The Buffalo Bills got their first win out of the way this past Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. While it wasn’t pretty, a win is a win. After a sluggish start and going down 17-3, Buffalo rallied and ended up winning 34-28 because of the heroics by Josh Allen.
To be fair, NFC opponents are tough to evaluate because Buffalo doesn’t play the NFC as much. However, with the Cardinals in the middle of a rebuild, it was quite surprising to see them give Buffalo a big scare.
Nonetheless, Buffalo is moving on and they are on a short week. Not only do they have limited time for preparation for a Thursday night game, but they will need to do it to take on the Miami Dolphins. Preparing for an opponent for a full week is already tough enough. The Bills have half of that this week and that doesn’t include flying down to South Beach.
While the Bills have dominated the Dolphins for many years, division games are always the toughest ones. Buffalo is going to be challenged, especially since Miami lost the division to the Bills in Week 18 last year.
This week’s game against Miami is the start of a tough stretch for the Bills
In case you haven’t looked at the Bills schedule in quite some time, this is the first game of their primetime stretch for the next three games. Buffalo is on the road this week against Miami under the lights, then they are back on primetime on Monday night, September 23rd at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars. So they get atleast one home game under the lights, but then they follow up with it by heading down to Baltimore for a Sunday night matchup on September 29th.
Then if we really want to add onto this schedule challenge, Buffalo heads to Houston to take on a rising Texans team before going to MetLife in Week 6 for a Monday night game against the New York Jets.
There is no doubt that this stretch of football could be very good or very bad for the Bills. These types of games are division matchups, as well as potential playoff tiebreaker games. If Buffalo wants to get the advantage in the playoff seedings, they cannot afford to play bad football during this stretch.