What a difference a year makes for the Buffalo Bills

The Buffalo Bills sit a 9-2 through 12 weeks of the 2024 NFL campaign. At this time last season, it looked as though the sky was falling in Orchard Park.

Kyle Silagyi | 3 Hours Ago

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What a difference a year makes.

As fans of the Buffalo Bills ensure that misguided members of the national media eat crow regarding their offseason predictions that the team would take a step back in the 2024 NFL campaign, it’s perhaps easy to forget that the thoughts weren’t without some merit, especially considering how the team looked throughout the majority of the 2023 campaign.

With the Bills currently sitting at 9-2 on the 2024 season and having a realistic path toward the top seed in the AFC, one would be forgiven for forgetting just how significant of a vibes shift there has been in Western New York over the last year. Just to help us appreciate the state the team is currently in, we’ve decided to take a look back at where Buffalo stood following Week 12 of the 2023 season, and boy, is there a discernible difference.

The Bills lost their Week 12 matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles on November 26, 2023, a late-afternoon bout that prompted Buffalo to fall to 6-6 on the then rapidly progressing campaign. It was the team’s worst in-season record since 2018, but the atmosphere between the two seasons was markedly different; 2018 was very much viewed as a rebuilding year, a season in which the team would lay a foundation on top of which it would build future success. Said success came in bunches over the following years, but at .500 entering December of 2023, it looked as though the team’s window was closing, as though its long-tenured core wouldn’t be able to get over the hump in what was shaping up to be its last go.

The games leading up to Week 12 last season were some of the most ill-received in recent team history. Losses to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 5 and New England Patriots in Week 7 were unforeseen and, frankly, unacceptable given the talent dichotomy, but things truly came to a head when Buffalo dropped a Week 10 Monday Night Football bout at Highmark Stadium to the then 3-5 Denver Broncos. That loss saw the Bills fall to 5-5, prompting Buffalo to fire offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey midway through his second season.

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Some purported that Dorsey was used as a scapegoat, as advanced analytics suggested that the Bills’ offense was one of the league’s best. It was the first (permanent) mid-season coordinator change Buffalo made since head coach Sean McDermott took the reins of the team in 2017, and some believed it was executed because it was the first time during the sideline boss’ tenure that he himself was feeling the heat. Quarterbacks coach Joe Brady was promoted to interim offensive coordinator in the wake of Dorsey’s departure, the team hoping that the shift in offensive play-caller would allow it to save its season.

And one could argue that it did. The atmosphere slowly started to shift in Orchard Park following Brady’s ascension, with the team winning its first game with Brady as its coordinator (a Week 11 clash with the New York Jets) 32-6 before scoring 34 points in its overtime loss to the Eagles in Week 12. Vibes weren’t fully restored as the Bills entered their Week 13 bye week, but it looked as though positive change was coming.

This notion proved true when Buffalo returned from the bye, as the Bills rattled off five straight wins (including games against the Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Cowboys, and Miami Dolphins) to not only earn its fifth straight postseason berth, but its fourth consecutive AFC East title. Buffalo finished as the second seed in the AFC, defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wild Card round before bowing out of the playoffs to the Kansas City Chiefs for the third time in four years.

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The offense showed signs of improvement under Brady, prompting him to get the full-time gig in the subsequent offseason. His hiring coincided with the promotion of linebackers coach Bobby Babich to defensive coordinator, meaning that the Bills would have two new full-time coordinators in 2024 (the first time since McDermott’s initial season that the team had new coordinators on both sides of the ball).

The play-callers weren’t the only changes made in Buffalo in the 2024 offseason, as the vibe that the club’s run with its existing core had concluded persisted. The Bills parted ways with stalwart starters like Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer, Tre’Davious White, Mitch Morse, and Stefon Diggs in the spring while also allowing key contributors like Gabe Davis and Leonard Floyd to walk, leaving Buffalo with a younger, more inexperienced, and generally unproven roster that some felt would yield disastrous results in the 2024 campaign.

And again, fast forward to Week 13 of the 2024 season, and the Bills are off to their best start in over 30 years. The offense is scoring nearly 30 points a game as Brady is a prime head-coaching candidate and quarterback Josh Allen is an MVP frontrunner. The defense has looked stout despite dealing with significant injuries at seemingly every turn. It not only looks as though Buffalo has a genuine shot at hoisting the Lombardi Trophy this season, but given the high-level play it's getting from its new ‘core’ contributors (players like Greg Rousseau, Christian Benford, Terrel Bernard, Khalil Shakir, and Keon Coleman), it looks as though the team’s championship window is wide open for the foreseeable future.

It’s important not to crown a team through 12 weeks of an NFL season because the vibes are good. That’s a bit foolish. That said, it’s fun to look back on where the Bills were at this point last year and contrast just how different the atmosphere currently is; just one year ago, it looked as though the sky was falling in Orchard Park, but it's now unseasonably blue.

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