The 2026 NFL season is vastly approaching with preseason wrapping up this week, then the final 53-man rosters will be delivered, and then opening kickoff will be here for you know it. The Buffalo Bills weren’t given any favors to start out their season as they don’t just begin on the road, but they will be taking on ferocious Houston Texans team that dominated them last season.
Buffalo is entering a new era with a new head coach in Joe Brady, but he has continuity with the organization from being their offensive coordinator the last few seasons. Then you have a new defensive look under Jim Leonhard in a 3-4 scheme, plus you have a new No. 1 weapon in DJ Moore for Josh Allen.
Teams who typically change a lot of things within the organization and/or the roster tend to not have super high expectations. That isn’t the case for the Bills because they still have the best quarterback who is in his prime.
Bills still remain as championship contender despite offseason changes
There were ten new head coaching hires this past offseason, and only two of them walk into situations where the expectations are high. Brady with the Bills, and Jesse Minter with the Baltimore Ravens. However, Brady has been in the building since 2022 so he knows how everything has been ran in that time span.
He takes on a massive task to do what former head coach Sean McDermott couldn’t, and that’s make and win the Super Bowl. For as great as McDermott was, he could never live up to the expectation to go far in the playoffs. Even though he got to the AFC title game twice, he lost both games to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Now with Brady stepping in, fans are expecting him to take the Bills further than McDermott ever did and not settle for anything less than where McDermott got the Bills to. However, a recent 2026 full season prediction by Lou Scataglia from NFL Spin Zone has the Bills going in the wrong direction.
Bills cannot afford to go backwards to start off Joe Brady era
Scataglia put together predictions that include division winners, playoff seeds, playoff matchups, and finally a Super Bowl winner. The good news is that Scataglia has the Bills winning the AFC East with an 11-6 record (just one game ahead of the New England Patriots), but that’s all he has them doing.
In this full season prediction, Scataglia has the Bills falling to the Cincinnati Bengals in the Wild Card Round despite the game being in Orchard Park.
"The Joe Burrow-led Bengals have beaten the Bills before in the playoffs. Given how well Burrow and the Bengals have played in the playoffs when they get there, I do like Cincinnati in this one. The Bengals have gotten to the AFC Championship Game, at minimum, in the two years of the Burrow era they have made the playoffs." said Scataglia.
The last time the Bills and Bengals met in the playoffs, it was a disaster for Buffalo. The Bengals beat the Bills 27-10, and the game wasn't close at all. That was the same season where the Bills had the most Super Bowl promise in a long time.
If a scenario like this were to happen, it would have Bills fans beyond mad. It would be a step back from where they were as they haven't lost in the Wild Card since 2019-2020 to the Houston Texans, which was Josh Allen's second year in the league.
The absolute minimum for Brady is getting to the second round of the playoffs. McDermott consistently did it and that's what Brady will need to do in order to show that a change was needed. Going backwards is unacceptable.
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