HBO, Warner Bros., Paramount, CBS — all of it gets pulled closer together.

And if you work in television, you already know what comes next.

“Synergy.”

“Efficiency.”

“Streamlining.”

All corporate words that usually translate to: a lot of people are about to lose their jobs. Paramount is talking about billions of dollars in cost savings from this merger. You don’t find billions by changing the brand of coffee in the break room. You find it by eliminating departments, combining staffs, closing offices and telling five people that the job they used to do is now being handled by two.

And then there’s the news side of this.

Having fewer and fewer incredibly wealthy people controlling more and more of the places Americans get their news should make everyone uncomfortable regardless of your politics. That doesn’t automatically mean somebody is going to sit in a control room and dictate every story, but ownership matters. Who hires the executives matters. Who controls the budgets matters. Who decides which shows survive matters.

And of course all of this is happening weeks before an election, because apparently our media industry needed one more completely normal development.

I feel for everyone working at these companies because television has already spent years cutting jobs, shrinking staffs and asking everyone left behind to do three jobs.

Now a gigantic merger arrives promising billions more in savings.

So congratulations to everyone who survives.

You’ll probably get a terrible new supervisor, twice as much work and a mandatory town hall explaining how exciting this all is.

—As we get closer to election season, here’s something I would actually like to hear a politician in New York run on: fix Paid Family Leave for freelancers. For anyone who doesn’t know how New York Paid Family Leave works, the benefit itself is pretty damn good. You can get up to 12 weeks at 67% of your average weekly wage, with the maximum benefit in 2026 at a little over $1,200 a week. The problem is getting eligible for it in the first place.

If you work 20 hours or more a week, you generally have to work 26 consecutive weeks for the same employer.

That sounds perfectly reasonable if you work a normal full-time job where you stay with one company for years. It makes absolutely no fucking sense for television production.

Almost the entire production world is freelance. You get hired on a show for three months, four months, maybe six months if you get lucky. The show ends, your employment ends, and then you go find another show with another production company.

So I could work 13 straight weeks for one company, finish that show on Friday, start another 13-week job somewhere else on Monday and work 26 consecutive weeks without missing a paycheck.

And according to the system, that basically doesn’t count.

Why?

Because I changed employers.

That’s ridiculous.

I got Paid Family Leave when Andy was born by the skin of my teeth. I happened to work for the same company for about 27 weeks across three different projects. I barely made the cutoff.

Luke comes along and now I don’t qualify.

Not because I wasn’t working. Not because I wasn’t paying taxes. Not because I took six months off. Because my industry moves people from production company to production company every few months.

And television isn’t the only business where people work like this anymore.

If the entire point of Paid Family Leave is that parents should be able to spend time with a newborn without deciding between bonding with their kid and paying the electric bill, then eligibility should reflect how people actually work in 2026.

Make it 26 weeks of covered employment in New York during the previous 39 weeks. Let workers carry their eligibility from one covered employer to another. Figure out some version that doesn’t punish people simply because their industry operates on contracts.

Kathy Hochul, state legislators, whoever wants to put this on the agenda… there you go.

I don’t care what party fixes it.

Freelancers have kids too.

And telling somebody they can work six straight months, contribute to the system and still not qualify because their paycheck came from two different production companies is fucking malarkey.

Fix it.

—Moving Andy into the big-boy bed was actually a success. He loves his new bunk bed, where eventually Luke will sleep on the top bunk, or, more realistically, the two of them will have their own Royal Rumble to determine who gets it.

Of course, I’m still sleeping on the stupid floor until further notice, or at least until Andy falls asleep. So really, he got upgraded to a bunk bed and my sleeping situation somehow stayed exactly the same.

Then came Night 2 of the Big Boy Bed Era, when Andy fell out of bed.

So now I’ve surrounded the thing with pillows, jackets and then some more pillows, basically turning his bedroom into one giant toddler crash pad. This is where we officially enter the “be careful what you wish for” portion of parenting.

There has been one positive development: Andy has finally moved on from making me read his dorky science books every night. Unfortunately, they’ve been replaced by a Daniel Tiger audiobook that reads eight different books.

At first, this seemed great. Less work for Dad.

Except Andy refuses to follow along with the correct book. The narrator will be halfway through Daniel Goes to the Dentist while Andy is sitting there intensely studying the potty book like everything is perfectly normal.

Technically, bedtime is easier now. Somehow it also makes me feel like a worse parent because I’m basically outsourcing story time to Daniel Tiger while lying on the floor surrounded by jackets.

I’m not asking for much here.

I just want this kid to eventually pick up a Bills book or a Star Wars book so I can feel like I’ve accomplished something as a father.

—Thanks for reading and supporting Joe from Queens. If you enjoy the work, consider pledging or contributing through Venmo. Every bit helps me turn this into more of a business than a hobby. Have a good rest of the week and please don’t beep your horn at any cars.

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The Bills lost 29-26 to the Patriots, but the part that bothered me most wasn’t necessarily the loss.

It was how familiar the whole thing felt.

For three weeks we talked about balance. Sustainability. A different version of Josh Allen and an offense that didn’t require Superman every Sunday. A team that seemed to have moved beyond some of the maddening things we spent years attaching to Sean McDermott.

Then New England came to Buffalo and suddenly it felt like we got back in a Time Machine.

Was it the defense that couldn’t get off the field? Was it the offense disappearing for long stretches? Was it the garbage playcalling? Was it the WR screens? Was it the receivers? Was it Josh Allen eventually deciding he had to fix everything himself?

If we’re going to use three good weeks as proof that everything is different, then we also have to acknowledge when one bad Sunday looks exactly the same.

And maybe there’s a bigger point buried in there.

Maybe some of what we spent years calling a “bad McDermott game” was really just football. Sometimes a defense can’t get the stop. Sometimes an offensive coordinator calls three plays that make everyone scream at the television. Sometimes your quarterback starts pressing. Sometimes your first-round tight end disappears and your left tackle has a shitty afternoon.

That doesn’t absolve anybody.

It just means the Bills somehow changed the conversation and still recreated one of the greatest hits.

THE BAD: THREE-AND-OUT CITY

This might be my favorite stat for explaining how different Buffalo’s offense looked Sunday.

The Bills entered the game having gone three-and-out one time all season.

One.

New England forced three three-and-outs in one game.

So the Patriots forced Buffalo into three times as many three-and-outs Sunday as Houston, Detroit and the Chargers did combined.

The last time Buffalo had at least three three-and-outs in one game was October 13, 2025 at Atlanta, when the Bills had four of them in a 24-14 loss.

That’s not just an offense being a little off.

That’s an offense that had been excellent at sustaining possessions suddenly unable to stay on the field.

THE BAD: THE THIRD QUARTER FROM HELL

Nothing illustrated that better than the third quarter.

Buffalo had:

8 net passing yards.
11 rushing yards.
19 total yards.
1 first down.
0 points.

Nineteen yards in an entire quarter.

The Bills actually produced more offense in every other quarter by a ridiculous margin.

Buffalo went from 119 yards in the second quarter to 19 in the third and then 143 in the fourth.

New England had at least 93 yards in every single quarter.

That third quarter didn’t just hurt the Bills.

They basically donated 15 minutes of football.

THE BAD: DALTON KINCAID BASICALLY DISAPPEARED

Dalton Kincaid’s first two games:

5 catches, 130 yards against Houston.
7 catches, 95 yards against Detroit.

That’s 12 catches for 225 yards through three games.

Against New England and LA?

1 catch. 7 yards.

2 catches. 38 yards

That gives him now 3 catches for 45 yards in his last two games. And that one catch didn’t even come until Buffalo’s final possession.

So yes, technically Kincaid did catch a football Sunday. But for basically the entire afternoon, one of Buffalo’s most productive offensive players through the first three weeks was nonexistent.

He came into the game averaging almost 88 receiving yards per game and finished with seven.

That’s easily his worst game of this season.

And if your offense is going to spend this much time living underneath, I have no idea how your athletic first-round tight end ends up with only two targets.

THE BAD: STOP THROWING SIDEWAYS

There were stretches Sunday where Buffalo seemed determined to make the football field 10 yards long and 53 yards wide.

Short throw.

Screen.

Another short throw.

Another screen.

And I am officially out on WR screens to Keon Coleman.

You have a huge receiver whose greatest advantage is his size and ability to win the football downfield, and somehow we keep asking him to catch the ball at the line of scrimmage and turn into Deebo Samuel.

Then Buffalo finally started using Coleman vertically.

What happened?

6 catches. 116 yards. 1 touchdown. 19.3 yards per catch.

His 34-yard touchdown with 4:39 remaining gave Buffalo a 26-21 lead.

Amazing what happens when you let the giant receiver go be a giant receiver.

THE BAD: THE DEFENSE COULDN’T CLOSE

And now we arrive at the argument Bills fans have been having for what feels like 900 years.

Buffalo finally got the lead.

Allen hits Coleman.

26-21.

There are 4:39 remaining.

Go win the football game.

Instead, New England goes down the field, scores a touchdown and gets the two-point conversion.

29-26.

That sequence is basically why these debates never end.

The offense will say: We gave you a lead with less than five minutes left.

The defense will say: We forced two turnovers and the offense vanished for the entire third quarter.

Then someone mentions the playcalling.

Then someone mentions Josh.

Then someone will mention Ed Oliver getting hurt.

Then everyone gets angry.

It felt exactly like an argument from three years ago.

THE BAD: 97 YARDS

The warning sign came on New England’s first real possession.

The Patriots started at their own 3-yard line.

They went 12 plays, 97 yards for a touchdown.

Buffalo had not allowed a 97-yard touchdown drive since November 3, 2024 against Miami, when the Dolphins went 14 plays and 97 yards after starting at their own 3.

So New England’s opening possession was Buffalo’s first 97-yard touchdown drive allowed in almost two years.

And it wasn’t some fluky bomb.

It was a sustained march.

New England eventually finished with 404 yards, ran 73 offensive plays to Buffalo’s 54 and possessed the football for 33:41.

That is a lot of defense.

And usually when your defense is playing 73 snaps, something has gone wrong on both sides of the ball.

THE BAD: DRAKE MAYE’S LEGS

This was another one we tracked during the game.

Through Buffalo’s first three games, opposing quarterbacks had combined for 39 rushing yards.

C.J. Stroud, Jared Goff and Justin Herbert combined: 39.

Drake Maye had 42 rushing yards by halftime.

He finished with 54 yards on eight carries, including a 26-yard run.

That’s significant because Buffalo had done a very good job preventing quarterbacks from extending plays with their legs through three weeks.

Maye completely changed that.

And this wasn’t Lamar Jackson.

Maye came into Sunday having struggled badly as a passer and left Buffalo with 269 passing yards, three touchdowns and 54 rushing yards.

Not ideal.

THE BAD: MAX HAIRSTON

It’s early. But Max Hairston looks like a liability right now.

Romeo Doubs finished with 6 catches for 58 yards and two touchdowns, and there were stretches Sunday where Buffalo made him look like Julian Edelman.

Teams are going to keep going after Hairston until he gives them a reason not to.

Maybe he develops into a really good player.

But if this eventually turns into a disaster, I’m sure somehow we’ll hear that Sean McDermott was the one pounding the table for him while Brandon Beane was innocently standing in the corner.

THE BAD: DION DAWKINS

Dion Dawkins had a rough game.

He allowed the early sack and then had the penalty that basically got Joshua Palmer off the hook for what would have been an awful drop.

You generally don’t want to notice your left tackle.

I noticed Dawkins a lot Sunday.

Buffalo officially allowed only one sack, so this wasn’t some complete offensive-line implosion.

But the sack, penalties and other small mistakes kept piling up.

That was basically the theme of the afternoon.

THE BAD: YOU CAN’T MAKE THAT THROW, JOSH

Josh Allen finished 23-of-33 for 253 yards, one touchdown and one interception. He also ran for another touchdown.

There was plenty he did well.

There was also the throw you cannot make.

Buffalo got the football back with a chance to tie or win the game. And Allen eventually made the YOLO throw into double coverage.

You can’t do that when you’re trying to ice the game.

That’s the exact moment where aggressive Josh becomes hero-ball Josh.

I understand why it happens.

The offense isn’t creating enough. Kincaid has disappeared. The playcalling is annoying. Buffalo has already gone three-and-out multiple times. So Josh starts believing the answer is to create something himself.

That mentality is a massive part of what makes him great.

It’s also the thing Buffalo has spent years trying to control.

Sometimes the correct play is boring.

Sometimes you live for another down.

Sunday had one of those moments.

THE WEIRD: JAMES COOK

I still don’t understand the way Buffalo used James Cook early.

At halftime:

6 carries. 16 yards.

Cook entered Sunday averaging more than 19 rushing attempts per game.

Eventually Buffalo remembered one of its best offensive players was standing behind Allen.

Cook finished with 12 carries for 75 yards and a touchdown. That’s 6.25 yards per carry.

So by the end of the afternoon, the running game wasn’t ineffective.

Buffalo simply didn’t lean on it enough early.

And yes, I’m still watching the fumbling.

Cook put another ball on the ground Sunday, although Buffalo recovered it. He has 9 fumbles, with 5 lost, in his last 18 games counting playoffs, through today’s Patriots game.

At some point, repeated fumbles stop being a weird coincidence and become a ball-security issue worth discussing.

THE GOOD: KEON COLEMAN

Coleman gets the credit.

6 catches.
116 yards.
1 touchdown.
19.3 yards per catch.

And his 34-yard touchdown should have been one of the plays we remembered as the game-winner.

Khalil Shakir was good too, finishing with 7 catches for 82 yards, including the 51-yard gain, but the fumble was killer and talk points off the board.

Those two combined for 198 receiving yards.

Which makes Kincaid finishing with seven even stranger.

THE GOOD: BUFFALO DID FORCE TURNOVERS

The defense wasn’t completely helpless.

Buffalo forced two New England turnovers.

Dee Alford’s interception late in the first half gave Buffalo a chance to steal points, and Tyler Bass kicked the field goal that gave the Bills a 17-14 halftime lead.

I was still a little surprised Buffalo didn’t try one more offensive play before the kick.

They had about five seconds and a timeout.

I understand taking the points.

I also think five seconds and a timeout isn’t nothing.

Either way, Buffalo went into halftime leading despite New England controlling large chunks of the first half.

Then came the 19-yard third quarter.

THE GOOD: ANDY KNOWS JOSH ALLEN

One Dad Shot before we finish.

Andy has actually done pretty well watching football with me this year.

We call it “highlights,” which seems to make the whole thing much more appealing to a three-year-old.

And he knows Josh Allen now.

If I say:

“Josh…”

He finishes:

“Allen.”

That feels like progress.

Unfortunately, Sunday also gave him an early introduction to another Buffalo tradition:

Watching the Bills play a football game that makes absolutely no sense.

THE BALLWASHER: KEON COLEMAN

I’m giving this one to Coleman.

He has taken plenty of shit. So if I’m going to complain about every WR screen thrown his way, I should also give him his flowers when Buffalo actually lets him do what he does best.

Six catches.

116 yards.

A go-ahead touchdown late.

More vertical Keon.

Fewer screens.

Please.

THE BALL BREAKER: THE ENTIRE THIRD QUARTER

There are plenty of candidates.

Kincaid.

The playcalling.

The secondary.

The late Allen interception.

But I keep coming back to one number.

19.

Nineteen total yards.

That’s what Buffalo produced in the third quarter of a game it ultimately lost by three points.

When you lose by three, you can find 900 moments to blame. The Bills basically donated an entire quarter and That’s probably enough.

And that brings us back to where we started.

This looked like one of those games Buffalo supposedly wanted to leave behind.

Maybe they haven’t.

Or maybe nobody really does.

Maybe sometimes football just finds a new way to make the same argument all over again.

Thanks for reading and supporting Joe from Queens. If you enjoy the work, consider pledging or contributing through Venmo. Every bit helps me turn this into more of a business than a hobby.

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The Bills and Patriots meet again Sunday, and New England enters the matchup in a much different spot than it probably expected to be three weeks into the season.

The Patriots are 1-2, Drake Maye hasn’t looked like the same quarterback he was a year ago, and New England is already staring at a potentially important early-season AFC East game. On the other side, the Patriots defense has shown some promising signs with an aggressive, blitz-heavy approach.

When I reached out to ESPN’s Mike Reiss looking for someone to talk Patriots with, he recommended Ethan Hurwitz of On SI.

Hurwitz, who can be found on X at @HurwitzSports, joined Joe From Queens to talk about Maye’s early-season struggles, New England’s offense, the Patriots defense, their former Bills, how Buffalo should attack them and whether Patriots fans actually consider the Bills a true rival.

Joe From Queens: It seems like the sky is falling a little bit for the Patriots right now. I know it’s only three games, but is the panic justified, or is this more of a “relax, it’s September” situation?

Ethan Hurwitz: I don’t think the panic is totally justified because it’s three games against three teams that made the playoffs last year. You can look at it as a tougher schedule than what they had a year ago.

What makes it more concerning is that your franchise quarterback is playing at a drastically different level than he was last year. Drake Maye has all the talent in the world. He’s 24 years old, he can make any throw on the field, but there’s some sort of disconnect right now with the decision-making and how everything is translating onto the field.

It looks like a complete 180 from last year.

They were in the Seattle game. If not for a few costly interceptions, you might walk out of there winning 10-7 or 10-3 in a really low-scoring game. Instead, Maye turns the ball over three times in the fourth quarter and they shoot themselves in the foot.

They beat Pittsburgh in a pretty grimy game, and then against Jacksonville, once again, bad decisions hurt them. We’re in an era where you lose two games after coming off a Super Bowl loss and everything becomes doom and gloom, but I’m not fully panicking.

There’s just more concrete concern than there was before.

Joe From Queens: Let’s peel back the onion on Drake Maye. Do you think the shoulder is bothering him? Is there some sort of Super Bowl hangover, or have teams just caught up to him a little bit?

Ethan Hurwitz: I think part of it is teams catching up to him. They have a full year of tape now.

Last year was his first year with Mike Vrabel and his first year with Josh McDaniels, and Maye isn’t necessarily the typical Josh McDaniels quarterback that we’ve seen in the past. He’s not Tom Brady or Jimmy Garoppolo, the guys who mostly stand in the pocket and control everything at the line of scrimmage.

Now teams understand more of what they’re going to see when they play him.

I do think the shoulder is something worth monitoring. Maye has said publicly that it isn’t a problem and it isn’t affecting his throwing. He took all the reps in practice. But he did appear on the injury report, and in the playoffs last year, he didn’t look very good before or after that shoulder injury.

There wasn’t much public information about exactly what the injury was or how severe it was, but he simply hasn’t looked the same.

Maybe the shoulder hurt his confidence. Maybe he started thinking, “I don’t trust myself to make the throw I would have made four weeks ago.” Once you get into a rut, it can snowball, and suddenly you don’t trust yourself in general.

Joe From Queens: If you’re trying to defend Maye a little bit, you could point to the wide receivers. Stefon Diggs is gone, A.J. Brown is hurt. How much of an excuse is that, and who should Buffalo actually worry about in this Patriots receiving group?

Ethan Hurwitz: I think that’s a completely fair point.

This offense could look 100 percent different if A.J. Brown doesn’t get hurt in the first game. One of the hardest things for a young quarterback is learning the decision-making part of the position. When do I attack? When do I take the safe throw? When do I extend a play? That cerebral part is usually the final thing to come.

You saw that with Josh Allen. He had all the traits, but things really clicked in Year 3 once Stefon Diggs arrived.

The hope for Maye was that A.J. Brown could have that same kind of effect. But at the same time, New England moved on from two receivers Maye really trusted last year in Stefon Diggs and Kayshon Boutte.

Now Brown is out, and Maye is throwing to a bunch of receivers who are fine and can play well in spurts, but they aren’t necessarily guys who are going to put up 150 yards and completely take over a game.

Mack Hollins has probably been the most productive receiver so far and seems to have the strongest rapport with Maye right now. Romeo Doubs has that kind of ability too, but we haven’t seen it consistently yet.

I really think this offense needs to get the running game going. TreVeyon Henderson had a really good game against Buffalo in the second matchup last year, but they haven’t given him the ball that much, partly because he was working back from an ankle injury. They’re averaging around three yards per carry.

If the Patriots can establish the run and open up the rest of the playbook, I think the offense can settle down. That’s probably the biggest way they can make this game competitive.

I don’t see this receiver room going out there and torching Buffalo for 400 yards. I just don’t see that kind of game happening.

Joe From Queens: Defensively, the Patriots seem pretty aggressive. They blitz a lot. What’s the overall philosophy of this defense, and do you think it’s better than last year’s unit?

Ethan Hurwitz: Going back to late July, almost every defensive player who spoke to the media was saying they wanted to be the No. 1 scoring defense.

Every defense says something like that, obviously, but this group was very specific about what it wanted to do. Get to the quarterback, force turnovers, dominate in the red zone and make offenses uncomfortable.

What made that interesting was that the edge room didn’t necessarily look dominant on paper.

Harold Landry has been banged up since last year. Gabe Akas, their second-round rookie, wasn’t even on the field early. Now he’s playing more. Elijah Ponder was an undrafted free agent. Draymond Jones is more of a run defender than a pure pass rusher.

But they’ve gotten really good snaps from some guys you might not have expected to create that kind of pressure.

They also have good linebackers. Robert Spillane and Christian Elliss are really sound in the middle. They can tackle, they’re rangy and they help tie everything together.

Then you get to a secondary that I think is one of the better groups in the league.

When all those layers come together, it gives them the ability to be aggressive.

They blitzed a lot last year too, but they’ve leaned into it even more. Zach Orr is in his first year as defensive coordinator, and I think there’s something to being a young defensive coach and wanting to attack. Blitzing is the fun part. You want to go after people.

And with Mike Vrabel being a former pass rusher, I think that mentality starts at the top. They believe in winning in the trenches, stopping the run and getting after the quarterback.

They don’t want to sit back and wait for the offense. They want to dictate what happens.

Joe From Queens: There are a few former Bills on the Patriots now. Mack Hollins, Reggie Gilliam, DaQuan Jones, Greg Van Roten. How have those guys looked?

Ethan Hurwitz: Van Roten was their top right guard after Mike Onwenu got hurt, and then Van Roten got hurt a week later. He’s on injured reserve, so he won’t be out there.

Mack Hollins has been pretty productive. Going into the year, you probably expected him to be the third receiver, and through the first few games, he’s basically been their best receiver.

He has a rapport with Drake Maye and has become somebody Maye trusts.

Reggie Gilliam hasn’t been used as much offensively as I thought he might be. He has been important on special teams, but I think he only played around eight offensive snaps against Jacksonville. If the running game starts becoming more of a focus, I think his role could increase.

DaQuan Jones has been more of a rotational player. They aren’t counting on him for 40 or 50 snaps a game or expecting him to pile up sacks. He’s there more to help against the run and give them solid snaps inside.

None of the former Bills have really become the centerpiece of the team, but Hollins is probably the one they need the most right now if they want to start winning games.

Joe From Queens: If you’re Buffalo, how do you attack the Patriots offense and defense?

Ethan Hurwitz: Against the Patriots offense, it almost feels like you have to let them stop themselves.

They’ve moved the ball during the first three weeks, but once they get into that 30-yard line or red-zone area, they start making mistakes.

Obviously Buffalo can’t just sit back and assume New England will implode, but I think you put the game on Drake Maye and make him prove he can beat you.

Based on what we’ve seen through three games, he hasn’t looked like the same quarterback he was a year ago.

Maybe he throws for 400 yards and proves everyone wrong, but right now he has been making some shaky decisions in the passing game. Buffalo has a defense that can take advantage of that.

You’ll see New England have a drive where they move the ball 40 or 50 yards, then they take a penalty, Maye throws into double coverage and suddenly the drive is over.

They’ve only scored two offensive touchdowns through three games, and only one has been a Maye passing touchdown.

So I think Buffalo’s defensive approach is basically: Make Drake Maye win the game.

On the other side, New England has struggled stopping the run and gave up five red-zone touchdowns against Jacksonville.

Jacksonville is a good offense. Trevor Lawrence is a good quarterback. But Josh Allen is an entirely different challenge.

Once Buffalo gets inside the 20, it feels like that could become almost automatic points if New England doesn’t improve.

The Bills also have so many ways to win. James Cook can hurt you. The tight ends can hurt you. If DJ Moore is healthy, that gives Buffalo another option outside.

New England’s secondary is banged up too. Christian Gonzalez didn’t practice, and Craig Woodson missed last week. That could create opportunities for Buffalo’s tight ends.

This Patriots defense has been good, and it can pressure the quarterback, but I don’t think we’ve seen it completely overwhelm a full-strength elite offense yet.

They lost to Drew Lock, beat an older Aaron Rodgers and lost to Trevor Lawrence. Josh Allen is a completely different level of quarterback.

Joe From Queens: I’ve been watching Bills-Patriots since the early ’90s. Buffalo dominated when New England was terrible, then Belichick and Brady arrived and it flipped completely. How do Patriots fans actually view Buffalo now? Is this really a rivalry to them?

Ethan Hurwitz: For most of the 21st century, I think Patriots fans viewed Buffalo as almost an automatic win.

It was basically, “We’ll win, Buffalo will lose, and that’s just what happens.”

Even when Buffalo started consistently winning the division around 2021 or 2022, I never really sensed this deep anger from Patriots fans toward the Bills.

I think Patriots fans were probably more focused on the Chiefs because of what Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City represented in relation to Tom Brady’s records and legacy.

With Buffalo, I don’t sense that same kind of hatred.

People respect Josh Allen. He’s a likable quarterback nationally, and people here recognize that he’s a great player.

It’s more, “If you want to win the AFC East, you have to beat Buffalo.”

There isn’t this overwhelming “We hate the Bills, we hate Josh Allen, we hate everybody in Buffalo” feeling.

If anything, the true rivalry period might have been the early 2000s, when Drew Bledsoe went to Buffalo, Lawyer Milloy left New England, and you had that 31-0 game.

But even then, I think Patriots fans have always hated the Jets more.

A lot of that comes from the Boston-New York dynamic. You have the Mo Lewis hit on Bledsoe, Bill Parcells leaving, and all that history between the Patriots and Jets.

During the Brady years, Patriots fans also considered teams like Indianapolis, Denver, Pittsburgh and Baltimore to be bigger rivals because those were the teams New England kept seeing in important playoff games.

For a long time, Buffalo simply wasn’t enough of a threat for Patriots fans to think of it that way.

Obviously that has changed because Buffalo is now the better team, but I still don’t think there’s this deep-rooted hatred toward the Bills from New England fans.

Joe From Queens: That’s funny because in Buffalo, the hatred never went away. Tom Brady can be calling a game and people are still furious. Rob Gronkowski shows up and people still don’t want to see him.

Ethan Hurwitz: Yeah, I definitely don’t think it’s equal.

Buffalo fans seem to hate the Patriots much more than Patriots fans hate Buffalo.

Maybe that changes if something happens that creates a real emotional flashpoint. A big injury, trash talk, a playoff controversy, something like that.

But right now, I don’t think there’s really that one moment that has created the same kind of resentment on the New England side.

Joe From Queens: Is there anything else about Sunday’s game that you think people should know?

Ethan Hurwitz: I think this game is incredibly important for New England.

Last year, the Patriots’ season really turned around with the win in Buffalo. This year, this feels like another potential turning point.

They don’t want to fall to 1-3 while Buffalo goes to 4-0, especially when Buffalo already has a game on them in the standings.

If you had asked me three weeks ago to predict the schedule, I probably would have chalked Buffalo up as a loss and said, “That’s fine. You try to split with them and move on.”

But now, with the way the first three weeks have gone and with some tough games later in the schedule, I don’t know if they can afford to fall into a 1-3 hole.

At this point, it really does feel like a must-win game for the Patriots.

For most Bills fans, Patriots memories usually start in one of two places.

Either it’s the 20-year Brady/Belichick torture chamber, where seemingly every Bills–Patriots game ended with Buffalo losing 27-10 while some random Patriots running back caught eight passes, or it’s the Josh Allen era, where the balance of the rivalry finally changed.

But I’m old enough to remember something else.

When the Patriots absolutely sucked.

And before we get to a few of those memories, including Thurman Thomas ripping off 80 yards, Bruce Smith chasing Doug Flutie around and Andre Reed turning Patriots defenders into tackling dummies, here are six things to know about the 2026 Patriots.

1. Drake Maye Hasn’t Looked Like the Same Quarterback

This is probably the biggest thing in the entire game.

Maye was ridiculous for most of 2025. Through his first 10 games last season, he completed 205 of 286 passes, 71.7%, for 2,555 yards, 19 TDs and only five interceptions. That works out to 255.5 passing yards per game, 8.9 yards per attempt and roughly a 113.9 passer rating.

Now compare that with his final four regular-season games plus New England’s four playoff games:

148 of 226, 65.5%, 1,810 yards, 14 TDs, six interceptions, 8.0 yards per attempt and a 99.6 passer rating.

Those numbers aren’t terrible, but the decline is noticeable, and the postseason was especially uneven. He threw for just 86 yards in the AFC Championship Game, was sacked five times, then threw two interceptions and was sacked six times in the Super Bowl loss to Seattle.

And whatever was happening late last season has gotten much worse in 2026.

Through three games Maye is 51-of-80 for 585 yards with one touchdown and six interceptions, with a 58.6 passer rating. He has already thrown almost as many interceptions in three games this season as he did in all 17 regular-season games last year.

That’s the story Buffalo’s defense should be attacking.

2. The Patriots Are Turning the Ball Over at an Insane Rate

New England has committed eight turnovers through three games, second-worst in the league in the Pro Football Reference rankings available entering Week 4, and their drives have ended in turnovers 26.7% of the time.

Maye has six interceptions plus a lost fumble, and New England gave the ball away three more times in Sunday’s 35-6 loss in Jacksonville.

For comparison, Maye threw eight interceptions during the entire 2025 regular season.

For a Bills team that somehow just won despite committing five turnovers against the Chargers, this feels like the obvious theme of the week:

Who stops handing the other team the football?

3. They Move the Ball Better Than the Scoreboard Makes It Look

New England isn’t completely incapable of moving the football. The Patriots have 921 yards through three games, which ranks 21st, and Maye is still averaging 7.3 yards per attempt. But they’ve scored only 36 points, 31st in the league.

The biggest problem has been finishing drives.

Their scoring percentage per drive is just 23.3%, last in the NFL, and they went 0-for-3 in the red zone against Jacksonville.

So this isn’t necessarily an offense Buffalo is going to hold to 150 yards. It might be an offense that drives 60 yards and then kicks itself in the balls.

4. The Offensive Line Is Becoming a Problem

This matters even more considering what Greg Rousseau has been doing.

New England has allowed nine sacks through three games, and injuries have started piling up.

Maye’s average time to throw has been 3.18 seconds, according to PFF, which is part offensive line and part quarterback.

He’s holding the football, trying to create, and lately those extended plays have produced a lot more chaos than magic.

Against Rousseau and Buffalo’s front, there’s an opportunity here.

5. A.J. Brown Isn’t Walking Through That Door

The Patriots’ biggest offensive acquisition is unavailable.

A.J. Brown is on injured reserve with an ankle injury and isn’t expected back until later in the season. That leaves Maye working with a receiving group led recently by Mack Hollins, who had six catches for 87 yards against Jacksonville.

Yes, that Mack Hollins who Pat Moran has a never ending chubby for.

Because apparently Bills–Patriots games are now legally required to contain at least three guys who used to play for the other team.

Hollins, Reggie Gilliam, DaQuan Jones and Greg Van Roten are among the former Bills currently with New England.

6. The Patriots Defense Is Better Than the 35 Points Jacksonville Just Scored

This might be the most important warning in the preview.

New England’s defense has been really good in man coverage.

Through three weeks they’re playing man on 39% of opposing dropbacks, second-highest in the NFL, allowing only 3.5 yards per attempt in man and producing -0.70 EPA per dropback, also second-best.

Their zone defense is basically the opposite: 7.7 yards per attempt allowed and +0.20 EPA per dropback, 28th.

That makes the chess match with Josh Allen interesting.

Because New England wants to play man, let Christian Gonzalez cover somebody by himself, bring pressure and challenge receivers to win.

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Advance Stats: What New England Actually Does

They blitz. A lot.

Through three weeks the Patriots have blitzed on 45.2% of opposing dropbacks, second-highest in the NFL behind Minnesota. Buffalo, by comparison, is at 23.4%. Through the first two weeks New England was sixth at 41.1%, and when they blitzed they generated pressure on 46.7% of those plays.

So don’t expect Josh Allen to sit back and play seven-on-seven.

They’re coming after him.

And this is where Buffalo’s protection becomes interesting after the Chargers game, because the offensive line run-blocked extremely well but had some real problems protecting Allen.

Man coverage is the strength

This is probably New England’s clearest defensive identity.

Man coverage:
39% usage — 2nd
3.5 yards per attempt — 3rd

Zone coverage:
61% usage — 31st
7.7 yards per attempt — 22nd

There’s the matchup.

If Buffalo can force New England out of those aggressive man looks, the defense becomes considerably less impressive.

Third down hasn’t killed them

Opponents are only 12-for-35 on third down, 34.3%. New England’s offense, meanwhile, is 13-for-40, 32.5%.

So these aren’t two offenses living on long, methodical third-down conversions.

Buffalo getting New England behind the sticks should matter enormously because of everything Maye has been doing under pressure.

Their defense is better than their points allowed suggest

New England is fifth in total yards allowed through three games despite giving up 35 to Jacksonville, and they’ve allowed just 4.8 yards per play. Jacksonville’s scoring explosion was helped enormously by New England turnovers and short fields.

Patriots Box score Stathead of the week: 2025 vs 2026

Forgotten Bills–Patriots Memories

This is the part I’d have the most fun with.

Everyone remembers Tom Brady. Everyone remembers the drought. Everyone remembers the wind game. Everyone remembers Josh Allen essentially sending the Patriots’ defense into retirement in the playoff game.

I want the Patriots games people don’t talk about anymore.

1990: Thurman finally ends the world’s ugliest football game

This one I remember because it was one of those games you basically had to experience through radio/highlights unless you happened to get it locally.

Buffalo was 8-1. New England was 1-8.

Naturally, the Patriots somehow turned the greatest Bills offense of that era into the 2023 New York Jets for about 58 minutes.

Jim Kelly finished 5-of-15 for only 79 yards.

Seventy-nine!

Buffalo led 7-0 forever before Thurman Thomas finally broke an 80-yard touchdown run with under two minutes remaining to make it 14-0. Thomas finished with 165 yards on 22 carries and both Bills touchdowns.

That 80-yarder was the longest run of Thurman’s NFL career.

That’s a perfect forgotten Bills game.

The Bills were headed to the Super Bowl.

The Patriots were one of the worst teams in football.

And somehow New England almost dragged them into the mud for an entire afternoon.

1989: Bruce Smith vs. Doug Flutie

This one becomes even funnier this weekend because Flutie is the Bills’ Legend of the Game. And I’ve always had a weird relationship with Flutie being treated strictly as a Bills icon.

He was obviously an important Bill. I loved watching him.

But the guy is Boston. Boston College legend. Played for the Patriots. Went back to New England at the end of his career. He’s as tied to that area as almost anyone who ever wore a Bills uniform.

In the 1989 meeting, Buffalo beat New England 31-10. Flutie went 15-of-41 for 176 yards, one touchdown and one interception, while Kelly went 12-of-17 for 278 yards and three touchdowns. Thurman added 105 rushing yards.

The craziest or coincidental part of this game is there was a story that the Patriots owner wanted Flutie to play instead of Tony Eason. Here’s how TBN had it

And yes, seeing Flutie running around trying to survive that Buffalo defense — especially Bruce Smith — is part of what makes him being honored for a Bills–Patriots game hilarious to me.

1991: Fred Smerlas comes home wearing the wrong uniform

This is an underrated weird Bills history game.

Fred Smerlas had spent 11 seasons in Buffalo, made five Pro Bowls and had been one of the faces of the franchise before eventually landing in New England. He played for the Patriots in 1991 and 1992.

So now he’s back in Orchard Park wearing Patriots colors.

Buffalo won 22-17, but it was much closer than it should’ve been. The Bills turned it over four times, New England ran for 122 yards, and Leonard Russell scored twice.

And the part I remember is Kelly screwing around with Smerlas at the line, getting his former teammate to jump offsides twice on two straight plays. Both players had a good laugh after the game about it.

That’s the kind of moment I want in this section because it feels like something completely lost to time now

It wasn’t Brady vs. Buffalo.

It was Jim Kelly laughing because he got Fred Smerlas to jump.

1993: Andre Reed destroys the Patriots

This one deserves to be rediscovered.

Opening day.

Bill Parcells’ first game as Patriots head coach.

Drew Bledsoe’s NFL debut.

And Parcells was returning to an NFL sideline for the first time since beating Buffalo in Super Bowl XXV.

Buffalo won 38-14.

Jim Kelly only completed 13 passes.

Four were touchdowns.

And Andre Reed caught six passes for 110 yards and three touchdowns. His TDs went for 41, 22 and 14 yards.

Reed had scored only three receiving touchdowns during the entire 1992 regular season.

The 41-yarder is the one.

That’s one of those Andre Reed highlights where he catches the ball and suddenly Patriots defenders start bouncing off him when ESPN decides to do a quick 5 minute interview with him today on media row during the Super Bowl.

Then he started 1993 by scoring three against New England in one afternoon.

That is exactly the kind of Bills–Patriots history I want in this preview.

DID YOU KNOW??

If the Bills beat New England, they will have swept three consecutive home games played in three consecutive weeks for the first time since 1989

Final word and prediction

The Bills have spent most of the last 25 years playing Patriots games carrying baggage from whatever happened before them. This one feels different. New England isn’t Tom Brady’s Patriots anymore, but they’re also not the 1-9 Patriots that Thurman Thomas finally put away with an 80-yard run. They’re somewhere in between — talented enough to make Buffalo uncomfortable, mistake-prone enough to hand the game away, and led by a quarterback who suddenly looks nothing like the guy who nearly won MVP last season.

Which probably means Bills–Patriots will be completely normal and stress-free.

So, obviously, Bills 30 and Patriots 27 with everyone miserable for three hours.

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I’ll admit it: I had no idea the Sabres season was starting Thursday until I was on Pat Moran’s podcast Sunday night.

Football starts and my brain basically shuts down every other Buffalo sports department. For most of the last 15 years, that hasn’t exactly been a terrible strategy with the Sabres. But after last season, there’s actually something to pay attention to again.

So I called Chad DeDominicis of Expected Buffalo to basically catch me up on what the hell is going on. I am a paid subscriber to his website and definitely recommend it even though I don’t get half his charts, but he always gets Sabres dirt which is what I love.

We talked about the strange Sabres/Bills fan dynamic, an offseason that felt like it was missing something, losing Alex Tuch and Bowen Byram, the NHL’s exploding salary cap, which young Sabres could take another step, the goaltending situation and whether Buffalo can actually make the playoffs again.

And yes, I openly admitted that sometimes I just steal Chad’s takes so I can sound like I know hockey.

Joe: I’m a football guy first, and when football season ends, that’s usually when I start caring about the Sabres. It’s been especially true over the last 15 years because, before last season, the Sabres were basically dog crap forever. Since you’ve been doing Expected Buffalo, have you noticed that too? Do people suddenly show up when the Bills season ends and say, “Okay, what’s going on with the hockey team?”

Chad DeDominicis: For sure. We always kind of joke that whenever the Bills season ends, hockey season starts. We’ll even put out an article that’s basically, “Hey, you were gone for half the year. Here’s what you missed.” I think this year will probably be different because there will be more eyes and ears on them right from the beginning after what happened last season. But typically, you have the sickos who are there from opening night, and then everybody else checks in around February.

Joe: Maybe my expectations were too high, but this offseason felt disappointing. I thought Jarmo Kekäläinen was going to come in and it would be like Let’s Make a Deal. Instead, Tuch is gone, Byram is gone, they brought in some people here and there, but it felt like something was missing. Do you agree?

Chad: Yeah, I understand that feeling. For me, it’s the forward move they didn’t make. I don’t think many people are going to dispute not paying Alex Tuch, and I don’t think many people will dispute moving Byram rather than paying him $12.5 million. But I thought they had graduated beyond the point where youth was going to be the driving factor. You were one shot away from the Eastern Conference Final. It felt like the time to make that one big move at forward.

To be fair to Jarmo, a lot of those forwards people thought might move never moved. Jason Robertson didn’t move. Dylan Larkin is still in Detroit. A lot of the big names stayed where they were.

That’s the NHL. Sometimes teams just won’t trade these guys.

But yeah, I think they were one move short. Now you’re relying on a bunch of guys in their early 20s to carry a pretty significant load.

Joe: Between Tuch and Byram, who do you think they’ll miss more?

Chad: Byram, for sure.

I want to be careful because Tuch obviously had an impact on the ice and definitely off the ice. But I think replacing him can become more of a committee approach. This team scores goals. They’re probably going to find those goals somewhere.

With Byram, it’s more about the minutes.

Buffalo was one of the heavier teams in the league in terms of how much they relied on their top four defensemen at five-on-five. Now those minutes have to go somewhere else. You already have Mattias Samuelsson dealing with an injury and Owen Zellweger dealing with a concussion going into the opener. Somebody has to step up and take some of that workload.

You can’t just lean even harder on Samuelsson, Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power for an entire season. We saw some of those guys look worn down at different points last year.

It’s a marathon. Somebody else is going to have to emerge.

Joe: I stopped really paying close attention to the Sabres for four or five years. I’d follow from a distance and steal takes from people like you, Netminder, Ostrander, and Kris Baker.

Then I came back and suddenly guys who have played 40 NHL games are getting giant contracts. I don’t want to sound like a boomer saying, “Back in my day, Drew Stafford got four years and $16 million and had to prove himself first,” but what the hell happened?

Chad: It’s really a last-year-or-two thing because of the salary-cap boom.

For years, the NHL salary cap was basically flat or would go up by maybe a million dollars. So you’d see bridge contracts and teams trying to squeeze their restricted free agents.

That mentality has changed because the cap is taking significant jumps.

Teams are trying to forecast where salaries are going and lock young players in now at what they hope becomes a discount later. That’s why you’re seeing players with very little NHL experience getting these numbers that sound insane if you haven’t been paying close attention. You almost have to stop looking at the raw dollar amount and start looking at the percentage of the salary cap.

That’s the adjustment people have to make now. If you haven’t been following the NHL closely for a few years, there’s definitely some sticker shock.

Joe: This young group from Rochester basically feels like the core now. Give me one young player you think can take another step forward and one you’re a little worried about.

Chad: I think Zach Benson has another level, which is kind of crazy to say after the level he played at in the playoffs. I don’t know if he’s going to be a 25-goal scorer. I don’t think he necessarily has that type of finishing ability. But could he score around 20 and become a 50-to-60-point player with his playmaking and two-way impact? Absolutely.

And everybody loves the style he plays. If you’re playing against him, you hate him. If he’s on your team, he rules. It’s nice for the Sabres to finally have one of those guys.

The player I’d be a little concerned about is Kulich, especially after his preseason and coming back from the blood-clot situation. I think he needs to play center, and I’m not sure there’s an obvious place for him to play center right now. I think he can get a little lost on the wing. It wouldn’t shock me if, once everybody is healthy, he had a short stint in Rochester where he could play first-line center, get completely back up to speed and then see where things go from there.

Joe: Going back to Byram, is there one defenseman who could really be affected by losing him? Owen Power played with him a lot, right?

Chad: If you go by minutes, Power played with him the most, but the top four rotated enough that everybody played together. I don’t think Power individually suddenly takes a step backward because Byram is gone. The bigger concern is the collective effect on those top defensemen. If they all have to play more minutes, eventually guys get worn down. Samuelsson is already dealing with an injury, and we’ve seen his injury history. We also saw how good he can be when he’s healthy.

Byram was also an important part of the special teams and had a career year offensively. Somebody has to replace some of those points. Maybe Power produces more with additional power-play opportunities. Maybe Zellweger gives you more offense.

So I don’t necessarily think one player suffers. It’s more about how they collectively replace what Byram gave them.

Joe: Tage Thompson feels like their best forward to me. Tuch always felt like his sidekick, at least in terms of scoring. With Tuch gone, who has to become that second major guy offensively?

Chad: Interestingly, Tage and Tuch were actually split up quite a bit last season. What they’re doing now is going back to something they used in the playoffs, putting Josh Norris and Thompson together. That indicates to me that they’re probably going to use Thompson on the wing some, which I agree with.

So the first thing is Norris has to stay healthy.

Then Josh Doan becomes really interesting. Maybe he’s the guy who takes on some of that Tuch role. I think he’s completely capable of it from a two-way standpoint and as a scorer. We saw a lot of that last year, and obviously the organization believes in him.

You need Norris healthy as your true No. 1 center, and you need Doan to keep ascending.

Joe: Have you heard anything Norris has done to stop getting hurt? Is he lifting differently? Taking creatine? Sacrificing a goat? Anything?

Chad: I haven’t heard anything specific.

A lot of his injuries have almost been fluky. Last year he hurts his oblique on basically one of the final faceoffs of the game. Then he gets a concussion in the playoffs after falling awkwardly into the boards. You hate calling injuries luck, but sometimes that’s what it feels like. I’m sure he’s trying different things. He knows his history. He’s not just doing the exact same thing every offseason and hoping something changes. Maybe simply having a healthier offseason and not rehabbing another injury helps him.

At some point, you just have to hope he gets some better luck.

Joe: Goaltending feels like the biggest mystery to me. Last year they overachieved compared to what we had seen before. If I woke up from a coma and said, “Give me the good and bad of the Sabres goaltending situation,” what would you tell me?

Chad: The good is that you have two relatively young goalies who are still growing, plus a veteran in Alex Lyon who has shown that if you use him correctly, he can give you good stretches. Lyon’s history suggests that if you’re asking him to play around 30 games, he can give you pretty good numbers.

The bad part is that you have three goalies because none of them has proven he can be a true No. 1.

We know Lyon isn’t going to become that at this point in his career. The younger goalies haven’t proven they can take on that 50-plus-game workload either. So there’s upside there, but there’s also still a lot we don’t know.

Joe: So where do you actually have them finishing? Are they going to be around where they were last season?

Chad: I don’t think they’re going to be a 109-point team that wins the division again.

But I’m pretty comfortable believing they’re a playoff team. I have them fourth in the Atlantic with 98 points and getting the top wild-card spot. I have Florida, Tampa Bay and Montreal as the top three in the division, although Buffalo and Montreal could be battling for that third spot. There are questions with Florida, especially with the goaltending and the age of the roster.

But if things mostly play out the way you would expect, I have Buffalo at 98 points and in the playoffs.

Joe: Anything else you want to say about the Sabres, life, soccer, anything before we ride off into the sunset and I go change a diaper?

Chad: I think it’s exciting for hockey, and I’d encourage people to get back into it.

But especially for football fans who are used to living week-to-week: don’t do that with hockey. It’s a long season. There are going to be good stretches and bad stretches, ups and downs. That’s just how hockey works. Try looking at it in five-game buckets or something like that. Because if you live and die with every single Sabres game, you’re going to lose your sanity.

Joe: Perfect. I’ll just continue stealing your takes, Netminder’s takes and Kris Baker’s takes, combine all three and pretend I know what I’m talking about.

That feels like a solid plan for the season.

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There is apparently one job requirement for running the official Highmark Stadium account: hate the fans.

Have a complaint about the new stadium? Get mocked.

Ask a question about something you were told before spending a pile of money on seats? Congratulations, you’ve just become material for the stadium account’s open-mic night.

Who the hell thinks this is a good way to talk to customers?

I don’t know who is running the Highmark Stadium account, but somebody apparently decided the official social media voice for a brand-new stadium should be some sarcastic fucking reply guy who thinks every legitimate fan complaint is an invitation to dunk on the person asking it.

And this isn’t just me getting mad because an account made a joke. I love stupid jokes. Half this website is stupid jokes. But there is a gigantic difference between some random Bills fan with 212 followers being an asshole on Twitter and an account representing the stadium doing it to the people who are buying tickets, PSLs, parking, concessions and everything else that comes with going to an NFL game.

Especially when the fans might actually have a point.

Take Bottlegate.

I’d love to tell you exactly what this Channel 2 article says, but their website has more pop-ups than a 2003 porn site and somehow managed to crash Chrome. At this point, getting through a WGRZ story feels like beating a level of Contra.

But the basic issue is pretty simple. Fans were apparently told one thing about water stations and bringing bottles into the new stadium, and now they’re finding out something different. You can bring Bills horns into the stadium, but forget about an empty water bottle.

It certainly sounds like the fine folks at Legends may have been fibbing a little bit about those water stations.

And yes, I know some super-sicko stadium fan is going to jump into my mentions screaming, “THAT’S HOW IT IS AT OTHER NFL STADIUMS.”

Fine.

That isn’t really the point.

If somebody from Legends or the Bills told people something while they were deciding whether to spend thousands of dollars on seats, and now the policy is different, people have every right to ask about it.

Now, I will say this is also a pretty odd conversation to have with your ticket rep. Who the hell starts asking about drinking water at a football stadium? I’m asking about sightlines, parking and whether my seat is underneath somebody’s armpit, not the hydration infrastructure.

Still, if somebody asked and was given an answer, you can’t suddenly act like they’re an idiot for remembering the answer.

What I really don’t understand is how purses are allowed and Bills Elvis can apparently bring a guitar into the stadium, but an empty bottle is where security draws the line.

Is it because the Bills don’t sell guitars inside, but they do sell bottles of water?

That’s where an official stadium account could actually be useful. Explain the rule, why it exists, and If somebody received incorrect information, say that. If the policy changed, acknowledge it.

Instead, we’ve apparently decided the best strategy is Stadium Twitter: Roast Edition.

What’s next?

Are the Sabres going to start an official KeyBank Center account where they just tell fans to fuck off every time somebody has a complaint?

“Your seat doesn’t have a cup holder? Use your fucking hand.”

“The Aud Club closed? Sorry, your mom got caught giving a hand job in there.”

“Bathroom line too long? Should’ve pissed before the game.”

Is this really where we’re going with official team and stadium accounts? Because there’s a difference between being funny and having some personality on social media and basically turning your customer-service account into a 16-year-old reply guy who just discovered sarcasm.

And that’s what drives me nuts about this account.

Remember when Ted Black took over the Sabres?

There were a million complaints about that organization. The game presentation sucked, Fans complained about broadcasts, Alumni relationships needed work, the arena needed improvements, and there were issues everywhere.

Black didn’t respond by hiding behind a logo and making sarcastic jokes at everybody.

He went out and talked to people.

He addressed the issues, he listened, and He wasn’t a dick about it. He came across like somebody who actually understood that if people are spending their money and investing their time in your product, maybe you should hear them out instead of trying to win a fucking Twitter argument.

And slowly, things changed.

We’re getting cup holders in the bathrooms. The 40th anniversary celebration goes from feeling like another cash grab to basically, “Fuck it, invite every former Sabres player we can find.” The Sabres bloggers wanted access…here’s one of Ted Black’s pizza parties and some press passes!

That’s how you address issues.

You don’t have to agree with every fan. Fans are fucking nuts. I’m one of them.

Some complaints are stupid.

Some people complain just because they enjoy complaining.

But when you’re representing the stadium, you don’t need to win the argument. You need to answer the question.

That seems to be completely lost here.

And the funniest part is the Bills should understand this better than almost anyone. This fanbase has spent years being sold on how special it is. Bills Mafia, best fans in football, family, community, Home-field advantage.

Great.

Then don’t treat those same people like idiots when they ask why something they were told about their expensive new stadium suddenly doesn’t appear to be true.

I’m sure the stand-up comedian running the stadium account will eventually deliver a killer line like:

“Fans are encouraged to stay hydrated by using our drink fountain or drinking the tears of Patriots fans for free.”

Maybe throw in a crying-laughing emoji.

That’ll fix everything.

And somehow the dumbest part of Bottlegate might not even be the bottle policy.

It might be the account assigned to explain it.

I was wrong about James Cook, and really, I was wrong about paying running backs in general. For years I bought into the same thing everybody else did, don’t pay running backs, you can find one in the fourth round, fifth round, sixth round, whatever. Use him for four years, move on, draft another one, because there will always be another guy. There was logic to it, obviously, because running backs take a beating and their careers are shorter than most positions. But I probably bought into that argument way too much.

When you’re building an NFL roster and paying quarterbacks, receivers, tackles, pass rushers, corners and everything else, running back became the place where everyone decided you could save money. It became almost a rule, smart teams don’t pay running backs, dumb teams do. You’d hear it over and over and eventually it just became accepted as fact.

And honestly, I repeated it plenty of times myself. Now I’m starting to think maybe we all got a little too smart about it.

Because running backs have always gotten the least amount of respect, from teams, from fans, from media, and honestly from people like me. We love them when they’re cheap, when they’re young, when they’re on rookie deals and winning fantasy leagues for everybody. We love watching a guy get handed the ball 20 times, run into linebackers, catch passes, pick up blitzes and get hit by 300-pound men all afternoon.

Then he asks to get paid and suddenly everybody becomes an accountant. Well, positional value, well, you can replace him, well, you can get 80 percent of the production for half the money.

Maybe that was true for a while, and maybe it’s still true in certain situations, but the game has changed too. Defenses have gotten smaller and faster, there’s more nickel, more light boxes, more speed on the field, and suddenly having a real running back can punish that. You’ve seen guys like Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry and Josh Jacobs remind everybody that the position can still matter a hell of a lot even as they get older. Maybe running backs didn’t suddenly become important again, maybe we just spent a decade convincing ourselves they weren’t.

And now James Cook is part of that conversation too.

There’s another part of this that always comes up in sports, and you’ve heard it a million times, the contract-year guy. Somebody plays great and immediately you hear, well of course he’s playing hard, he wants to get paid. Then he gets paid and the conversation flips instantly to, okay, let’s see if he still cares now.

I remember being at one of Ty Dunne’s Happy Hours, Doug Whaley was there, somebody asked him about Marcell Dareus, and the first thing I remember Whaley saying was basically that he got paid and didn’t care anymore. That line always stuck with me because it’s such a common way we talk about athletes.

And look, that does happen, because it happens everywhere. It happens in sports, television, sales, construction, basically every workplace on earth. Somebody gets security, somebody gets comfortable, somebody gets promoted and maybe they don’t grind the same way anymore. That’s part of life and I’m not pretending it doesn’t exist. But the thing that bothers me is how quickly that explanation gets attached to certain players, like the contract itself becomes proof that they stopped caring.

And that’s where I think the racial part of the conversation connects, because a lot of the language we use around athletes isn’t neutral even when people think it is. We talk about who is hungry, who is disciplined, who is a grinder, who is naturally gifted, who wants it more, who got paid and became lazy.

Those labels have a long history in sports, and Black athletes have often been described through that lens in a way that can carry more baggage than people realize. I’m not saying every time someone says a player stopped caring it’s racist. I’m saying it’s worth noticing how easily the “he got his money and checked out” story gets told, and how comfortable everyone can be telling it without actually knowing the person.

That’s part of why James Cook is such an interesting example to me. If you wanted to use the lazy sports cliché, this was the moment where he was supposed to get paid, relax, protect himself a little more, maybe stop running quite as hard. Instead, he got paid and then got better, which is really the entire point of this piece. The Bills gave him the extension and instead of taking his foot off the gas, he had the best season of his career. He won the rushing title with 1,621 yards and averaged 5.2 yards per carry.

Now through three games this year, he’s at 346 yards and 6.0 yards per carry. Cook didn’t have the huge year trying to get paid. He had the huge year after he got paid.

The cynical sports-fan script says that’s supposed to be when the player gets comfortable, stops running as hard, stops taking care of himself or starts protecting the contract. Cook has done basically the opposite.

And more than the numbers, just watch him now compared to his rookie year. The speed was always there, the burst was always there, and you could see immediately why Buffalo liked him. But there’s a different confidence to him now, a patience and decisiveness that wasn’t always there early on. He waits for blocks better, hits the crease harder, gets north faster, and he looks like he knows exactly what he wants to do before the defense can react. He doesn’t look like a fast player trying to find space anymore, he looks like a complete running back.

The progression is pretty wild when you lay it out.

• 507 rushing yards as a rookie in 2022

• 1,122 yards in 2023

• 1,009 yards with 16 rushing touchdowns in 2024.

• 1,621 yards and the rushing title in 2025.

Now he’s off to another huge start in 2026.

That’s not someone who plateaued once he got his second contract. That’s someone who keeps adding to his game.

And maybe that’s where I was wrong more than anything, because I always looked at running back as a replaceable position instead of looking at the actual player. Yes, you can find running backs later in the draft, that part is still true. Yes, you can find productive players without spending a ton of money, that’s true too. But that doesn’t mean every really good running back is automatically replaceable. Those are two completely different things.

The question shouldn’t be, can I theoretically replace this position. The question should be, can I replace this player and not make my football team worse. Right now, I don’t think Buffalo can take James Cook out of this offense and pretend nothing changes.

Maybe we spend so much time talking about bad contracts that we forget there’s another version of the story. There are guys who get paid and then go out and earn every damn dollar. There are guys who get security and don’t get comfortable, they get better. So far, that’s James Cook. And I’m happy to admit I was wrong.

The money didn’t stop the progression, and if anything, he’s gotten better since it arrived. Maybe the lesson isn’t always pay running backs or never pay running backs, maybe it’s just pay great football players when you have one.

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Growing up watching football, there were certain things you heard so often that they basically became commandments.

Establish the run.

Defense wins championships.

Win the battle in the trenches.

And, of course:

DON’T TURN THE BALL OVER.

Turnovers. Turnovers. Turnovers.

Turn on ESPN, CBS, NBC and Whatever pregame show happened to be on. Eventually some talking head, former quarterback or coach would start lecturing everyone about turnovers. Coaches preached it, broadcasters preached it, your dad probably screamed it from the couch, and your favorite WGR caller complained about it.

As a Bills fan, I certainly didn’t need anyone explaining what turnovers could do to a football team. I watched Buffalo commit what felt like one billion turnovers in those Super Bowls. There were obviously plenty of reasons the Bills lost four straight, but giving the football away sure as shit didn’t help. But over the last 15 years or so, I think football analysis has gotten smarter about this.

Especially the advanced-stats community.

A turnover isn’t just a turnover anymore.

Where did it happen?

What down was it?

What did it actually cost you?

Did the opponent turn it into points?

An interception on fourth-and-18 from the opponent’s 40 goes into the box score exactly the same way as a pick-six from your own 5.

INT.

Turnover.

But those are obviously not remotely the same football play and that’s what I wanted to dig into.

I went on stathead and went through the 2024 and 2025 seasons looking at how often teams won despite turning the ball over, which teams turned it over the most, what happened on the scoreboard because of turnovers, and — most importantly — where on the field these turnovers happened.

Because turnovers matter, but I just don’t think every turnover matters the same. There’s going to be a lot of words and charts and I don’t necessarily reach a definitive conclusion, but maybe you as a reader will…

Teams Win With Turnovers All The Time

Let’s start with the simplest question.

Can you turn the football over and still win?

Apparently, yes.

A lot.

In 2024, teams won 154 games despite committing at least one giveaway.

There were some absurd examples.

Washington beat Philadelphia 36-33 despite five giveaways.

Detroit beat Houston 26-23 despite five giveaways.

Cincinnati beat Tennessee 37-27 despite four.

Then in 2025, teams won another 134 games while turning it over at least once.

That’s 288 wins in two seasons where the winning team committed at least one turnover.

Even crazier: when both teams turned the ball over, the winner actually committed more turnovers 34 times over the two seasons.

But here’s where we shouldn’t get stupid with this argument.

When the two teams finished with different turnover totals, the team with fewer giveaways went 110-34.

That’s a .764 winning percentage.

So yes.

Winning the turnover battle is still extremely valuable.

It’s just not some automatic law of football.

Josh Allen

This is where Josh Allen has always made the turnover conversation fascinating to me.

I think Allen absolutely benefited in the 2024 MVP race from finally knocking down the raw turnover number.

For years the conversation was always:

Yeah, but Josh turns it over.

Then in 2024, the interceptions dropped dramatically and suddenly a lot of the old-school football writers who had spent years hammering him over turnovers could check that box.

Now he was the MVP.

And here’s the funny part:

I can sit here and argue that Josh Allen was a better pure quarterback in 2020 or 2021 than he was during his MVP season.

That’s not an insult to his MVP season.

It’s the point.

We sometimes use turnovers as this giant morality grade for quarterback play instead of asking how damaging those turnovers actually were.

Who Actually Turned It Over The Most?

You would expect the teams with the most giveaways to be terrible.

In 2024, that was mostly true.

None of the five made the postseason. NFL standings confirm Cleveland and Tennessee finished 3-14, Indianapolis 8-9, Las Vegas 4-13 and Dallas 7-10.

Pretty convincing argument for protecting the ball, right?

Then 2025 comes along.

Four of the five missed the playoffs.

And then there is Seattle.

The Seahawks turned it over 28 times and went 14-3, won the NFC West and won the Super Bowl.

That’s the type of team that makes the turnover conversation more interesting.

Because clearly 28 turnovers didn’t destroy Seattle.

Why?

Because a team’s ability to survive a mistake matters too.

Points Off Turnovers Matter More Than The Raw Number

This is where I think the conversation gets much more useful.

Instead of only asking how many turnovers a team had, let’s look at net points off turnovers.

In 2024 and 2025 here is the top three teams in net points off turnovers were…

This tells me much more than a raw giveaway number.

Take Buffalo’s +101 in 2024.

That’s not simply an offense protecting the ball.

That’s takeaways.

That’s field position.

That’s turning the other team’s mistakes into touchdowns and field goals.

That’s Buffalo’s defense sometimes preventing the opponent from cashing in after the Bills screwed up.

A turnover is the event.

The points are the consequence.

And the consequence is what actually decides the game.

Where You Turn It Over Matters

This is the part that interested me most.

I went through the individual turnover plays from 2024 and 2025, removed penalty-erased plays, punts and other special-teams plays, and categorized the offensive giveaways based on where the play started.

That’s important.

This isn’t necessarily where the fumble was recovered or where an interception return ended.

It’s the offense’s field position when the snap happened.

Using non-overlapping sections of the field, here’s what I found:

And this is exactly why I don’t like treating every turnover equally.

A turnover from your own 7 can practically hand the opponent points.

A turnover at the opponent’s 7 doesn’t give the opponent good field position at all, but it wipes out a scoring opportunity you already spent an entire drive creating.

Those are two completely different kinds of damage.

Who Turned It Over Deep In Their Own Territory?

Here’s another interesting way to look at it.

Which teams repeatedly gave opponents the ball after beginning a play inside their own 20?

In 2025, the leaders included:

Buffalo finished 12-5 and made the playoffs, Jacksonville went 13-4 and won its division, and Seattle went 14-3. Baltimore finished 8-9 and Cleveland 5-12.

Again, this doesn’t mean those turnovers were harmless. It means good teams can survive them.

Buffalo is a perfect example.

In 2024, Buffalo had zero giveaways on plays beginning inside its own 20 in this dataset.

In 2025, they had four.

Allen himself had some ugly field-position turnovers, including an interception against Tampa Bay on a play beginning at the Buffalo 5.

That’s the kind of turnover where the location really matters.

It’s not just an interception.

It’s an interception where the opposing offense doesn’t have to do much work to turn your mistake into points.

That’s much more damaging than a deep interception from the opponent’s side of midfield.

What About Red-Zone Turnovers?

Now flip the field.

A red-zone turnover creates a different problem.

You’re not necessarily giving the opponent great field position.

You’re taking points away from yourself.

That’s why I wanted to isolate them.

In 2024, the biggest red-zone giveaway totals included:

Minnesota went 14-3 and Philadelphia 14-3 and both reached the postseason, while Dallas, Seattle, the Giants and Jets missed it.

Then in 2025:

Jacksonville went 13-4 and New England 14-3 despite being among the league leaders in red-zone giveaways. Arizona and the Jets each finished 3-14, while Dallas went 7-9-1.

That’s another reminder that the turnover itself doesn’t tell you the entire story. Two of the top 5 teams in each category went to the Super Bowl. (Pats/Eagles)

Josh Allen

Buffalo had two red-zone giveaways in 2024 and four in 2025 in this study.

That’s where I think Allen’s turnovers deserve more criticism than the random raw interception number.

If Allen throws a pick from the opponent’s 5, Buffalo has potentially taken seven points off its own scoreboard.

That hurts.

A lot.

But that’s also precisely why we should separate it from a turnover that occurs in a completely different situation.

If you’re going to criticize the mistake, criticize the actual mistake and its actual cost.

Don’t just yell “TURNOVERS!”

So How Much Do Turnovers Actually Matter?

Teams that lose the turnover battle lose more often than they win and the five teams with the most giveaways in 2024 all missed the playoffs.

Four of the five teams with the most giveaways in 2025 missed the playoffs.

But then Seattle turns it over 28 times, goes 14-3 and wins superbowl

Buffalo goes from having no giveaways beginning inside its own 20 in 2024 to four in 2025 — and still finishes 12-5 and makes the playoffs.

Jacksonville has six red-zone giveaways in 2025 and still goes 13-4.

New England has five and goes 14-3.

So the modern turnover conversation probably needs to be somewhere between the two extremes. The old football guys were wrong if they treated every turnover like an automatic death sentence.

The advanced-stats crowd would be wrong if it acted like turnovers were mostly random noise that doesn’t matter.

They matter.

But context matters too.

Where did you turn it over?

How many points did it cost?

How good was the field position?

Did your defense bail you out?

How often were you turning the ball over compared with how much offense you were creating?

Those are much more interesting questions.

And that’s particularly true when talking about Josh Allen. I don’t want him throwing interceptions. I especially don’t want him throwing interceptions from his own 5 or in the opponent’s red zone. But I also don’t want him playing quarterback like the only goal is avoiding a negative statistic.

Because football isn’t played on a spreadsheet and the turnover column tells you that something bad happened.

It doesn’t necessarily tell you how bad it was.

Is This Finally the Most Balanced Josh Allen Team?

For most of the Josh Allen era, the Bills have had one pretty reliable plan whenever things start going sideways, and that plan is basically Josh, please fix this shit.

To be fair, that has worked out pretty well because Josh Allen is fucking awesome, but it has also been one of the weirdest things about this team for years. No matter how good the roster looked, no matter how many weapons they had, no matter how many offseason stories we got about how the defensive line was deeper now or how this was finally the year the running game would take pressure off Allen, eventually everything somehow ended up back in No. 17’s lap.

Need a first down? Josh.

Need a touchdown? Josh.

Running game disappeared? Josh.

Protection breaks down? Josh.

Defense just gave up a 12-play drive and now you need an answer? Josh again.

At a certain point, that’s not really “having a franchise quarterback.” That’s making one guy the football equivalent of the dad who gets called every time something in the house makes a weird noise.

So three games into this season, I’m starting to wonder if this might finally be the most balanced Bills team Allen has had.

I don’t mean the best, because it’s September and I have watched enough September football to know that this is the month when half the league is apparently fixed and every rookie is going to Canton.

I mean balanced.

There is a difference.

The Bills have had better offenses than this one. They have had scarier passing games. They have had stretches where they looked like the best team in football and made opposing defenses look like they had spent the week preparing for a different sport.

But a lot of those teams still had the same underlying problem: if Josh Allen wasn’t playing like one of the best quarterbacks on earth, things got uncomfortable really fast.

This team, at least so far, feels like it has a few more ways to survive.

The biggest reason for that is James Cook. He feels like somebody who can take over a stretch of a game and make the offense normal again when things are starting to get weird.

And “normal” is a wonderful thing when your quarterback’s natural instinct is occasionally to turn third-and-7 into a Die Hard movie.

Every time Cook gives Buffalo something steady, that’s one less possession where Allen has to escape two guys, reverse field, throw across his body and somehow convert a first down while half the fan base has a cardiac event.

That matters.

The receiving group has the same kind of appeal.

I don’t think this is the most talented group Allen has ever had, and I don’t think anyone is going to sit around in ten years talking about this receiving corps like it was the Greatest Show on Turf. But it might be one of the healthier groups he’s had in terms of how the offense actually functions.

There isn’t one guy where it feels like the entire passing game has to orbit around him.

One week it can be Kincaid. Another week it can be DJ Moore. Somebody else makes a big catch. Shakir gets involved. Keon Coleman is getting better and Rocking the best silver chain since Buff Bagwell in 1998. Another guy quietly moves the chains.

We have already seen what happens when an offense becomes too dependent on one relationship. Eventually defenses figure out what you’re trying to do, the quarterback starts forcing the issue, and then by January everyone is staring at the All-22 like they’re examining if they can see Sydney Sweeny’s boobs in a commercial.

This feels less complicated.

Allen can just find the open guy.

You know, quarterbacking.

But the biggest reason I think this team might actually be more balanced has nothing to do with the offense.

It’s the possibility that the defense might finally be capable of bailing Josh Allen out once in a while, and a big part of that is Greg Rousseau.

For years the Bills have had goos defensive linemen. They’ve had deep defensive lines. They’ve had guys who can get pressure and guys who can put together a really good season. What they haven’t really had, at least to me, is that one guy on the edge who makes an offense spend the week worrying about where the hell he is going to line up and whether he’s about to ruin the entire play.

Rousseau is starting to look like that guy.

And I honestly can’t remember the last Bills defensive lineman who felt like a legitimate game-wrecker quite like this. Mario Williams is probably the name I keep coming back to.

That’s a long fucking time.

The Bills have spent years searching for this. They drafted pass rushers. They signed pass rushers. They rotated seven defensive linemen at a time like eventually one of them was going to turn into Bruce Smith if they just kept everybody fresh enough.

There have been good players in there, obviously. But there is a difference between having a good pass rush and having a guy where the quarterback comes to the line already thinking about him.

Rousseau is starting to feel like that. He’s also doing it during clutch times in a game when you need a stop or sack.

Four of the six came either in a one-score game or before the game had really separated, and two were strip-sacks at the beginning and end of the Houston game.

You notice him before the ball is snapped, or where he’s lined up, or when the other team is sliding protection toward him. And when Buffalo desperately needs somebody to wreck a possession, I’m starting to expect Rousseau to be the guy who does it.

That’s something this defense has lacked.

It also changes what you can ask everybody else to do. If one player can win a matchup without Jim Leonhard having to send six guys and draw something on a cocktail napkin, suddenly everybody else’s job gets a little easier.

That’s the kind of defensive help Allen hasn’t always had.

Bills fans know there have been plenty of games over the last few years where Allen makes one mistake and immediately everyone starts doing advanced calculus.

Very normal way to watch football.

As much as I can fall into the spell or post a ton about whether this offense is averaging more yards than some previous version of the Bills or whether a national power ranking has them first this week, because congratulations to everyone involved in winning the September Power Rankings Championship.

I want to know if this team can survive when Allen isn’t the best player on the field for 60 minutes.

Because we already know he can win games by himself. We’ve seen that movie plenty of times.

The question has always been what happens when he doesn’t. The Josh Allen Bills have been very good for a long time, but being very good and being complete are not always the same thing.

There have been better Bills teams on paper. There have been more explosive offenses. There have been defenses we all talked ourselves into by October because apparently we never learn.

But this one might have a chance to be something slightly different.

For once, Buffalo doesn’t look like Josh Allen dragging a very good football team behind him while everyone else waves from the wagon.

It looks like a very good football team that happens to have Josh Allen playing quarterback.

That’s a much different thing.

And if that feeling lasts beyond September, then maybe this really is the most balanced team he has ever had.

Stathead of the Week: 5

Greg Rousseau has 6.0 sacks through Buffalo’s first three games, tying him for the fifth-highest total through three games of an NFL season since 2010.

The only bigger starts in that span belong to Shaquil Barrett (8.0), Justin Houston (7.5), DeMarcus Lawrence (6.5) and Aidan Hutchinson (6.5). Not a bad way for No. 15 to announce himself in 2026.

Buffalo social media moment of the week

I mentioned this in my stadium piece Thursday about how the Bills stadium account has gotten really into dunking on what it considers “fake outrage.” Well, here’s another one.

And maybe I’m reading this wrong, but it sure feels like this is another joke aimed at people complaining about obstructed views or the grass or did I miss something or reporting on the stadium miscues before the season.

Sorry, I’m not laughing and maybe it’s too soon for the Bills to start the comedy routine based on what happened in August. If outsiders, say the Chargers complained about the stadium, I would be fine with it. But the complaints seem to be coming from the people inside the house is another story.

If people bought tickets without fully understanding just how obstructed some of these seats would be, I don’t think making them the punchline is particularly cool. Additionally, there were a number of players and experts who weren’t fond of the grass, so it’s more than just jimmybilly7272627 complaining.

Yeah, I get it. It’s social media. It’s a cheap pop and I’m old and I still don’t get what the hell those weird 3 minute out of context videos the team posts after wins. I probably wouldn’t even care about this and know I may come across as Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud.

But they’ve been doing this a lot lately and joking about the field complaints, the obstructed views, basically being passive-aggressive toward criticism that, in some cases, is completely legitimate.

I like my stadium account to tell me about new beer, when the gates open, new gear, fireworks and whatever ridiculous food item they’re selling that week. I don’t really need it doing crowd work on fans who have legitimate complaints.

Whatever. I’m sure I’ll get shit on for saying this too by those who love the humor or think I’m just not with the times.

Dad Shots:

Last week, Dan Le Batard brought up the story that Mike McDaniel turned down the Bills head coaching job because of his relationship with Sean McDermott. I’d posted about it back in June. Maybe nobody locally picked it up because I buried it halfway through Dad Shots, which, yes, are long as fuck.

Le Batard did that thing a lot of journalists do now: “I’m hearing this, but I can’t really confirm it, so don’t blame me.” It lives in a podcast clip or a tweet, never quite making it into a reported story.

The reaction in Buffalo was basically, No way McDaniel turns down a chance to coach Josh Allen. On the surface, I get it. What annoyed me was seeing someone in the local beat dismiss the story out of hand. Why not call the Bills? Text Derek Boyko or Brandon Beane and ask. If they say it’s false, report that. You’ve got a story, you’ve got your clicks, and you’ve done more than just offer a take.

—The John Murphy story started getting legs last week. Pro Football Talk, Buffalo Business First and Awful Announcing picked it up. The Bills still haven’t commented, and as far as I can tell, nothing has changed for Murphy, except his Twitter account is gone.

Since I wrote about John Murphy losing his credential, I’ve gotten pushback from people in the media and the league community. They’ve pointed to his history of liking/commenting on suggestive posts online. I decided to check in…

One source told me they spoke with two people they believed would know why Murphy lost access. Neither knew of any connection to his online behavior. The source also raised a question I keep coming back to: if this was the reason, why did Murphy have a credential in August?

There are a number of Murph tweets responding to well…thirst traps on X that have been happening for over a year. That doesn’t rule anything out. It means the reason remains unconfirmed, and the Bills still haven’t explained their decision.

I’ve also heard through the grapevine that some people at Channel 4 didn’t even know John Murphy worked there, whether as an employee or in a part-time role. Well…I have news for those people…but Murphy has been writing for the site dating back to last year.

Even if they didn’t know he was working there, or was sitting in the break room liking thirst traps on twitter, or they thought he was the oldest intern ever…it doesn’t change the point of my report last week:

Murphy had a press credential, and then he lost it. Whether he worked one day a week, five days a week, or showed up to drive the van doesn’t explain why the credential was taken away.

I’ve also heard people debate what “part-time” means here. A source brought up Vic Carucci, saying he has a part-time arrangement with a contract as if the contract makes it part-time but with benefits. I don’t know the terms of that deal, and I’m not going to pretend I do. But TV and media work often runs on contracts and freelance gigs. A person can work regularly for an outlet without fitting neatly into the usual full-time or part-time boxes on their W4. If someone from the AP gets sick and needs someone to fill in, does that person being called in mean they are part-time or they are a freelancer? As a person with over 24 years of TV experience, that’s not called part-time..it’s called freelance.

So if the argument is that Murphy’s employment status somehow explains what happened, I’m still waiting for the connection. He was approved for a credential. Then he lost it. Why?

—Stealing Pat Moran’s stat that James Cook is 1041 yards away from passing Fred Jackson for 3rd in club history.

—These wretched Bills nickel city uniforms robbed us of this awesome jersey matchup yesterday. Pathetic!

—Let me also be the 2,000th person to crap on the NFL for fining players for mimicking drinking a beer while the league has lucrative sponsorship deals with beer companies.

It’s such classic NFL shit. Beer commercials everywhere. Beer logos everywhere. Official beer sponsors. Please gamble responsibly while drinking the official beer of the NFL.

But a player pretends to crack one open after scoring a touchdown? FINE HIM.

I’m sure there’s some line buried in the rule book about celebrations involving alcohol or protecting sponsors or whatever the fuck. Still, it’s hilarious. The NFL will happily take every dollar a beer company wants to throw at them, but they just apparently don’t want the players pretending to enjoy the product.

Fucking weirdos.

—I hate watching a zoom interview online and the person’s background is blurry. What are they hiding? It distracts me and I hate it.

— Gonna start putting together a blurb every couple of weeks of ex-Bills and see how they are doing. Pat Moran’s hero Mack Hollins seems to be doing well and Diggs might be the best #2 possession WR in football.

—Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters from the White House. Shocking, said absolutely no one. Their journalists were turned away and their credentials confiscated.

Of course he wants attention as he always wants attention. But this is also happening weeks before the midterms, when voters need reporters asking questions he doesn’t get to approve first. I can’t tell you what his private election strategy is. I can tell you that deciding which news outlets are allowed through the door is a hell of a way to head into an election. It’s going to be a shitshow.

I also really don’t need to see a fucking commercial trying to sell me on how great Donald Trump is for being a dictator during an NFL game where he’s walking towards the camera like he has a broom stuck up his ass. I don’t care what party you’re in, what algorithm decided I needed to see it, or how much somebody paid to put it in front of me. If your political pitch is basically, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if one guy had more unchecked power?” maybe that’s the part where we’ve completely lost the plot.

—We’re entering the Andy-goes-from-a-crib-to-a-big-boy-bed era. Yes, we’re late on this transition. But he recently decided he was done with the sleep sack, which feels like his way of telling us the time has come.

We bought a bunk bed. So far, it’s still sitting in the box, awaiting its big reveal like Chainsaw Charlie. “We bought” is also doing a lot of work in that sentence, because my wife is the one who will have to put it together. My handy skills are garbage. I can hold a flashlight and ask if she needs the little wrench that came with it. We also had to lock Andy’s closet because he keeps trying to change his pants at least 6x a day.

Meanwhile, Luke had the worst blowout in the history of mankind. He loves his BabyBjörn bouncer, which keeps him on a bit of an incline. Great for bouncing. Terrible for shitting. You know the old saying, “Shit rolls downhill”? On a BabyBjörn, it absolutely does. We needed a cleanup crew at the bottom of that thing.

—If you made it this far, I thank you. Do me a favor and Buy some steaks, shirts, women’s hats, peanut butter, and store 716 gear. You can also just pay me 5 bucks a month by pledging so I can show my wife that this is more than a hobby.

Have a good rest of the week and make sure you have a pumpkin flavored donut NOT from a chain.

For once, I agree with Tom Brady.

This was an ugly and fun game.

I guess.

Was I arrogant about the Bills curb-stomping the Chargers? Yes. Absolutely. I thought this was going to be one of those games where Buffalo jumped on them early and basically spent three hours reminding everyone why one team had Josh Allen and the other one had junkyard fire.

Instead, Buffalo won by eight while committing five turnovers, taking 10 penalties for 88 yards and generally looking like shit for long stretches.

And that’s the weird part.

They weren’t really getting outplayed as they were being dumb fucks.

There’s a difference.

The Chargers didn’t dominate them physically. Buffalo kept handing them opportunities with fumbles, interceptions, penalties, protection breakdowns and stupid mistakes. They basically spent most of the afternoon punching themselves in the dick and still won 24-16.

Buffalo finished with 351 yards to Los Angeles’ 348. Almost dead even. Yet the Bills turned it over five times to the Chargers’ one and still won by eight.

That’s either encouraging or terrifying.

Probably both.

Also, these uniforms are fucking awful.

I know people love alternate uniforms because something different automatically becomes cool for five minutes, but these look like Arena Football jerseys. There’s no reason to make them look like the Buffalo Destroyers are playing a Saturday night game at HSBC Arena.

And while we’re cleaning things up, enough with the Rob Gronkowski Buffalo homecoming tour.

Now he’s constantly leaning into the Western New York connection. I don’t remember much during his playing career here besides popping up around Amherst Pizza & Ale House with the family stuff everywhere and acting like this has always been some huge part of his identity.

Please.

During his playing career, being from Buffalo always felt like a footnote. He played for New England and he tortured the Bills. And, most importantly, he elbowed Tre’Davious White after the play was over which basically condemned him to hell.

Now the playing career is over and Buffalo is useful again.

Nope.

Be thankful the Bills won cause the shit jerseys and the TE meathead grifter would have been the blame.

Seven things that stood out

1. James Cook is fucking awesome

There really isn’t much more complicated analysis needed here.

24 carries. 154 yards. 6.4 yards per carry. One touchdown.

Cook was the best offensive player on the field.

And this isn’t some random hot game anymore.

This was his 18th regular-season 100-yard rushing game in 69 regular-season games. Including the playoffs, he now has 20 career 100-yard rushing games.

That means Cook has gone over 100 rushing yards in roughly one out of every four regular-season games he’s played.

He also did it one game after running for 135 against Detroit. Buffalo had turnovers everywhere, passing game was inconsistent, and the protection had problems.

Cook was the constant.

And when the Bills needed to close the game late, they went right back to him.

2. Greg Rousseau has five sacks in three games

This is getting ridiculous.

Rousseau picked up two sacks of Justin Herbert, giving him SIX through three games.

Here are his full-season sack totals:

2021: 4
2022: 8
2023: 5
2024: 8
2025: 7
2026: 6 through three games

So Rousseau already has as many sacks in three games as he had during his entire 2023 season. He already has more than he had his entire rookie season. He is one sack away from matching last year.

He is two away from tying his career high.

After three games.

He also had the six-yard tackle for loss on Keaton Mitchell early and kept showing up around Herbert.

Whatever they are doing with Rousseau in this defense, don’t touch it.

3. Did the five turnovers really matter?

Here’s one of my football pet peeves. We talk about turnovers like every turnover is exactly the same.

They’re not.

I always care about where the turnover happens.

Did you fumble at your own 15 and basically hand somebody seven points?

Did you throw an interception 50 yards downfield on third-and-long that essentially becomes a punt?

What did the other team actually do with the possession?

Buffalo turned it over five times Sunday.

That is awful. There is no way around it.

But Los Angeles scored only 16 points in the entire game. The Chargers went up 10-0 in the first quarter and scored only six points over the final three quarters.

• James Cook fumble — Buffalo 47: first offensive snap. Cook gained 4, fumbled, and LA recovered at the BUF 47.

• Josh Allen INT #1 — Buffalo 44: Allen was picked by Genesis Smith around the BUF 44, giving LA an immediate short field. This was the turnover that helped set up the Chargers’ first-quarter field goal.

• Josh Allen INT #2 — Chargers 10: Allen threw deep from his own 35 and Smith intercepted it at the LAC 10 with no return. Functionally, this one was much closer to a punt than a disaster.

• Dalton Kincaid fumble — Chargers 24: Kincaid caught a 24-yarder to the LAC 24, then fumbled; LA recovered at the LAC 17. That one hurt because Buffalo was already in scoring range.

• Josh Allen fumble — Buffalo 28: Allen was sacked, fumbled, and LA recovered at the BUF 28. That was the most dangerous field-position giveaway of the five.

So yes, the turnovers mattered. They killed Bills possessions and they prevented Buffalo from controlling the game. They are a huge reason this wasn’t a comfortable win. But the defense continually prevented those turnovers from becoming touchdowns.

Five turnovers looks catastrophic in a box score, but the actual damage wasn’t nearly as catastrophic because not all turnovers are created equal.

4. Remember when it was 10-0?

The first quarter was a disaster.

Buffalo had 22 total yards at the end of the quarter.

Their first four possessions:

Fumble.

Punt.

Interception.

Interception.

Zero points.

Then the offense suddenly remembered how to play football. The next two possessions produced 139 yards and 10 points.

They tied the game before halftime.

And Buffalo eventually finished with 351 total yards after having only 22 at the end of the first quarter.

That means the Bills generated 329 yards over the final three quarters.

The scoreboard was 10-0 Chargers.

From that point forward, Buffalo outscored them 24-6.

That is basically the game.

5. The offensive line was two completely different units

If you only watched the run blocking, you’d think the offensive line played a fantastic game.

Cook ran for 154.

Buffalo ran for 176 yards as a team.

They were moving people and Cook was consistently getting to the second level. And on the final possessions, when Los Angeles knew Buffalo wanted to run, the Bills could still run it.

The pass protection?

Different story.

Josh Allen was sacked four times for 30 yards.

Tuli Tuipulotu got him for 13 yards early.

Akheem Mesidor had a sack.

Khalil Mack got him.

Nakius Barrett and Tuipulotu split another.

Then there were the penalties.

Alec Anderson: two offensive holds.

Dion Dawkins: a hold and a false start.

Spencer Brown: a false start.

That’s five accepted penalties for 40 yards on the offensive line alone.

Dawson Knox added another holding penalty as a blocker, meaning the blocking group was responsible for six accepted penalties totaling 50 yards.

That’s absurd.

This is why I don’t want to just say “the offensive line sucked.”

They didn’t.

The run blocking was excellent.

The pass protection and discipline were absolutely not.

6. Josh Allen survived himself

Allen finished 16-of-26 for 204 yards, no passing touchdowns, two interceptions and ran for two touchdowns.

This wasn’t some MVP highlight-reel Allen game.

It was weird.

There was one play on Buffalo’s first scoring field-goal drive that drove me nuts. Allen had room to run and instead threw an incomplete pass to DJ Moore on a bad throw.

Just go.

That’s part of what makes him Josh Allen. If the passing game isn’t working and there are eight free yards sitting in front of you, take the fucking eight yards.

Still, look at what happened:

He threw two interceptions.

The Bills fumbled three times.

He got sacked four times.

Buffalo had 10 penalties.

And they still scored 24 and won by eight.

That’s not a game you put on Allen’s MVP reel.

That’s a game you survive.

Absolutely. I’d make this Blurb #7:

7. DJ Moore is a tough son of a bitch

DJ Moore isn’t going to jump off the box score from this game, but he kept making the kind of catches Buffalo needed. When he played against Detroit, every Bills twitter doctor (raises me) thought he broke his collarbone or was dead. Instead, he rehabbed and is tougher than a 2 dollar steak.

He finished with 6 catches for 67 yards, and the biggest one came late in the fourth quarter when Josh Allen hit him for 16 yards down to the Chargers’ 3-yard line. Two plays later, James Cook scored the touchdown that basically put the game away.

That catch mattered because Moore took the contact, secured the ball and got Buffalo right to the doorstep.

He’s not flashy. He’s not going to be the guy who dominates headlines every week. But he’s tough as hell, catches the ball in traffic and gives Allen a reliable target when the offense gets messy. And this game was very fucking messy whole Moore was one of the adults in the room.

Ballwasher of the Game: James Cook

Who else?

24 carries. 154 yards. 6.4 yards per carry. Touchdown.

Cook was the best player on Buffalo’s offense and probably the biggest reason a game filled with stupidity never completely went off the rails. Every time Buffalo needed something normal to happen, give Cook the ball. Every time the offense needed to settle down, give Cook the ball. When they needed to close the game, give Cook the ball.

There are going to be games where Josh Allen has to be Superman.

This wasn’t one of them.

Cook carried the offense.

Ballwasher.

Ball Breaker of the Game: Offensive Line

I know.

How do you give the Ball Breaker to the same group that helped James Cook run for 154 yards?

Because football is weird.

The run blocking was outstanding.

Everything else was a mess.

Four sacks for 30 yards.

Five accepted offensive-line penalties for 40 yards.

Multiple drives either stalled or became significantly harder because somebody held, jumped early or allowed pressure.

That is way too much self-inflicted shit.

Against the Chargers, Buffalo survived it.

Against Kansas City in January?

Good luck.

The offensive line deserves a ton of credit for what Cook did.They also deserve the Ball Breaker for making Josh Allen’s afternoon much harder than it needed to be.

Both things can be true.

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Before we get into this week’s game, I want to go down memory lane for a little bit because Bills-Chargers is one of those matchups that, for whatever reason, unlocks a ridiculous number of very specific football memories for me, which is funny because when I was growing up these teams basically never played each other.

And I mean never.

The Bills and Chargers played twice in 1985, San Diego won both games, and then they didn’t play again for 13 years, which means the entire Jim Kelly era came and went without a single Bills-Chargers game. I started watching the Bills in 1989, so by the time they finally played San Diego in the 1998 season opener, I had been watching this team for almost a decade and had never actually seen this matchup.

Of course, that first one ended up being one of the strangest games possible.

My First Bills-Chargers Game

The 1998 opener was supposed to be the beginning of the Rob Johnson era, which at the time felt like a pretty big deal because the Bills had traded a first-round pick for this guy, handed him a five-year, $25 million contract and basically decided he was going to be the quarterback who carried them into whatever came after Jim Kelly.

The above image basically describes this game for Rob as he made it about a half before getting knocked out with a concussion.

Buffalo was down 10-0 when Doug Flutie came into the game, and one thing I remember about that time is that there really wasn’t this enormous Flutie Mania when he initially signed. Obviously people knew who he was and there were people who wanted to see him play, because Buffalo has always had the “hang up and listen, the backup quarterback should start” crowd, but nobody knew what the next couple of years were going to become.

Then Flutie came into that game and was really good.

He threw a pair of touchdowns to Andre Reed, Buffalo took a 14-13 lead and suddenly this 35-year-old quarterback who had spent the previous eight seasons in Canada was about to win the opener.

John Carney eventually kicked a 54-yarder to put San Diego back ahead, but Flutie drove Buffalo down the field one more time and gave Steve Christie a chance to win it from 39 yards with three seconds left.

Christie missed.

And the funny part is that he had already missed a 21-yarder earlier in the fourth quarter, which was almost impossible to believe because Christie was one of those guys I just assumed was going to make everything.

Buffalo lost 16-14, Rob Johnson was hurt, Flutie had almost pulled off the comeback and, without any of us really knowing it yet, the Flutie-Johnson civil war had basically begun.

Apparently Rob Johnson Just Couldn’t Finish Chargers Games

Two years later, they played again, and somehow it was another completely bizarre game.

The 2000 Chargers were awful. They came into Buffalo 0-6, eventually finished 1-15 and ended up with the first pick in the draft, but somehow they had the Bills down 24-14 entering the fourth quarter.

Buffalo came back, Steve Christie tied the game and they went to overtime, where Rob Johnson — because apparently his body simply rejected playing complete games against the San Diego Chargers — separated his shoulder.

So here comes Flutie again.

Henry Jones intercepted Jim Harbaugh who is coaching on Sunday, Flutie helped move the Bills into position and Christie eventually hit a 46-yard field goal to win it 27-24. Johnson’s injury opened the door for Flutie to get the job again, and Flutie ended up going 4-1 as the starter before Johnson eventually got it back.

It really is amazing how many chapters of that quarterback controversy somehow involved the Chargers.

The Flutie-Johnson Bowl

Then came 2001, which was basically the Super Bowl for Bills fans who had spent the previous three years screaming at each other about quarterbacks.

I was an intern at WGRZ Channel 2 at the time and I remember sitting there logging the game, and it felt enormous in Buffalo because it wasn’t just Flutie against Johnson. John Butler was running the Chargers, A.J. Smith had gone there, a bunch of former Bills had followed them, and there was this feeling that half the organization had relocated to San Diego.

Ralph Wilson even said he’d rather beat the Chargers than win the Super Bowl. If Terry Pegula said something like that today, I’d probably write 2,000 words about it and mail a dead fish to his house.

The other thing I remember is that Rob Johnson was actually really good that day. He threw for 310 yards, Buffalo had a lead late and it looked like he might actually win the game everybody in Western New York had turned into a referendum on him.

Instead, Flutie did what Flutie did.

He scrambled for the go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter, Buffalo got one final opportunity and Jake Arians came out for a 44-yard field goal that would have tied it.

Blocked.

Chargers win 27-24.

The Bills ended up going 3-13 that season and San Diego went 5-11, so in the grand scheme of NFL history this game meant absolutely nothing, but if you were a Bills fan or Ralph Wilson, it felt like the spiteful Super Bowl of ass. .l

The Day the Power Went Out

Then there’s 2008, which is another one permanently stored in my brain because Buffalo entered the game 4-1, Trent Edwards was back after missing the Arizona game and Philip Rivers was on the other side.

The Bills won 23-14, Edwards went 25-of-30 for 261 yards and Buffalo improved to 5-1, and I distinctly remember thinking that maybe this was finally the year the drought was going to end.

Of course, because we’re talking about a Bills game, there also had to be something completely ridiculous happening, and part of Ralph Wilson Stadium lost power because Mylar balloons got tangled in power lines outside the stadium. The scoreboard stopped working, television monitors went out and portions of the game had to be played without the normal stadium electronics. I remember watching this game at Broadway Station in Astoria and when we got there to watch, we were asking the bartender where the hell is the game and he acted like we had 3 heads. He wasn’t sure. Finally we saw something on one of the other games explaining the situation. So we just had beers and waited until the 2nd quarter.

Buffalo was 5-1.

Trent Edwards looked good.

The Bills were going back to the playoffs.

Everything was great.

They finished 7-9.

The Nathan Peterman Game

There is no reason to spend 500 words reliving 2017, because if you watched it, you remember. Sean McDermott benched Tyrod Taylor for Nathan Peterman, Peterman threw five interceptions in the first half and the Chargers won 54-24.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a quarterback decision explode that quickly.

Moving on.

Josh Allen Start No. 1

One year later came the game that actually mattered historically, although none of us knew how much at the time.

September 16, 2018 was Josh Allen’s first NFL start.

Buffalo had just gotten annihilated by Baltimore in the opener, the Nathan Peterman experiment was mercifully over and Allen got the Chargers at home. If you’re trying to remember whether he immediately looked like the Josh Allen we watch now, let me help you out.

He did not.

Buffalo fell behind 28-6, Allen made some plays in the second half and finished with 245 passing yards, one touchdown and two interceptions in a 31-20 loss. His first NFL touchdown pass went to Kelvin Benjamin, which is a sentence that makes 2018 feel like it happened during the Bush senior administration.

That was Josh Allen Start No. 1.

Eight years later, the Chargers are coming back to Buffalo and nobody is wondering whether Josh Allen can play quarterback anymore.

They’re trying to figure out how the hell they’re going to stop him.

CHARGERS STATHEAD OF THE WEEK

Five Things About Bills-Chargers

1. The Chargers Are Already in a Hole

Two weeks into an NFL season is way too early to decide what a team is, but it’s certainly not too early to say the Chargers haven’t looked good. Los Angeles comes to Buffalo 0-2 after losing both of its first two games by the exact same score, 26-14, first against Arizona and then against Las Vegas. So we’re talking about a team that’s scored 28 points in eight quarters and has been outscored by 24 points.

Meanwhile, Buffalo has opened the season by scoring 36 against Houston and 41 against Detroit, and now the Chargers have to play their first road game of the season in Buffalo. I’m not saying an 0-2 team is dead, especially in September, but 0-3 starts getting uncomfortable very quickly.

2. Justin Herbert Is Getting Killed

If there’s one number from the first two weeks that immediately jumped out at me, it’s this one:

Justin Herbert has been pressured on 45.5% of his dropbacks, the second-highest rate among qualifying quarterbacks.

That’s basically half the time Herbert drops back to pass. And he hasn’t exactly been overcoming it, either.

His PFF grade under pressure is only 28.7. Herbert’s overall numbers haven’t been very Herbert-like, either, with 401 passing yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions through two games.

Now here comes a Buffalo defense with seven sacks through two games and a Greg Rousseau who has looked like one of the best players on the field.

If the Chargers can’t protect Herbert better than they have so far, I don’t know how much the rest of their offensive game plan is going to matter.

3. And the Chargers Aren’t Getting to the Other Quarterback

Here’s where this matchup gets particularly interesting.

While Herbert is getting pressured constantly, Los Angeles has produced only three sacks through two games, which is tied for 25th in the NFL. And the Chargers haven’t been an especially blitz-heavy defense, either, with a blitz rate of roughly 25.6%.

So this is one of the things I’m watching immediately on Sunday. Do they trust their front four and continue playing the way they’ve played during the first two weeks, or does Chris O’Leary decide that letting Josh Allen stand comfortably in the pocket is an even worse idea and start sending extra people?

Because that’s the problem with Allen.

Blitz him and you better get there.

Don’t blitz him and you better have somebody who can win one-on-one.

Neither option is particularly appealing.

4. The Turnover Difference Is Massive

Buffalo is plus-2 in turnover differential and Los Angeles is minus-4.

Josh Allen has thrown five touchdown passes without an interception, while Herbert has thrown two touchdowns and three interceptions. Los Angeles has five giveaways through two games compared with only one takeaway, and against Las Vegas alone Herbert threw two interceptions while Omarion Hampton lost a fumble. That’s a six-turnover difference between these teams after two weeks.

5. The Chargers Are Already Getting Beat Up

The other problem for Los Angeles is that the injury report is getting crowded very early. David Njoku and Charlie Kolar are both headed to injured reserve, which leaves Oronde Gadsden as the only tight end currently on the Chargers’ active roster. Trey Pipkins III is dealing with a knee injury, which isn’t exactly what you want when your quarterback is already getting pressured on almost half his dropbacks, and Derwin James has a fractured finger, although he’s expected to try to play through it.

6. Don’t buy the West Coast-to-East Coast narrative

You always hear about West Coast teams struggling when they have to fly across the country for an early game, but the Chargers haven’t exactly been bothered by it. Since 2020, Los Angeles is 13–6 in regular-season road games played in Eastern Time Zone stadiums, including a 4–1 mark in 2024.

Buffalo was actually one of the teams to get them during that stretch, beating Justin Herbert and the Chargers 27–17 in Orchard Park in 2020.

Scoring: There’s No Advanced Stat Necessary

Sometimes we make football more complicated than it needs to be.

The Chargers scored 14 points in Week 1.

Then they scored 14 points in Week 2.

Buffalo has scored 77 points through two games.

Los Angeles has scored 28.

Whatever advanced statistic you want to use, eventually somebody has to cross the goal line.

The funny thing about Bills-Chargers is that these teams haven’t played enough for this to feel like any sort of rivalry, yet somehow almost every time I think about this matchup I remember something weird.

Doug Flutie replacing an injured Rob Johnson, then doing it again two years later. The Flutie-Johnson Bowl. Ralph Wilson apparently deciding a Week 8 game against a bad Chargers team was more important than the Super Bowl. Balloons knocking out the power at the Ralph. Nathan Peterman throwing five interceptions in a half. Josh Allen making his first NFL start. For a matchup that basically disappeared for my entire childhood, Bills-Chargers has given me a surprising amount of shit to remember.

We’ll see what gets added to the list Sunday.

PREDICTION

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I know what you’re thinking.

Another stadium piece, Joe? Really?

Why? Can’t you take a hint? The thing is built. The Bills are playing there. Not everything is a conspiracy theory!? Cue up @thebuffaloguy716 yelling at me in my DMs. Even the Bills stadium Twitter account is dunking on us fake-outrage stadium people at this point.

I tried to move on.

Then Kathy Hochul and Terry Pegula started talking.

Last week, with the new stadium getting ready for its first regular-season game, there was a lot of reminiscing about the Bills, the stadium, and how there was supposedly this very real possibility that the team could have left Buffalo if all of this didn’t come together.

Kathy Hochul went on WGR last week and casually dropped something that caught my attention.

Apparently, things were serious.

Not “the Bills need a new stadium or someday we could have a problem” serious. Hochul said there were “a lot of other cities” courting the Bills, that the team was frustrated with Albany and that, at one point, it was “not a given” they were staying in Buffalo.

Oh?

This is news to me.

Then Terry Pegula sat down for a rare interview, and what I assumed would basically be a ball-washing tour of the new stadium by him — the amenities, the booze, the clubs, the giant buffalo and everything else resembling one of those paid Disney resort infomercials you accidentally find on YouTube — turned into another conversation about saving the Buffalo Bills and not before he bought the team..but afterwards. Cleveland came up. Other cities came up. The ghosts of franchises that packed up and left their fans behind came up.

By the end of opening week, I wasn’t sure if we were celebrating a new football stadium or being told that Kathy Hochul, Terry Pegula, PSLs, and $850 million in public money had combined to save the Bills universe for the 200th different version of “We Saved the buffalo bills! [“back to the future” save the clock tower voice]

And that’s where I started having questions.

Listening to some of it made me wonder if I remembered the last 12 years completely differently than everybody else. It felt like a victory lap, and I don’t necessarily mean that as an insult to fans. As for politicians, some media and the NFL…I have questions.

The politicians got their victory lap, Terry Pegula got his, and Bills fans certainly got theirs, and I completely understand why people are emotional about it. If you grew up in Western New York, there absolutely was a time when losing the Bills felt possible, especially as Ralph Wilson got older and nobody knew what would happen after he died. And trust me, I wasn’t sitting there thinking the Bills were never going anywhere.

From 2010 through 2014, when I was running Buffalo Wins, I was scared shitless about it. I wrote about the Toronto experiment, relocation and how the organization, specifically Russ Brandon, seemed to treat those concerns like bullshit. I didn’t believe Jim Kelly had some mystery group of investors who were automatically going to save the team, and I didn’t assume some local billionaire would magically appear. Ralph Wilson wasn’t going to live forever, and I didn’t know what happened next.

Then Terry Pegula bought the Bills, and that’s where my memory gets different from the story we’re telling now, because once Pegula bought the team, I basically stopped worrying about relocation. Not worried a little less, not figured the odds had improved, I mean the thought pretty much left my brain. Pegula buying the Bills felt like the ending to that story. Maybe I was naive, or maybe conversations were happening behind the scenes that none of us knew about, but relocation just didn’t feel like the boogeyman anymore.

Even when the stadium conversation got serious in the early 2020s, most of what I remember was about the stadium itself. The Buffalo News was constantly reporting about the condition of the old stadium, and the debate was downtown or Orchard Park, renovate or build new, dome or no dome, how much would it cost and who was going to pay for it? There was also this random dude from Legends or whatever that stadium builder company was, who looked straight out of the Trump Administration of angry Stephen Miller school, who went on local TV stations to talk shit about wanting more public money, and Tim Graham mentioned how this guy was going about it in a very abrasive carpetbagger way and didn’t know the region, which we ended up never seeing this guy again. There was the Austin story, which got crapped on pretty heavily locally, but I don’t remember 2018 through 2023 feeling like Buffalo was constantly one bad meeting away from Terry Pegula packing up the Bills and leaving.

Those aren’t the same thing.

Ron Raccuia, who was negotiating on behalf of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, was directly asked in 2021 if the Bills had ever threatened to leave Buffalo. His answer was “None.” He said they hadn’t discussed anything with another market and were focused on getting a deal done in Buffalo. He also made it clear the Bills wouldn’t renew their existing lease without a new stadium agreement, so yes, there was pressure. But there’s a difference between pressure to get a stadium deal done and Terry Pegula seriously considering moving the Buffalo Bills.

If the second thing happened, tell us.

Were there proposals, meetings or legitimate offers?

What cities were involved?

How far did it get?

Did the NFL get involved?

Now Graham did have a piece last year that indicated through sources that moving was talked about.

At this point, you might be thinking I should just scrap this breaking take and go back to Jim Harbaugh vs Jim Kelly fights, but this isn’t about which politician gets credit for saving the Bills. It’s about figuring out what actually happened during the process of trying to get a stadium done before shovels hit the ground , what fans were told while it was happening, and what we’re being told now that everything worked out.

It reminds me of the Russ Brandon era. Back then, reporters asking what would happen after Ralph Wilson were sometimes treated like they were stirring up unnecessary panic. Everything was fine, stop worrying, stop asking. Then after the Pegulas bought the team, Brandon went on WGR and essentially said thank God for Terry and Kim Pegula because he didn’t know where the Bills would be without them. So if there was another serious relocation threat during the stadium negotiations, give us the middle of the story too, not just the ending where Buffalo was saved.

And that brings me to Terry Pegula. Terry actually talked extensively recently, which happens about as often as Halley’s Comet, and I enjoyed Tyler Dunne’s piece and thought he got some interesting stuff out of Pegula about the stadium and organization.

But there’s still one question I wish Terry would answer himself: Why did Bills fans have to pay PSLs?

I know what a PSL is, and I know other NFL teams use them. I want Terry Pegula to explain why he believed they were necessary in Buffalo. This is a stadium that received an enormous public investment, owned by a billionaire whose franchise has increased tremendously in value, and some season-ticket holders were then asked to spend thousands of dollars for the right to continue spending money on their tickets. That’s a significant ask, and I think it’s reasonable to want the owner to explain it.

Not Pete Guelli, not somebody from the ticket office and not a carefully worded FAQ. Terry. How much of the private financing depended on PSL revenue? What would the alternative have been? Was building the stadium without PSLs seriously considered?

Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable answer. My point isn’t that PSLs automatically make Terry Pegula some evil billionaire counting everybody’s money. My point is that Bills fans deserve something more substantial than, “Well, that’s what everybody does.”

The new stadium is here, the Bills have long-term stability in Western New York, and that’s worth celebrating even though I feel we’ve done that for over a decade. But celebrating the stadium doesn’t mean we have to rewrite how things felt after Pegula bought the team, and celebrating the fact that the Bills stayed doesn’t mean we have to stop asking stadium questions.

Maybe the Bills really were closer to leaving than I ever realized, and if they were, someone tell us the whole story. When Ralph died, there were vetted out stories every week in BN, AP, and local stations about what was happening. It was cutthroat by all parties involved for leaks and it eventually settled down when Terry bought the team.

The timing from 2018-2026 just felt like press releases, renderings, and debate on the size of the Buffaloes. Maybe if there had been more reporting at the time about the actual danger of the Bills leaving for Texas, instead of the usual day-to-day Bills chatter from some of the same media members now telling us how close the team came to leaving, I’d remember this differently. But I don’t, and that’s kind of my point.

And maybe PSLs really were absolutely necessary to make this whole thing work. If they were, tell us that story too…preferably from Terry Pegula.

Because after the victory laps are finished, after the politicians take their bows and after the Bills finally play a real football game in this building, the fans who helped pay for the thing deserve to know exactly how we got here.

Were we really that close to losing the Bills and simply kept in the dark about how serious things had become, or is some of what we’re hearing now political theater, with everyone taking credit for saving something that, at least publicly, we weren’t being told was actually on the verge of disappearing? If it was the first one, tell us the story, because if it was the second, that’s a very different kind of victory lap.

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I was going through old Buffalo News stories while working on Bills-Chargers stuff, because apparently this is what my life has become, when I stumbled back onto the Jim Kelly-Jim Harbaugh fight which I tweeted about briefly.

I remembered the fight and some body part was broken. But that’s it…

What I did not remember was how completely fucking ridiculous the entire story was, or that a few months later Harbaugh and Kelly would essentially end up connected to the same quarterback job in Baltimore, Peyton Manning draft status could have been effected by this, and then Harbaugh as a future Bills coach.

So rather than simply tell you what happened, we’re going to do this the old-fashioned way.

Let’s go to the newspaper clippings [George Michaels voice]

First, Jim Kelly discovers television

After Kelly retired after the 1996 season and before he became spokesperson for your parents favorite cars and hospitals, he immediately went into broadcasting.

It apparently took him approximately five minutes to discover one of the great joys of being in the media:

Calling players soft.

Look at this paragraph:

“Kelly’s criticism of Harbaugh on his Channel 2 show for being a baby who overdramatized his pain received a lot more attention than his subsequent softening of it.”

I’m sorry.

A BABY WHO OVERDRAMATIZED HIS PAIN!!!

Jim Kelly had barely gotten the shoulder pads off before becoming the boomer guy on television questioning whether current players were tough enough. And the clipping actually makes the story more interesting because Kelly apparently realized he’d gone a little far. He later went on NFL Live, stood by the general criticism but conceded that he’d been harsher than he intended.

Which is essentially:

I shouldn’t have called him a gigantic baby.

Medium-sized baby.

Unfortunately, Jim Harbaugh had heard the first version.

Harbaugh would like a word

Harbaugh was upset because Kelly had reportedly described him as a “baby,” questioned his courage and accused him of overdramatizing injuries.

And Harbaugh took that personally.

Very personally.

Kelly was in San Diego with NBC to broadcast Colts-Chargers. Harbaugh confronted him during the weekend, Kelly was reportedly shoved against a wall, the two ended up wrestling on the floor and Harbaugh threw a punch.

And broke his hand.

His throwing hand.

Again:

NFL QUARTERBACK BREAKS THROWING HAND PUNCHING RETIRED NFL QUARTERBACK BECAUSE RETIRED NFL QUARTERBACK QUESTIONED WHETHER NFL QUARTERBACK WAS TOUGH.

We’re eight paragraphs into this thing and 1997 is already winning.

But Harbaugh was just trying to be professional

Now we get to my favorite quote.

Colts director of football operations Bill Tobin -the angry guy who yelled at Mel Kiper- explained that Harbaugh wanted Kelly to apologize or explain himself.

And apparently Harbaugh intended to handle this:

“in a professional manner.”

Excellent.

I also conduct most of my professional disagreements by breaking bones in my hand…just ask Pat Moran.

Tobin then provided the understatement of the century:

“It didn’t work that way.”

No, Bill.

It did not.

And Harbaugh basically admitted the whole thing

Here’s Harbaugh afterward:

“I regret throwing the punch, but I felt I had to do something since my toughness was being questioned.”

THIS IS INCREDIBLE.

My toughness has been questioned and therefore I must punch Jim Kelly. Unfortunately, I have now broken my hand punching Jim Kelly and cannot perform my job as an NFL quarterback.

But nobody can question my toughness.

Mission accomplished.

Indianapolis considered it a non-football injury, which meant Harbaugh wasn’t entitled to his salary while he couldn’t play.

So Harbaugh managed to get injured, lose money and miss football games while attempting to prove that Jim Kelly was wrong about him exaggerating injuries.

The craziest butterfly effect

Here’s the part that broke my brain.

Harbaugh broke his hand punching Kelly and missed three games. The Colts went 1–2, including a 31–28 loss to Tampa Bay, and eventually finished an NFL-worst 3–13.

The Colts were just 2 years removed from almost going to the Super Bowl when they lost to the Steelers and the season before they were a wildcard team. Those two seasons gave Jim Harbaugh the moniker “Captain Comeback” They also beat the Packers -who went to the Super Bowl against Denver- during this 3-13 campaign. So maybe I’m overhyping them to make this story work, but they don’t feel like your traditional doormat.

Their reward for finishing last? The No. 1 pick and Peyton Manning.

If Harbaugh doesn’t punch Kelly, plays those games and the Colts win just one more, they finish 4–12 and potentially lose the No. 1 pick. And suddenly they’re thrown into a five-team tie with Arizona, San Diego, Oakland and Chicago instead of owning the first pick outright.

And sitting right behind Manning in that draft was Ryan Leaf.

I’m not saying Jim Kelly is responsible for Peyton Manning becoming an Indianapolis Colt….But I’m also not not saying it

Jim Kelly’s version: What fight?

Now here’s where this becomes an all-time quarterback pissing contest.

Years later Kelly was asked about the incident again on WFAN.

Kelly:

“I went on TV the next day, there was not a mark on me.”

Ohhhhhhhhhh.

Then:

“To be honest with you, I don’t even know how he broke his hand.”

HAHAHAHA.

That is so wonderfully disrespectful.

Jim Harbaugh says he punched me? Weird. Couldn’t tell you. I looked fantastic the next morning.

Kelly described it as “pretty much just a little scrap” and acknowledged that Harbaugh was angry about something he’d said. This is essentially two quarterbacks arguing about the box score of a bar fight or me and Pat arguing about one of the Italian Bills beat guys.

This is where the rabbit hole got me because several months later, Jim Kelly started thinking about playing football again.

And he had a very logical destination.

Baltimore.

Ted Marchibroda was coaching the Ravens. Marchibroda had been Kelly’s offensive coordinator in Buffalo and helped develop the K-Gun offense. Baltimore wasn’t thrilled with its quarterback situation and expressed interest in Kelly.

Kelly was 38.

He’d been retired for more than a year.

But this wasn’t completely imaginary. Baltimore wanted to know whether Jim Kelly wanted to be an NFL quarterback again.

Eventually Kelly made his decision.

Months after Harbaugh confronted Kelly over questioning his toughness, Baltimore was interested in bringing Kelly out of retirement.

Kelly said no.

And Baltimore’s answer was…

JIM HARBAUGH.

That guy became Baltimore’s quarterback instead.

You could not write a more ridiculous epilogue….until..

Post Harbaugh playing and Kelly TV careers

The weird postscript to all of this came more than a decade later. After the 2009 season, when Buddy Nix was searching for a new Bills head coach, Jim Harbaugh’s name was out there. Harbaugh later said he didn’t believe he had done enough at Stanford yet to deserve an NFL head-coaching job, while carefully refusing to confirm or deny whether Buffalo had actually been interested in him.

And I swear to God, I want to say somebody in the Buffalo media at the time wondered or hinted whether the whole Kelly-Harbaugh fiasco from 1997 might have made Harbaugh and the Bills an awkward match. By then, Kelly wasn’t just the retired franchise quarterback. He was still closely tied to the Bills as an employee/ambassador and was basically the organization’s biggest preacher/charlatan for Buffalo and keeping the franchise in Western New York. He definitely had Ralph Wilson’s ear.

Years later, Harbaugh became much more open about what actually happened that day. And because this story somehow gets better every time another detail is added, his version basically confirmed that it was every bit as ridiculous as the original newspaper accounts made it sound.

.

The part I love is how matter-of-fact Harbaugh eventually became about the whole thing. Yeah, I went looking for Jim Kelly. Yeah, I threw a couple punches. Yeah, I broke my hand doing it.

And even his regret came with a qualifier: he regretted throwing the punch, but still felt at the time that he had to do something because Kelly had questioned his toughness.

Almost 30 years later, Harbaugh is coming back to Buffalo as the Chargers head coach. It may actually be the first time he’s been back since 1997 as when he only coached one game with the 49ers and that was on the road. Kelly will almost certainly be somewhere around the building.

Please, for the love of God, keep these two away from the NBC production meeting..

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There are a million different ways to look at change in the NFL, especially when you’re talking about a defense changing coordinators, changing schemes and changing a bunch of the people actually playing in it.

Sometimes it works immediately. Sometimes it takes a year. Sometimes it takes two. And sometimes everybody spends six months talking themselves into how it’s eventually going to work before realizing the whole thing just sucks.

Bills fans have seen pretty much every version of this.

I remember Wade Phillips’ defense giving way to Gregg Williams, and that sure as hell wasn’t an overnight transformation. I remember Dave Wannstedt giving way to Mike Pettine and suddenly it felt like the Bills were playing a completely different sport. Then Pettine left, Jim Schwartz came in and changed it again. Then Rex Ryan arrived after Schwartz and inherited one of the best defenses in football, only to make everybody wonder why the hell we needed to change it in the first place.

Which brings us to Jim Leonhard.

Two games.

That’s it.

So I’m not going to sit here and tell you Jim Leonhard has fixed the Bills defense, and I’m also not ready to tell you this thing is a disaster because C.J. Stroud and Jared Goff threw the ball all over the place.

What I can tell you is that it’s different.

And the numbers are fucking weird.

Through two games, the Bills have allowed 62 points, 31 in each game. Opposing quarterbacks have completed 52 of 76 passes for 546 net passing yards, six touchdowns, zero interceptions and a 118.4 passer rating.

That’s terrible.

There really isn’t a nice way to dress that up.

But then I look at the pass rush and wonder what the hell I’m supposed to make of this defense.

Buffalo has seven sacks, 25 pressures, 10 quarterback knockdowns and seven hurries. Their pressure-to-sack rate is 29.1%, which ranks third in the NFL through two weeks. That’s up from 19% last season and 12.8% in 2024.

Here’s the strange part: their overall pressure rate is only 27.1%, which is in the bottom quarter of the league.

So the Bills aren’t constantly getting to the quarterback. But when they do, they’re actually putting his ass on the ground.

And that’s where I wanted to go back and look at this differently.

HOW DIFFERENT IS THIS FROM THE LAST SIX YEARS?

Instead of throwing another wall of numbers at you, I put the first two games of every Bills season since 2020 into the graphic below, and there are a couple things that immediately jump out.

First, blitzing and creating pressure are not remotely the same thing.

The best example is 2022, which remains the holy-shit comparison for me. Buffalo barely blitzed at all and still got to the quarterback constantly, while creating turnovers and keeping teams off the scoreboard.

Compare that with 2020, when the Bills were sending extra rushers all over the place without getting nearly the same return. That’s why I’m not particularly interested in whether Leonhard is blitzing more or less than Sean McDermott did. I’m interested in whether the pressure actually accomplishes something.

And through two games, that’s where this gets weird.

The Bills are getting pressure, sacks.l and hitting quarterbacks. They’re also getting absolutely torched when the quarterback gets the ball out. That’s the disconnect I’m trying to figure out with this defense.

The pass rush looks like it might be better.

The pass defense sure as hell doesn’t.

And somehow both things can be true at the same time.

HERE ARE THE PERCENTAGES

I’m using opponent pass attempts as the common denominator because I wanted the same calculation for all seven seasons.

These are NOT official blitz and pressure rates. It’s simply blitzes and pressures divided by opponent pass attempts.

And look at that last number.

Buffalo’s 32.9 pressures per 100 opponent pass attempts is the second-highest figure through two games in this entire seven-year sample, trailing only 2021. Yet the 118.4 passer rating they’ve allowed is easily the worst.

That’s Jim Leonhard’s defense after two games in one sentence.

They’re affecting quarterbacks and simultaneously getting murdered by quarterbacks.

BUT WHO THE HELL WERE THEY PLAYING?

This is where I think the comparison gets more interesting, because allowing 45 points against one set of quarterbacks isn’t necessarily the same thing as allowing 45 against another.

So who did Buffalo actually face in those first two games…teams that weren’t very good. Only 3 teams here finished above .500 and that was 2020 and 2021.

Houston is currently 0-2 and Detroit is 1-1, so obviously we can’t compare their records directly with see completed 17-game seasons yet.

But from a quarterback standpoint, that’s a pretty serious opening test.

Stroud threw for 274 yards and two touchdowns.

Then Goff threw for 327 yards and four touchdowns.

That’s 601 gross passing yards and six touchdowns in two games.

So when I say this is the worst opponent passer rating Buffalo has allowed through two games in this sample, there’s at least some context that has to come with it.

This isn’t Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson.

It’s Stroud and Goff.

Now, that doesn’t excuse a 118.4 passer rating, or six touchdown passes, and it sure as hell doesn’t excuse allowing 31 points in consecutive games.

But it does make me less interested in simply lining up the points-allowed column and declaring one Bills defense better than another.

The competition matters.

AND 2022 IS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF WHY

That 2022 start looks fucking ridiculous statistically.

Seventeen points allowed.

Nine sacks.

Five interceptions.

One passing touchdown.

51.0 opponent passer rating.

And at the time, it looked even better because Buffalo had just beaten the defending Super Bowl champions and then destroyed Derrick Henry and Tennessee.

But those teams eventually went a combined 12-22.

The 2025 opponents finished a combined 11-23.

The 2024 opponents went 16-18.

The 2023 opponents went 15-19.

The 2021 opponents went 18-15-1.

The 2020 opponents went 12-20.

Again, I’m not using that to excuse Leonhard.

I’m using it because if we’re going to compare seven different Bills defenses after exactly two games, we should probably acknowledge they didn’t take the same test.

AGGRESSIVE DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN BLITZING

This is something I think we got wrong when Leonhard was hired.

We heard aggressive.

We heard attacking.

We saw where he came from.

And I think a lot of us immediately translated that into blitzing the shit out of everybody. But Leonhard said before the season that Buffalo was going to be aggressive without being reckless, and that how you attack a quarterback has to change depending on who you’re playing.

That’s important.

The Bills went from the 4-3/nickel foundation we’ve watched forever under Sean McDermott to Leonhard’s 3-4 structure.

The outside linebackers can rush or they can drop or Buffalo can show five and send four or they can move people around before the snap.

The offense has to figure out where the fourth rusher is coming from instead of simply counting how many guys are standing near the line of scrimmage.

That’s aggression, too.

And we’re already seeing some evidence that it’s working.

GREG ROUSSEAU MIGHT BE EXHIBIT A

If you’re looking for the player who appears to have benefited most from this change so far, it’s Greg Rousseau.

Four sacks in two games.

Two against Houston.

Two against Detroit.

He’s now only the second Bills player in franchise history to record at least two sacks in each of the first two games of a season.The other guy was Bruce Smith. Pretty decent company.

Rousseau had six pressures against Detroit alone, and he’s talked about how the move to Leonhard’s 3-4 defense has helped him.

And Rousseau isn’t doing this by himself.

Deone Walker has been causing problems in the middle. Bradley Chubb got his first sack as a Bill against Detroit, and Buffalo finished with four sacks of Goff. Detroit was missing three starting offensive linemen, so I’m not hanging a banner for it. But that’s what you’re supposed to do when an offensive line is missing three starters.

Destroy it.

THE PART THAT SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF ME

Six passing touchdowns.

Zero interceptions.

That’s the part I can’t explain away with scheme changes or small samples.

Look at the first two games of every season for passing TDs:

2020: 3

2021: 1

2022: 1

2023: 2

2024: 2

2025: 3

2026: 6

That’s twice as many as any Bills defense in this seven-year sample. And while Buffalo has created turnovers with forced fumbles, the lack of interceptions still matters because Leonhard spent the offseason talking about attacking the football and creating turnovers.

The Bills are also allowing a ton after the catch.

So the YAC itself isn’t unprecedented.

The problem is they’re getting hit everywhere. They’ve also allowed 361 air yards, the most in this seven-year sample. This isn’t just quarterbacks checking it down for seven yards while Bills defenders rally to the football. They’re giving up stuff downfield AND they’re giving up yards after the catch and that’s how you end up with a 118.4 passer rating.

AND THEN THERE’S THE RUN DEFENSE

This is where the whole thing gets even stranger. The Bills have allowed only 190 rushing yards through two games, 95 per game and 3.6 yards per carry.

So we’ve got a defense that can stop the run, sack the quarterback and produce 25 pressures in two games.

We’ve got a defense converting pressures into sacks at one of the best rates in football.

And we’ve got a defense allowing 31 points per game.

Make it make sense.

STOCK UP: GREG ROUSSEAU

If anybody looks like he was waiting his entire career for Jim Leonhard to show up, it’s Greg Rousseau.

Rousseau averaged about 26 pressures and six sacks per season over his first five years in Buffalo.

Two games into 2026, he already has 16 pressures and four sacks.

Sixteen pressures.

That’s more than 60% of what he averaged over an entire season before Leonhard got here.

And it isn’t just sacks.

PFF has him with six quarterback hits, six hurries and three forced fumbles already, while grading him as the third-best pass rusher among qualifying edge defenders.

This is what I mean when I say the defense can simultaneously look encouraging and terrifying.

Leonhard moved Rousseau from a traditional defensive-end role to outside linebacker in the new front, and so far Rousseau looks fucking unleashed.

STOCK DOWN: CHRISTIAN BENFORD

And then there’s Christian Benford, which might be the most concerning individual development on the entire defense.

From 2022 through 2025, quarterbacks targeting Benford had an 85.8 passer rating. He allowed 62.4% of those passes to be completed and only 6.7 yards per target.

This year?

PFF has his passer rating allowed at 122.2.

He’s already surrendered the following:

11 completions

zero interceptions

owns a 37.2 coverage grade

87th out of 92 qualifying cornerbacks.

That’s not a small drop….That’s falling off a fucking cliff.

And this is where I’m curious about Leonhard beyond simply looking at the box score, because Benford spent his career becoming one of the league’s better corners in a defense built heavily around zone coverage.

Before this season, quarterbacks had produced only a 68.5 rating targeting him in zone, compared with 110.7 in man.

If Leonhard is asking him to play differently, maybe we’re watching the growing pains happen in real time. That doesn’t mean Benford can’t play in this defense, and two games sure as hell don’t erase four years of evidence that he can play cornerback.

But through two games, the two players might be the perfect representation of the entire Jim Leonhard experiment.

Greg Rousseau looks like Leonhard unlocked something.

Christian Benford looks like Leonhard changed something.

Now we have to find out whether both of those things are permanent.

Final word

Maybe the best way to describe Jim Leonhard’s defense after two games: there’s enough working that I’m not ready to panic and enough going wrong that I’m sure as hell not ready to celebrate. The front looks better, Rousseau looks unleashed, they’re getting quarterbacks on the ground and the run defense has done its job.

But you don’t get to give up 31 points every week and point to pressure numbers as proof everything is fine. Eventually those pressures have to create bad throws, those bad throws have to become interceptions, and somebody in the secondary has to stop turning every completion into another first down.

That’s why I’m more fascinated by this defense than discouraged by it. The Bills didn’t make this change because the old defense was terrible, they made it because being pretty good wasn’t good enough anymore, especially when January kept ending the same fucking way. So I’m willing to live with some September growing pains if Leonhard is building a defense that looks different when the games actually matter. But that’s the standard now and they didn’t hire Jim Leonhard to make this defense different.

They hired him to make January different

The Press Box Has Empty Seats but John Murphy Still Doesn’t Have One

Back on August 30, I wrote about what I called “The Curious Case of John Murphy’s Bills Credential.” A media source told me Murphy had been granted a credential for the first preseason game at the new Highmark Stadium, although he ultimately didn’t attend, and then was denied a credential for the regular season.

The explanation I was given at the time was that Murphy was working part time. There was just one little problem with that explanation. Vic Carucci also works part time and, according to my source, had been credentialed.

So I asked the obvious question: What changed between then and now? I even wrote, “HMMMMMMM I WONDER?????” because Murphy had recently written a column questioning whether first-year head coach Joe Brady had enough experience to lead a Super Bowl contender.

Well, Alan Pergament talked to Murphy for his latest Buffalo News column, and now we have a whole lot more information.

And you know what?

HMMMMMMM I STILL WONDER?????

Pergament reports that Murphy said Bills vice president of marketing Chris Jenkins told him in mid-July that he would receive a credential for the season. Murphy also said he was shown where he would be seated.

COME ON.

This makes the part-time explanation I was given a month ago look even more ridiculous. John Murphy didn’t suddenly become part time in August. He was already part time when, according to Murphy, a Bills executive told him he’d have a season credential. He was part time when they apparently showed him the freaking seat.

And I can confirm this as a source provided me the seating chart for the Carolina Panthers preseason game.

So what changed?

Pergament reports that more than a month later, Murphy wrote a column questioning Joe Brady and that two days after the column ran, Murphy received a text from Channel 4 sports director Josh Reed saying the station was unable to get credentials for Murphy and photographer James P. McCoy because part-timers don’t receive them.

Two days.

Did somebody at One Bills Drive read the column and suddenly discover Murphy’s employment status?

“WAIT A MINUTE. SOMEBODY CHECK THIS GUY’S HOURS!”

When Pergament asked Murphy if he believed the Brady column had something to do with losing his credential, Murphy said: “I think so, but I don’t know.”

I’ll go further than Murph.

I think it did because I’m also capable of reading a calendar.

July: You’re getting a credential, John. Here’s where you’re sitting.

August: John writes something critical of Joe Brady.

Two days later: Sorry, John. Part-timers.

That’s one hell of a coincidence. And let’s remember the apparently dangerous opinion Murphy expressed.

Pergament describes Murphy’s column as arguing that Brady’s inexperience as a head coach could be the one thing preventing the Bills from winning a Super Bowl.

That’s it.

He didn’t call Brady an idiot. He didn’t demand he be fired. He didn’t accuse him of running an underground dog-fighting ring in Orchard Park. He wrote a football opinion about whether a rookie head coach could successfully navigate a Super Bowl-or-bust season.

CALL THE FBI.

And somehow the story gets even more ridiculous from there.

Pergament reports that Murphy later wrote another column predicting the Bills would win 10 games. According to Murphy, a Channel 4 digital producer told him the station needed to pause his column and couldn’t publish it because of pressure from the Bills.

Excuse me?

Channel 4 couldn’t run a 10-win prediction column? What was in the second half of it, nuclear launch codes?

If Murphy’s account is accurate, this is where Channel 4 comes off looking like cowards to me. You’re a news organization. You have John Murphy writing commentary about the Buffalo Bills. The Buffalo Bills allegedly don’t like something John Murphy wrote.

Shouldn’t your response basically be, “Thanks for reading”?

Instead, we’re apparently protecting Western New York from the dangerous thoughts of John Murphy.

Is that how we’re treating John Murphy?

The guy suffered a stroke. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Murphy when he worked for the Bills as he was definitely drinking the kool-aid and doing the Bills dirty work. But he’s the guy who spent decades covering and broadcasting this football team. He was the voice for the team for 20+ years.

What exactly is he allowed to write?

Josh Allen is good. The Bills are good. Joe Brady is good. The new stadium is good. Everything is good. Go Bills.

END COLUMN.

And we’re talking about a 10-win prediction!

That’s not exactly a scorched-earth takedown of the organization. Apparently predicting that an NFL team might lose six games is now too spicy for publication.

People have been predicting the Bills to disappoint for 65 years, but apparently when John Murphy did it, Channel 4 needed to activate the emergency broadcast system

Pergament writes that the demand for press-box credentials is extremely high, with the Bills saying the new press box has fewer seats available than the old one and that there are more media requests than available seats.

That’s completely believable. It’s the first season in a brand-new stadium. Every outlet that has ever written the word “Bills” probably wants somebody in there. Of course space is at a premium.

There’s just one teeny, tiny problem.

According to my source, there were unassigned seats all over the place, including seats right next to the Channel 4 contingent. And let me make an important distinction here. I’m not talking about no-shows. If somebody receives a credential and gets sick, misses a flight or decides not to attend, that’s not the Bills’ fault.

I’m talking about seats that, according to my source, were not assigned to anybody. Dozens of them throughout the press box. Think I’m bullshitting you? Well here’s the seating chart and check out the WIVB side.

So please don’t tell me there simply wasn’t a chair available for John Murphy. Apparently there were chairs available for people who DIDN’T EXIST. I don’t know if Pergament was free-styling the in demand part or if he was tipped off, but for a primetime game and it being the first regular season game ever to have that many open seats tells me the math ain’t mathing.

Pergament also reports that the new 97 Rock booth is smaller than the old WGR booth, making it difficult for Murphy to watch the game from there.

Fine.

Nobody is suggesting they shove John Murphy underneath Chris Brown’s desk. There’s a press box. It apparently contains chairs. According to my source, some of those chairs didn’t have anybody assigned to them.

Here’s an insane idea:

Put John Murphy in one.

Then we get to the part of Pergament’s story that actually makes me feel bad for the guy.

Murphy told Pergament: “They didn’t fight for me.”

That sucks.

We’re talking about someone who called Bills games for decades, suffered a stroke and ultimately had to give up the job he’d spent a huge chunk of his life doing.

Pergament recalls Brandon Beane telling Murphy when he stepped away from the radio job that he would “always be a Buffalo legend.”

That’s nice.

Apparently Buffalo legends are welcome forever, provided they don’t criticize the head coach. I’m not saying John Murphy is constitutionally entitled to a press credential for the remainder of his natural life because he called Bills games. Credentials aren’t gold watches.

But this isn’t even really about that anymore.

If Murphy had applied for a credential in August, the Bills said there wasn’t enough space and that was the end of the story, fine. I’d probably still think John Murphy deserved consideration, but there wouldn’t be much mystery.

That’s not what Murphy happened.

Pergament reports that emails and texts to Channel 4 sports director Josh Reed and news director Josh Roy weren’t returned.

Guys.

This would be an excellent time to return a phone call. We know that the Bills and channel 4 have a relationship based on the Bills having games on their channel and Eric Wood does another podcast with the station. We also know that Josh Reed has a really good relationship with Brandon Beane. Maybe too good..

The bottom line is this: the Bills have way too much power in that town, and I think they’re bullying the local media and it is concerning the reaction.

This isn’t my normal bitching about the Bills bro beat taking selfies, reviewing chicken wings or reporting on Josh Allen handshakes. This is about sports directors, editors and GMs either not fighting back or not knowing how to.

And what better time to flex that power? Newsrooms are being gutted and budgets are being slashed while the Bills remain the biggest game in town. For the team to get upset over one pretty lame column questioning Joe Brady’s experience—a column probably nobody read anyway because you have to fight through 73 pop-ups—and Channel 4’s response was essentially crickets.

Murphy was a loyal soldier for decades for the club. Then he finally wrote something the Bills apparently didn’t like and, in his words, “They didn’t fight for me.”

That’s the part that should bother everyone. If John fucking Murphy isn’t important enough for a Buffalo television station to fight for and the Bills can just throw his ass to the curb, imagine being a 26-year-old reporter who discovers something the Bills really don’t want published.

That’s the part everybody covering this team should probably think about because this is how the stories the public needs to know but the team refuses to acknowledge get ignored.

STATHEAD OF THE WEEK: 2, 3, 4

I’ll admit something before we get to this week’s Stathead rabbit hole: I’ve been a Dalton Kincaid hater.

Not because I thought Kincaid sucked, but because I wanted the Bills to draft a wide receiver in 2023. Then they took a tight end in the first round and started talking about playing two tight ends all the time, and I thought the whole thing sounded dumb. You’re trying to maximize the prime of Josh Allen and your big offensive idea is MORE TIGHT ENDS?

Then Kincaid couldn’t stay healthy, Dawson Knox was still here, the whole 12-personnel revolution never exactly turned into the Greatest Show on Turf, and every offseason it seemed like we got another picture of Kincaid’s calf. Look how beefy his calf is! Look at this calf! This is the year! I was sick of hearing about the fucking calf. I wanted to see the production.

Well, two games into 2026, I’m seeing it.

Kincaid has 12 catches on 14 targets for 225 yards and a touchdown. That’s an absurd 18.8 yards per catch, and when I started screwing around on Stathead to see where that actually ranks among tight ends to start a season, it got even more ridiculous.

Since 2000, only Jared Cook in 2018 has had more receiving yards through his team’s first two games. Cook had 229. That’s it. Kincaid is second with 225, ahead of Jimmy Graham’s 224 in 2013, Brent Celek’s 222 in 2012, Dallas Clark’s 222 in 2009 and Mark Andrews’ 220 in 2019.

And it’s not just because the Bills are force-feeding him the football.

Among the qualifying tight ends in my Stathead search, Kincaid’s 18.8 yards per reception ranks third since 2000.

Dallas Clark opened 2009 at 20.2 and Travis Kelce was at 19.5 in 2019. Then comes Kincaid.

Think about that combination for a second. He’s second in yards and third in yards per catch. Usually if you’re piling up this many yards, you’re getting peppered with targets. Kincaid has only 14. Jared Cook needed 16 targets to get his 229. Jimmy Graham needed 23 for his 224. Kincaid has 225 on fourteen.

Then I sorted by success rate, and that’s where I really had to shut up.

Kincaid has an 85.7% success rate, which ranks fourth among the qualifying TE starts in this search since 2000. The three ahead of him are Rob Gronkowski in 2021 at 92.3%, Travis Kelce in 2015 at 90.9% and Kelce again in 2021 at 86.7%.

So here’s the Stathead of the Week:

225 receiving yards — 2nd since 2000
18.8 yards per catch — 3rd
85.7% success rate — 4th

I spent three years asking what exactly the Bills were supposed to be getting out of drafting a tight end in the first round when they already had Dawson Knox. I complained about two-tight-end sets, injuries and enough offseason calf photos to fill a fucking medical textbook.

Two games don’t settle what Kincaid’s career ultimately becomes, but this is finally the version that makes the whole idea make sense.

Less calf pictures. More of this…

VIRAL BUFFALO MOMENT OF THE WEEK

Ever have one of those moments where something sounds good on paper, and then you actually see it and immediately think, “Oh, this ain’t right?”

That’s exactly how I felt when I saw poor Bruce the Bison.

Yes, I remember when Tre’Davious White used to try to convince Kim Pegula that the Bills needed a real buffalo to run out onto the field before games, and at the time I thought that sounded pretty fucking cool. A giant buffalo charging onto the field while 70,000 drunk Bills fans lose their minds? Sign me up.

Then I saw a poor baby bison sitting in a cage at the new stadium and immediately went full Matrix: “Not like this. Not like this.”

I don’t know what the alternative is, because I’m also not suggesting we just open the cage and let Bruce run wild through Orchard Park. But if the Bills are really serious about developing the area around the stadium, which Tyler Dunne said on WGR Thursday that they are, I have an idea.

Build a little animal area next to my proposed Buffalo Beer Hall of Fame. Give Bruce some actual space, add a few more buffaloes, maybe throw some goats in there for the kids, and now we’ve got the Orchard Park petting zoo. Dad gets to look at the history of Labatt Blue while the kids go see Bruce.

And yes, every buffalo should be wearing a little Bills hat.

Drunks can come over before the game, say hello to Bruce, wish a buffalo good luck, stumble over to the Beer Hall of Fame, have six Blue Lights and then walk into the stadium.

You’re welcome, Terry.

I just developed your entire stadium district for free.

DAD SHOTS

—When the Bills offense gets rolling, it can turn into an avalanche. Against the Lions, the Bills scored four straight TDs. It got me thinking…how many times in a game have the Bills scored 4 TDs on 4 straight possessions….so call this a bonus stathead..

Since 2020, Buffalo has scored touchdowns on at least 4 straight offensive possessions 8 times:

By comparison sake, I looked up the Chiefs to see where they were at and they have done it 5 times.

Kind of shocking neither team did that against each other.

—One of the best parts about living in our neighborhood is that we still have so many mom-and-pop restaurants and shops. Ditmars has been home for us for five years now, and one of the things I’ve always loved about it is being able to walk one street over and actually buy something from a person who owns a store instead of having another Amazon package show up at my door.

Two of our favorites were The Tiny Owl and The Brass Owl, both owned by the same person. Tiny Owl was for kids, Brass Owl was more for adults, especially women, and we spent a lot of money in both.

Brass Owl was one of my cheat codes for buying my wife gifts. They had tons of Christmas ornaments, jewelry, clothes and random little things where I could walk in, find something she’d like and feel slightly better about myself because Jeff Bezos wasn’t getting another $47 from me.

Tiny Owl became part of our life once Andy came along. That kid had all sorts of stuff from there because apparently I developed an obsession with buying rattles and pacifiers. They also had story time every Wednesday, and I used to bring Andy. It wasn’t just a store we occasionally bought shit from. It was part of having a little kid in this neighborhood.

And then Tiny Owl closed.

The owner was pretty open about what happened. Costs went up because of tariffs, shipments became a problem, the rent went up and then Target opened around the corner and sales dropped. Eventually there was just too much working against a small children’s store.

Then Brass Owl closed too.

And I’m not going to pretend I’m some patron saint of small business. I’ve shopped at Target. I’ve gone to Five Below. I’ve bought plenty of shit from TJ Maxx and God knows how many Amazon boxes have arrived at our apartment. But whenever I could get something from the place around the corner instead, I tried to do it.

That’s why what replaced these stores makes the whole thing even more depressing.

Tiny Owl became this weird AF cell phone store. Maybe it’s locally owned and I wish them well, but how many cell phone stores do we need? It feels like there’s one every six blocks where somebody can fix your shattered iPhone screen while selling you a case with rhinestones on it.

But Brass Owl?

Brass Owl is becoming a fucking Dunkin’ Donuts.

A DUNKIN’ DONUTS.

Now, I could write an entire Dad Shots about Dunkin’ as a product. The donuts are fine. The coffee is mid. I understand people love it. Whatever.

But here’s the problem:

WE ALREADY HAVE DUNKIN’ DONUTS.

In fact, we have so many Dunkins around here that I’m starting to wonder if Ditmars Boulevard is part of some psychological experiment to find out how many identical coffee shops human beings will tolerate before snapping.

There are now four Dunkins within roughly a six-minute walk of us.

And the new one is ONE FUCKING BLOCK from another Dunkin’.

What the fuck are we doing?

It’s one thing when chains move into a neighborhood. That’s going to happen. This is New York City in 2026, not Bedford Falls. But replacing a neighborhood shop that had been around for more than a decade with another location of a chain that’s already one block away feels especially depressing.

Brass Owl wasn’t just somewhere you bought something. Tiny Owl wasn’t just somewhere you bought something. They hosted events. They knew people. Parents brought their kids there. You could walk in looking for a Christmas gift and walk out with something you wouldn’t have thought to search for on Amazon.

You can’t replace that by dropping another Dunkin’ on the block.

And I know the answer isn’t to scream at everyone who walks into Target or orders something from Amazon, because I’m guilty of doing both. Sometimes they’re cheaper. Sometimes they’re easier. Sometimes you’ve got two kids and don’t feel like dragging everyone around Queens because you need diapers and fucking batteries.

But when you have the choice, spend the extra few bucks at the place down the street.

Buy the birthday present there. Buy the Christmas ornament there. Get lunch from the family-owned restaurant. Buy the stupid little thing you probably don’t need but your kid will love.

Because one day you’re going to walk by that store and it’ll be gone.

Then a few months later you’ll see construction happening inside and wonder what’s replacing it.

And eventually the sign goes up.

DUNKIN’.

One block from the other Dunkin’.

Support your neighborhood businesses, because apparently if we don’t, eventually every fucking block is going to be the same six stores.

—The Bills are debuting those Nickel City, blue-collar, gray, whatever-the-fuck-we’re-calling-them uniforms against the Chargers, which got me wondering: How have the Bills done the first time they’ve worn a new alternate look?

Since 2005, it’s happened four times. The Bills are 2-2.

2005 — Beat Houston in the blue 1960s throwbacks
2009 — Lost at New England in the white AFL 50th Anniversary throwbacks
2015 — Beat the Jets in the debut of the red Color Rush uniforms
2025 — Lost to New England in the debut of the Cold Front Rivalries uniforms

So the Nickel City uniforms will break the tie. More importantly, if they lose, I’m blaming the gray jerseys.

—Last week, I was kind of shocked to hear Mike Florio on WGR 550. Funny enough, I remember Florio being on Brad Riter’s show almost 20 years ago, back when ProFootballTalk was basically this underground blog that would post every rumor imaginable and had a Photoshop guy constantly making fun of people. It was a fun product. Now it’s obviously this enormous national thing, and sometimes it feels more like an aggravating aggregation machine than the site I remember. But whether I love Florio or not really isn’t the point. He’s a big national name, and now WGR has him every week.

And he’s not the only one. WGR has Vic Carucci, Dion Dawkins, Connor McGovern, Austin Corbett and DJ Moore as regular guests. When the Bills and WGR split up, I speculated that maybe some of the money the station was spending on Bills radio rights could instead go toward paying for better weekly guests. I obviously don’t know WGR’s finances or what these appearances cost, but from the outside, it sure looks like they’ve decided to invest in making the daily shows feel more connected to the team and the national NFL conversation. As a consumer, I’m completely fine with it. Florio and Carucci aren’t necessarily must-listen radio for me personally, but they’re legitimate names, and I’m sure there are listeners who like them a lot more than I do.

And compare that with what we were getting before. Sean McDermott would go on Sal Capaccio’s Extra Point Show on Friday, basically tell us who was playing and who wasn’t, say almost nothing else, and then 20 minutes later walk into his press conference and tell everybody who was playing and who wasn’t all over again. What exactly were we getting out of that? Give me Florio talking about the league, Carucci talking Bills, and actual Bills players sitting down for weekly conversations instead. WGR may have lost the Bills games, but if some of that money and energy is being redirected into better guests and better content, I’d argue the listener is getting something much more interesting Monday through Friday.

I will say though, it feels like the special guests seem to be more on the Afternoon and morning shows, while Brad and Tim don’t seem to have gotten that “pay to talk” guest rub yet. 10-2pm radio spot isn’t exactly the money maker for sports by comparison to morning and afternoon drive, but they are going against One Bills Live.

—Is it just me, or is there ALWAYS a mad rush the morning after a Bills game for every beat reporter to tweet out the snap counts? People eat that shit up, which is completely fine. I like snap counts too. I just hope everyone realizes that Pro Football Reference updates this stuff basically overnight in every box score -for free- and you can go there and look at the entire team instead of waiting for 14 different tweets to tell you who played 37 snaps. Maybe I’m getting old, but the morning after is suddenly Money in the Bank, with every Bills reporter climbing the ladder trying to grab the briefcase containing Cole Bishop’s snap percentage.

And if you’re pulling the numbers from Pro Football Reference, that’s fine too. Just give them credit. They’re doing God’s work over there so the rest of us can pretend we spent six hours breaking down the All-22 when really we clicked on a fucking table while drinking coffee.

—Last week I talked about how much I loved that the Bills were going to play “O Canada” at the home opener. With everything going on between the U.S. and Canada right now, I thought it was a pretty cool gesture. But then I started wondering: Why now?

And then it was staring me right in the face.

The Bills have been making a serious business push into Canada. They partnered with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment last year specifically to grow the Bills brand north of the border. Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady are minority owners of the Bills, in part because of their connections to Toronto. The Bills have done events with the Raptors, they’ve been expanding their presence in Canada, and, oh yeah, Rogers — the same company behind the old Bills Toronto Series — is in the process of taking full ownership of MLSE.

So is “O Canada” about the current political climate? Maybe. Is it about recognizing all the Canadian Bills fans who have crossed that border for decades? Absolutely. But let’s not pretend there isn’t a pretty obvious business angle here, too. The Bills want Canada. They want Toronto. They want Canadian fans buying tickets, merchandise and everything else that comes with being part of Bills Mafia.

And you know what? I’m completely fine with that.

Play “O Canada.” Welcome Canadian fans. Grow the fan base. Make money. Just don’t sell me patriotism when there’s also some pretty damn good business synergy sitting right there across the Peace Bridge.

—Colin Kaepernick was on the MeidasTouch Podcast this week, and he brought up something from the whole kneeling controversy that I had honestly forgotten about. Kaepernick went back to that 2017 meeting between NFL owners and players, and said Robert Kraft called the protests “the elephant in the room.” According to Kaepernick, Terry Pegula followed that by saying, “We need a Black face to help us end this.”

That sent me back down memory lane of what was actually being said in those meetings, and the Pegula stuff is still crazy to read. Pegula reportedly kept calling Anquan Boldin “Antwan,” while talking about finding a spokesman for the league. He even brought up the NRA using Charlton Heston as a figurehead as an example of what the NFL needed. Meanwhile, Eric Reid’s response at the time was basically: You already have that person. It’s Colin Kaepernick.

And this is where Kaepernick’s argument gets interesting. He told MeidasTouch that the owners were looking for somebody who could help “subvert the protests,” and he believes that eventually became Jay-Z. The NFL partnered with Jay-Z and Roc Nation in 2019, and Kaepernick argues Jay-Z stepped into the role of the Black public face the league had been looking for. That’s Kaepernick’s interpretation of what happened, but nearly a decade later, it’s pretty fascinating to hear him connect those dots himself. The kneeling disappeared, the NFL put money into different social-justice programs, Jay-Z became one of the league’s biggest partners, and the guy who started the entire conversation never played another NFL game.

—I’m not going to pretend I understand every fucking thing about Israel and Palestine. This shit has been going on forever, innocent people on both sides have suffered, antisemitism is very real, and I’d love to see a world where Jewish people and Palestinians can both live without being afraid of getting killed. But saying “Free Palestine” does not automatically mean “death to all Jews.” Supporting Palestinian people isn’t supporting Hamas, just like criticizing the Israeli government isn’t hating Jewish people. If we can’t make those distinctions anymore, we’re fucked.

That’s what bothers me about Robert Kraft’s role in the Ed Sheeran/Macklemore situation. Kraft confirmed Gillette wouldn’t allow Macklemore to perform, and the tour promoter says seven NFL stadiums objected to having him on the bill. And there’s some context here that shouldn’t be ignored: Kraft has spent millions developing American football in Israel, taken NFL legends there, and even had NFL Films document one of those trips. I can’t say money from Israel is influencing NFL decisions because I haven’t seen evidence of that. But I think it’s completely fair to ask whether these longstanding relationships influence how some of the most powerful people in the league view this issue. Especially when Kanye West can spend years making explicitly antisemitic statements, released a song called “Heil Hitler” and still perform at SoFi Stadium, while “Free Palestine” can apparently make Macklemore unacceptable at seven NFL stadiums. That inconsistency deserves an explanation.

—Allegedly! Andy has peed AND pooped in the potty. I say allegedly because neither one of these historic events happened in front of me or my wife. They both happened at daycare, and while his TAs claim they witnessed it, we remain skeptical because this kid is not exactly coming home and asking for the New York Times so he can spend 25 minutes on the toilet.

I don’t know why the TAs would lie about this. They don’t work on tips. There isn’t some potty-training commission where they get an extra $50 if Andy takes a dump. So I guess I have to believe them.

Meanwhile, at home we’ve entered a completely different developmental stage: Andy the Streaker.

The kid takes his clothes off and runs around the house naked, which would be harmless enough except he’s also discovered that apparently every piece of furniture needs to come into contact with his balls and dick.

The couch? Yep.

The chair? Absolutely.

Whatever Dad was just about to sit on? Probably.

FUN!

You know those studies that are always like, “Children who watch more than three hours of television per day are 37 percent more likely to become bank robbers”? I’m waiting for the study that tells me what a three-year-old repeatedly dragging his naked ass across the sectional predicts.

My current guess is that he’s going to become the 64-year-old guy at the YMCA who has absolutely no problem carrying on a 15-minute conversation with you completely naked.

We’ve also officially gotten rid of the binkies.

I’m actually going to miss them. That thing could calm Andy down like a horse tranquilizer. But he’s now chewed through two of them, and Mom finally made the executive decision: it’s time.

He still asks for one at night because that’s when he normally had it, and I’ve decided my strategy is to pretend I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.

“Binky? What’s a binky? Never heard of it.”

Basically, I’m Brandon Beane being asked if I had anything to do with Sean McDermott getting fired.No idea what you’re talking about. Next question.

And then there’s Baby Luke, who is doing great and apparently decided last week that our relationship had become a little too comfortable.

For seven weeks, I had successfully avoided being peed on.

Seven weeks!

I started thinking maybe I was actually good at this. Maybe I’d figured out the diaper-change angles. Maybe Luke respected me.

Then last week he pissed on me four times.

Four.

Apparently he was just saving it up.

Fucking prick.

—I have watched zero TV shows. None. I miss TV.

—Well…my garden was a flop. Here’s my one and only maybe edible veggie…better luck next year.

—If you made it this far, I thank you… I’ll be on Pat Moran‘s talking Buffalo podcast tonight. Live on YouTube and wherever you can find your podcast tomorrow morning.Have a good rest of the week and make sure you play with your cat.

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