Buffalo Bills Still Eyeing Playoffs After Loss vs. Cincinnati Bengals

The Buffalo Bills are 5-4 after their loss against the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Buffalo Bills slipped further in the AFC standings after their 24-18 loss on Sunday Night Football against the Cincinnati Bengals.

The loss put the Bills at 5-4 and the team is currently on the outside looking in for the AFC playoff picture. The team also sits two games behind the first-place Miami Dolphins.

But quarterback Josh Allen is still confident that the Bills can find a way into the postseason.

"Eight games left, we have five wins. So the math there, it's not pretty. It's not going to be easy but again, if there's a locker room that can handle this, it's this locker room right here," Allen said postgame. "The guys in this locker room, we got a lot of guys that are unselfish players, guys that will do anything that they can to help his team win football games and this second half of the season."

The Buffalo Bills lost 24-18 to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday / © Kareem Elgazzar, USA TODAY

With eight games left in the season, the Bills are currently the ninth-best team record-wise in the conference and the top seven qualify for the playoffs, so Buffalo is within distance. The team could jump a spot depending on whether or not the New York Jets beat the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday night.

Allen also noted that the team has a relative target for a record at the end of the season.

"Realistically if you want to look at it from a real view, you need 10, maybe 11 wins to get into the playoff picture in the AFC," Allen said. "It's nothing that we haven't seen before. We just got to find a way to put it together."

This means the Bills need five or six more wins in the final eight games to feel good about qualifying for the playoffs.

Buffalo will have to face the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs on the road later in the season. The team also hosts the Dallas Cowboys in Week 15. If the Bills were to lose those three games, they would need to hypothetically win every other game on their schedule, which includes the Denver Broncos, New York Jets and New England Patriots at home and the Los Angeles Chargers and Miami Dolphins on the road.

All of those games are winnable, but if Buffalo drops games like it did on Sunday against the Bengals, the wiggle room will soon expire.