The beginning of Week 12 was a very bad start for the Buffalo Bills with their 23-19 loss to the Houston Texans. After they had put up 44 points on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers just four days prior, the Bills completely fell apart in Houston. Josh Allen was hit 12 times and brought down 8 of those times. The defense wasn’t the biggest liability, but they still allowed Houston to effectively run the ball.
With that loss, the Bills dropped to 7-4 to not only keep the AFC playoff picture wide open, but they continued to drop further down in their own division. Since their Week 5 loss to the New England Patriots, the Bills have been up and down and now they find themselves behind the Patriots by a good margin.
New England has won 9 consecutive games and they currently sit at 10-2 with a tiebreaker advantage over the Bills. While they barely beat the Cincinnati Bengals, they still got the 26-20 win to stay way ahead in the division.
With the Patriots beating the Bengals and the Bills losing to Houston, Bills fans can now only accept a harsh reality that didn’t seem possible at the start of this season.
Bills set up to lose AFC East to Patriots
Since 2020 when Tom Brady left the Patriots, the Bills have taken control of the division with winning the AFC East five straight seasons. Coming into this season, it seemed like they were on their way to winning their sixth consecutive one. However, unless the Patriots completely fall apart and the Bills go on a run, New England is going to win this division.
I’m not saying that this is the start to near 20-year run by the Patriots once again, but with Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye being the perfect head coach/quarterback duo at this time, the Bills will officially have some serious competition in their division for the first time this decade.
For the rest of this season, the Bills will take on the Steelers, Bengals, Patriots (in New England), Browns, Eagles, and Jets. That’s three teams that have winning records, including one that already beat Buffalo in Orchard Park.
As for the Patriots, they have the Giants, Bills, Ravens, Jets, and Dolphins. Only Buffalo and Baltimore have winning records and the Ravens just got above .500.
Obviously, winning the AFC East is not the Bills’ ultimate goal but having home field advantage in the playoffs does mean a lot to them. They have yet to win a road playoff game since Sean McDermott and Josh Allen arrived so when someone says that being at home doesn’t matter, just remind them of that.