As Bills slip, questions will emerge about the future
After the Bills capped quarterback Josh Allen's seventh season with yet another failure to make it to the Super Bowl, Bills G.M. Brandon Beane was defiant about the challenge the team faces.
“Keep kicking the door, keep kicking the door and you’re going to knock it down,” Beane said in his 2024 season-ending press conference. “That’s my mentality.”
As the Bills sit two full games and a tiebreaker behind the Patriots in the AFC East — and as Buffalo deals with the distinct possibility of closing out its current stadium with not only no home playoff games but no playoff games at all — only one person's mentality matters.
What does owner Terry Pegula think about the current situation? What, if anything, will he want to change for 2026?
On one hand, it's possible that the first season of a new stadium with $245 million in PSLs already sold will be a celebration, not a fresh start. Who gets a divorce right before moving into a brand-new house?
On the other hand, Allen's prime is being frittered away. After owning the AFC East for each of the first five post-Brady seasons, the Bills have seen the Patriots develop a new franchise quarterback in Drake Maye, and Buffalo's stranglehold on the division has ended.
The deeper question is whether it's an issue of talent (which points to G.M. Brandon Beane) or an issue of coaching (which points to coach Sean McDermott). The properly-functioning NFL franchises don't treat it as an either/or proposition, because that sets the stage for finger pointing and blame shifting.
Consider the status of 2024 second-round receiver Keon Coleman. Inactive for two straight games, is his current status a product of a bad draft pick by Beane, or a failure to properly develop Coleman by McDermott?
Regardless, only Pegula knows what he'll do after the season. And the season is far from over. The Bills can still get hot. Tyler Dunne can still post another article that lights a fire under the locker room. They can still win the division. They can still get to the Super Bowl. They can still win it.
Or they can continue to struggle. They can relinquish the AFC East to the Patriots. They can go one-and-done as a road-team wild-card. They can miss the playoffs altogether, despite having the 2024 NFL MVP as the centerpiece of the team.
These are fair questions to ask. The Bills are one of the 15 hotspots identified a week ago today. And this is the business they've chosen.
Yes, the job is in many ways easier with a franchise quarterback. It's also in many ways harder, because the bar is always higher. So far this season, after starting 4-0 and slumping to 3-4 since then, the Bills are falling short of the bar that having Josh Allen sets.