AFC East Preview and Predictions: It’s Buffalo’s World Now

The Bills are primed to take over the division from the old-guard Patriots—the only team capable of posing a challenge.

Last January the Bills were an overtime coin flip away from a conference title game matchup at home against the Bengals. Who knows, but if they had won the toss and gotten the ball first in overtime and beaten the Chiefs, they could well have gone on to beat Cincinnati and play in the Super Bowl—and even maybe have won it. But as much as that loss hurt, the reassuring thing about being a Buffalo fan right now is that the team seems less focused on what might have been than on what is going to come next.

This offseason the Bills added one of the greatest pass rushers in NFL history in 33-year-old Von Miller, who had 13.5 sacks last season, including four in the playoffs as he helped the Rams to the title. They also added a potential premier running back and pass-catcher out of the backfield with second-round pick James Cook from Georgia, bolstered their depth with veteran slot receiver Jamison Crowder, and drafted a cornerback in the first round, Florida’s Kaiir Elam, who could solidify what was already one of the best secondaries in the NFL. Among the AFC elite, no team did a better job this offseason of making itself more complete than Buffalo, which, from a personnel standpoint is now neck-and-neck with the Chiefs, Bengals, Titans and Ravens.

Within the division, the Bills’ chief competition is the Patriots, who will be better than the team Buffalo pummeled 47–17 in the wild-card round in January. In that game a Bill Belichick team was dressed down in a way not seen during the coach’s 22-year tenure in New England—or in NFL history, for that matter—as the Bills scored touchdowns on each of their seven drives. This season the Patriots brought back a name from the past in offensive tackle Trent Brown, who won a ring in Super Bowl LIII, to shore up the offensive line. But the question of how much better New England will be rests on the continued development of Mac Jones. The fifth quarterback taken in the 2021 NFL draft had no business reaching the playoffs last year and finishing as the NFL’s 15th-rated passer. If Jones improves even marginally, the Patriots—who won 10 games for the 18th time in the last 19 seasons—should at least rack up enough wins to return to the postseason. They are most likely to be a wild-card team again, but they figure to be peskier than they were last year.

At the bottom of the division, the Jets and the Dolphins are pursuing rebuilding plans with strong parallels. Both are headed by coaches plucked from the Kyle Shanahan tree. Miami hired Mike McDaniel, Shanahan’s longtime run-game mastermind, to be its coach. The Jets meanwhile are in Year 2 with another ex-49ers coach, former defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, who brought with him a slew of coaches from that staff, including offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur. Both teams are also developing young quarterbacks: Tua Tagovailoa, who still is a question mark coming into his third season in Miami, and Zach Wilson, who needs to improve after a rough rookie season in New York. A knee injury in the preseason opener has Wilson’s Week 1 status in doubt, meaning the Jets could open the year with veteran Joe Flacco under center. Both teams also tried to trade for Tyreek Hill, with the Dolphins’ compensation package and slightly more competitive roster (and locale?) helping to land the ex-Chief. They are also both likely spectators in the division race for now, though the Dolphins should put up more of a fight in 2022.

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SI’S PROJECTED STANDINGS

1. Buffalo Bills: 13–4
Best Case: A Super Bowl victory. The Bills have the coaching staff, the offensive line, the pass rush, the secondary and, obviously, the quarterback in Josh Allen. They are well built, deep and experienced. There is no safer pick this year with so many powerhouses retooling.
Worst Case: The offense misses coordinator Brian Daboll, now the Giants’ coach, more than expected. But that seems unlikely because his replacement, Ken Dorsey, has worked with Allen the past three seasons as QBs coach, and that continuity should keep the offense humming.

2. New England Patriots: 10–7
Best Case: Division title No. 18 for Belichick. With former offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels now running things in Las Vegas, the Patriots’ new committee of coaches taps the unrealized potential of the team’s skill players, and Jones still looks like the best QB of the 2021 draft.
Worst Case: The Patriots badly miss McDaniels, who has been calling plays since 2012. Free-agent losses such as cornerback J.C. Jackson and guard Ted Karras hurt, while signings such as receiver DeVante Parker and safety Jabrill Peppers fail to make an impact.

3. Miami Dolphins: 8–9
Best Case: McDaniel cements Tagovailoa as a legitimate NFL starter, something predecessor Brian Flores struggled to do with his revolving door of offensive coordinators. The offense is further boosted by the additions of Hill and tackle Terron Armstead.
Worst Case: Tua struggles, in part because the league has finally learned how to stop the increasingly popular Shanahan-style offense that McDaniel was brought in to deploy. As a result, Miami’s surprising firing of Flores after a winning season looks like a big mistake.

4. New York Jets: 6–11
Best Case: Fans and management show patience as the Jets win seven games—something the team has done just once in the last six years. GM Joe Douglas, who arrived in June 2019, continues the time-consuming task of rebuilding the team from the ground up.
Worst Case: In a key developmental year for Wilson, the No. 2 pick in the 2021 draft shows only modest improvement, and that leaves Douglas with the thorny question of whether to stick with Wilson for another year or move on and take advantage of a QB-rich draft in ’23.