Bills Central

Former NFL LB says Bills no longer have Dolphins' number: 'This is 2024'

Former NFL linebacker Manti Te'o feels as though the Miami Dolphins are set to overtake the Buffalo Bills, but his reasoning is a bit misguided.

Kyle Silagyi

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The Buffalo Bills own the AFC East.

This isn’t a necessarily controversial statement, as there’s no recent evidence to support the contrary. Buffalo has won its division in each of the past four seasons, with the race only being particularly close in one of those campaigns. Even Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel agrees with the sentiment, telling reporters that the Bills “own the division until somebody takes it from them” during his Wednesday media availability.

The Dolphins came close to taking the AFC East from Buffalo last season, with each team finishing the campaign with 11-6 records; the Bills won both of their regular season matchups with Miami, however, allowing Buffalo to hold the tiebreaker. The Dolphins have made a habit of losing to the Bills in the recent past, as Buffalo is a combined 11-2 against Miami since Josh Allen’s rookie 2018 season.

Related: Bills vs. Dolphins NFL Week 2 Preview: An Early Pivotal Clash

Making matters a bit worse for the Dolphins is Allen’s dominance against ‘the fish,’ as the otherworldly signal-caller has totaled 4,001 yards and 38 touchdowns against the divisional foe throughout his professional career. Despite the quarterback and general team’s recent success over Miami, some pundits feel as though a changing of the guard is due; during a recent appearance on Good Morning Football, co-host (and former NFL linebacker) Manti Te’o spoke about Buffalo’s upcoming Week 2 clash with the Dolphins, implying that history is irrelevant with regard to this week’s matchup and that Miami is set to get over the proverbial hump.

“We’ve talked about weather changes, we’ve talked about playing in Buffalo in November, it’s a different scene, different weather, all of that stuff,” Te’o said. “History may say that the Buffalo Bills have the Miami Dolphins’ number, but this isn’t history. This is 2024. This is the Miami Dolphins. The Buffalo Bills are not the same team that they’ve been in the past, starting from the secondary. You think of Tre’Davious White, you think of Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer. Guess where Jordan is at, guys? He’s in Miami. We talk about the dominance that the defense has had over the years over Tua and Tyreek Hill and company, a lot of that had to do with those two safeties that they had back there, those two All-Pro safeties that kept a roof over that speed. 

“Then you think about Josh Allen, and he’s dealing with new talent around him. He’s dealing with, I think last week, he threw to seven different targets. He doesn’t have the Stefon Diggs, he doesn’t have the Gabe Davis. To the credit of Stefon Diggs, he was somebody that gave the Bills the opportunity to extend drives and kept Tua off the field and kept Tyreek off the field. So with those two components alone, I think that the Miami Dolphins, it’s going to be a different future from 2024 on.”

There’s a lot to sort through from Te’o’s comments, but we’ll start on his qualms with Buffalo’s secondary. He notes that the team parted ways with White, Hyde, and Poyer in the offseason, which is true, but leaves out a significant point: all three of these players have dealt with various injuries over the past several seasons. White played in just 21 regular season games over his final three seasons with the Bills and only suited up against the Dolphins four times (tearing his Achilles tendon in Buffalo’s Week 4 clash with Miami last year). Though Hyde played in each of the team’s matchups with the Dolphins in 2023, he missed both divisional clashes in 2022. Poyer missed games against Miami in both 2022 and 2023.

This isn’t to say that the Bills won’t miss the departed defenders (particularly Hyde and Poyer, as the two did effectively provide a “roof” over the top of the defense), but the team has demonstrably been without these defensive backs in past matchups with Miami; they've still found ways to win.

Jumping to the offensive side of the ball, Te’o brings up Allen targeting several different targets as though it’s an issue (the former linebacker notes he targeted seven players in Week 1, but he actually targeted 10 and connected with nine), but it’s, if anything, a feather in the offense’s cap. A major issue Buffalo’s offense faced in past years was an overreliance on Diggs and a lack of a robust supporting cast; the team, in the Pro Bowler’s absence, constructed a deep, versatile receiving crops to which Allen can evenly disperse the ball, the quarterback connecting with nine players in Week 1 serving as an indication of the offensive philosophy’s feasibility as opposed to a major issue.

Regardless, Te’o is correct in suggesting that past matchups will not have a direct impact on Thursday night’s clash, despite the Bills’ recent dominance in the series. Miami will look to overcome its divisional foe while Buffalo will look to continue its prowess when the two teams face off at 8:15 p.m. on Thursday night.

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Kyle Silagyi

KYLE SILAGYI

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