Following the Jets loss in NY in Game 9 of 2022, when Allen hurt his elbow late (and still uncorked a 65 yard pass for the win that Gabe dropped), everything felt like a grind the rest of that year. Nothing ever felt easy, despite the 7 straight wins to end the year excluding the Bengals/Hamlin game. It always seemed like their nose was just above the water line. Honestly, if I’m a Chiefs fan, I have to be feeling similarly right now about their current team.
For the 2024 version of the Bills, only 2-3 games that felt this way, in my view. They were the Texans game (loss) and first Patriots game (win)… where you can’t shake the feeling that if the Bills played a middle-of-road, clean game, they win by double digits and the outcome assured by the end of the third quarter. Every game in the back half of ‘22 was that type of grind.
This year has felt more like watching a Brady-led Patriots team for the most part. Just a surgical blood-letting. My Broncos friend told me how proud he was of his team, giving the Bills a scare. I let him take the moral win… but I’m thinking “31-7, 42 minutes of possession time, more than doubled them in yards, what’s he talking about”. We completely dominated them, but I remember making similarly absurd comments about the Bills versus Brady teams during that era.
I’d submit this version of the Bills has some of that vibe and certainly not the vibe of the second half of 2022. That team was strangely exhausting.