The anticipation of the NFL schedule release is finally behind us, and one thing that jumps out at you with the Bills schedule is the difficulty. We'll get more into this later, but it seems the Bills have one of the toughest schedules to navigate every year. By season's end, they still find a way to take the division title and get into the playoffs, but it would be nice if they didn't have to work so hard to make it happen. Maybe they could be a little less banged up and rested headed into the playoffs.
The Bills open the season hosting the Arizona Cardinals in Week One, as Kyler Murray and rookie Marvin Harrison Jr., will be coming to One Bills Drive. As a fan, it'll be exciting to be one of the first to see MHJ on an NFL field, but he'll be a difficult test for a somewhat rebuilt secondary, along with the mobility of Murray, the Cardinals could give the Bills some fits, even though I have Buffalo coming away with a win. You can check out my full game-by-game score predictions here.
The Buffalo Bills will be featured in five primetime games this season, but luckily the rest of their schedule is filled with games on Sundays at 1 pm EST, which should be a welcome change. I'll have more on the primetime games in this article, so read on for my thoughts on that. One game that I will be looking forward to is the Seahawks game on the road in Seattle. Only because I will be there with my family, as we cheer on our Buffalo Bills. But enough about that, here are my five takeaways from the Buffalo Bills 2024 schedule.
The Buffalo Bills' late-season matchups with the New England Patriots is odd.
To close out the season with two of three against the New England Patriots in Weeks 16 and 18 seems off to me. The Patriots are not a contender for the division title, and in years past the league typically sets this up for potential battle for the division title. The Patriots are in full-on rebuild mode and will most likely be starting rookie Drake Maye by that point of the season.
This would have been the prime place to schedule games against the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins, given both of those teams should be in serious contention for the division title. They do have the Jets sandwiched between the two Patriots games, and the Jets close out the season against the Bills and Dolphins in the final week of the season. This tells me more about what the NFL thinks of the Jets and Dolphins and those two play each other in Week 14.
NFL missed not scheduling the Buffalo Bills against Stefon Diggs and the Texans in primetime
This seemed like a no-brainer to me. With all the media attention that Diggs garnered since last offseason, followed by the trade to the Texans, this game would get a ton of attention with Allen versus Diggs. Plus, it's a conference matchup and both teams are division winners and playoff teams from 2023. What more do you need to put a game on primetime? Did the NFL miss this gift-wrapped opportunity for some extra eyeballs?
This matchup is in Week Five and sandwiched between two primetime games for the Bills, Week Four against the Ravens on Sunday Night, and Week Six against the New York Jets on Monday Night. Maybe the league didn't want the Bills on primetime for three straight weeks, after already featuring them from Weeks Two through Four, but when the Bills are on, NFL fans watch.
The Buffalo Bills have two significantly difficult stretches baked into their schedule.
The Bills have five weeks between Week Two through Week Six, where they will face the Miami Dolphins, Jacksonville Jaguars, Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans, and New York Jets. On top of that, four of the five are on the road, with the Jaguars being the lone home game. Is this the toughest part of the Bills 2024 schedule? A case can certainly be made, but let's look at the other difficult part of the schedule before making that determination.
In the second half of the year, Buffalo has a six-game stretch that features the Dolphins, Indianapolis Colts, Kansas City Chiefs, San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Rams, and Detroit Lions. Three of those are at home and three on the road. They are fortunate to get a bye week in there at Week 12 between the Chiefs and 49ers games, both of which are home games. Is this the toughest stretch of games? It's hard to say, but I think Buffalo will have a little bit of an advantage early in the season with teams not knowing what to expect from this team with the various changes in the coaching staff and the roster.
The Buffalo Bills have one of the league's toughest schedules in 2024.
NFL.com's Deputy Editor, Gennaro Filice recently published his ranking of the league's toughest schedules, and he has the Bills at number two, behind only the Pittsburgh Steelers. In his ranking of the top seven most difficult, the Chiefs, Dolphins, Texans, and 49ers, just to name a few are nowhere to be seen. I looked at some other schedule rankings to get an idea of where some of these other teams fell, and here is what I found.
In another ranking put out by USAToday.com, they ranked the ten teams with the easiest schedule. The Dolphins made this list with the eighth easiest schedule. Finally, foxsports.com ranked all 32 teams based on opponents winning percentage from 2023. I find some fault with ranking this way because teams change, coaches change and there is always significant roster turnover, but even still, the Bills are seventh on this list, with the Chiefs coming in at 16 and the 49ers in at 13.
A factor to consider when ranking the toughest schedules is the strength of the division. The Chiefs have it made with the Raiders, Broncos, and Chargers. This is part of the reason the Patriots were able to dominate in the early 2000s, the AFC East was terrible and made life easy on the Patriots during the regular season. I don't buy into the "tough schedule makes you playoff-ready." If anything, it wears you out physically and mentally for the playoffs. Unfortunately, the Bills reside in what is now one of the toughest divisions.
The Buffalo Bills have four primetime games within the first six weeks of the season.
In the first six games of the 2024 season, the Bills have four primetime games, which include three consecutive weeks in the spotlight, from Week Two through Week Four. They have two Monday Night games, one Sunday and one Thursday Night. The opponents are the Dolphins (Thursday), the Jaguars (Monday), the Ravens (Sunday), and the Jets (Monday). The only two non-primetime games are the Cardinals in Week One, and the Texans in Week Five.
I find it interesting the league crammed all these primetime games in early, and only one later in the year against the 49ers in Week 13, a Sunday Night game. Here is my thought on why this is, which also plays into the league putting the Bills against the Patriots in two of the last three games. I don't think the league is very high on the Bills this season and figure they won't be relevant after the first month and a half of the regular season. Why else would they pack in the early primetime games and backload it with the Patriots?