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One metric suggests Bills’ remaining 2024 schedule is incredibly favorable

The rest of the Buffalo Bills' 2024 schedule is quite favorable, if one metric is to be believed.

Kyle Silagyi

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The vibes in Western New York aren’t stellar at the moment, but there are justifiable reasons for optimism regarding the Buffalo Bills.

The team sits at 3-2 through five weeks, good for first place in the AFC East; a five-game sample size is rarely indicative of how a division race will ultimately play out, but in the case of this year’s AFC East, it may be fair to extrapolate. The division, while not necessarily imploding, is not nearly as strong as initially anticipated; the second-place New York Jets have already fired their head coach, the Miami Dolphins aren’t half the team Buffalo fans feared they’d be, and the New England Patriots are expectedly lackluster.

The Bills aren’t necessarily going to win the division by default, but given what we’ve seen across the AFC East through five weeks, they appear to be a shoo-in to earn their fifth consecutive division crown. Helping matters a bit is Buffalo's schedule throughout the rest of the year, which, per one metric, is the NFL’s easiest remaining slate.

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X (formerly known as Twitter) user @NerdingOnNFL calculated the strength of each NFL team’s remaining 2024 schedule, with Buffalo having the easiest remaining slate. The rest of the AFC East appears within the top 10, with the Dolphins at No. 3, the Patriots at No. 7, and the Jets at No. 9.

The user used ESPN’s Week 6 power rankings to determine remaining strength of schedule, looking at each team’s upcoming slate and calculating the average rank of their opposition; the average rank of Buffalo’s remaining opponents was 19.67, the largest number and, thus, lowest collective rank. It’s a neat idea for a metric in that it attempts to factor in how teams are playing at this particular moment, but it’s not a foolproof method, as it’s entirely based on one outlet’s subjective rankings and may too heavily yield to recency bias. 

There are some heavy hitters on Buffalo’s slate, starting with the potentially rejuvenated Jets in a Week 6 Monday Night Football clash. The Kansas City Chiefs, San Francisco 49ers, and Detroit Lions all await the Bills later in the year, and the team also has matchups with not-to-be-overlooked clubs like the Seattle Seahawks, Indianapolis Colts, and Los Angeles Rams. It’s nice that one metric suggests that the Bills are well-positioned to stack wins throughout the rest of the campaign, but Buffalo ultimately has to take to the field and win these games.

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Kyle Silagyi
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