Bills troll pundits who predicted downfall in offseason after winning AFC East crown

The Buffalo Bills secured the AFC East title in Week 13, and the team's social media staff is enjoying themselves.
Mark Konezny-Imagn Images

You couldn’t scroll through Twitter for more than a few moments throughout the 2024 NFL offseason without seeing a new national analyst forecasting the downfall of the Buffalo Bills.

There were a scant few pundits who predicted that the team would remain competitive in 2024, but national media personalities, by and large, expected the team to tumble down the AFC East standings—and potentially out of the playoff picture entirely—following an offseason that saw the departures of stalwarts across the roster. Key contributors like Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer, Tre’Davious White, Mitch Morse, Stefon Diggs, and Gabriel Davis left One Bills Drive in the offseason, with the Bills primarily replacing them with young and unproven players in an effort to maintain long-term financial flexibility; the presence of Josh Allen significantly raised the floor of the team to the vast majority of reputable pundits, but most expected the 2024 campaign to be a ‘retooling’ year, of sorts, for Buffalo.

Josh Alle
Tina MacIntyre-Yee/Democrat and Chronicle / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Fast forward to Week 14 of the 2024 season, and the Bills have already clinched their fifth-consecutive AFC East title, becoming just the fourth team since 2002 to secure their division crown with five or more games remaining in the season thanks to their Week 13 thrashing of the San Francisco 49ers. The team is off to a 10-2 start, its best in over 30 years, and looks like not only a true Super Bowl contender, but perhaps a championship favorite. Just a few months ago, a large swath of national doomsayers purported that Buffalo’s 'window' was closed; it’s now clear that it’s wide open.

And what’s the fun in being a competitive football team if you can’t relish in it a bit? The Bills took to social media after they secured their fifth-straight division title to share a video highlighting the offseason criticism they received from national pundits, a hilarious public display of receipts that shows just how premature analysts were to forecast disaster.

Buffalo doubled down on its public dunking on Monday afternoon, posting a “how it started… how it’s going” meme that features offseason AFC East predictions from national personalities and an image of the Bills celebrating their fifth straight crown.

A bit of social media trolling is fun, but ultimately, the Bills have been here before. Though it wasn’t a thought unanimously shared by the media, Buffalo had the internal expectation of repeating as division champions this season, and it realized that expectation on Sunday night. One could assume that the team also has the internal expectation of competing for a championship, a belief it, too, will attempt to manifest into reality as the season concludes.

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