Bills secure AFC East title, break franchise record with win vs. 49ers

The Buffalo Bills have secured their fifth straight AFC East title thanks to their Week 13 win over the San Francisco 49ers.

Kyle Silagyi | 2 Hours Ago

Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images

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They said it was a ‘rebuilding’ year. They said the Buffalo Bills were due for regression. They said there was no way the team would win the AFC East for a fifth consecutive year.

They were wrong.

After an offseason in which a bevy of national pundits predicted imminent disaster for Buffalo given its offseason roster turnover, the Bills only went out and got off to their best start in over three decades, securing their 10th win of the 2024 campaign with their 35-10 win over the San Francisco 49ers in Week 13. Buffalo (now 10-2) secured a playoff berth and the 2024 AFC East crown with the victory, cementing their fifth-straight division title with the win.

The Bills have broken a franchise record by winning another division crown, as this is the first time in franchise history that they’ve won the AFC East in five consecutive years; their previous longest streak was four years, which they’ve accomplished twice (from 1988–1991 and 2020–2023). This is also Buffalo’s sixth consecutive postseason berth and seventh in the last eight years; not bad for a team in a ‘retooling’ year.

The New York Jets, meanwhile – whom several pundits expected to usurp the Bills in the division this season – fell to 3-9 on the season this week with an embarrassing loss to the Seattle Seahawks. The Miami Dolphins are a bit more respectable at 5-7, but there’s really nothing all that respectable about allowing a division foe to win the title after just 13 weeks; Buffalo, in fact, is just the fourth team since 2002 to secure its division with five or more games remaining in the season.

The Bills have now secured at least one home playoff game this year, and it’s possible that the conference ultimately runs through Buffalo; the 11-1 Kansas City Chiefs are currently the No. 1 seed in the AFC, but should they falter, the Bills hold the head-to-head tiebreaker thanks to their Week 11 win over the back-to-back Super Bowl champions.

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