The Buffalo Bills are heading into a new stretch with Joe Brady now running the show, but the expectation outside the building hasn’t taken a hit. Even with Sean McDermott gone and a first-time head coach taking over, Buffalo is still being talked about like one of the league’s safest bets to stay in the upper tier.
Brady’s rise keeps the offense tied to Josh Allen, and that continuity matters. He has been in the building since 2022 and has worked directly with Allen since then, so this is not a total reset for a team that lives in win-now mode. The Bills also made a notable move on the other side of the ball by bringing in Jim Leonhard to lead the defense, a hire fans are hoping will help turn that unit around.
The concern is obvious enough: handing a championship-caliber roster to a first-time head coach can come with risk, especially for a team that knows every season without a Super Bowl chips away at the window. But the view from around the league is that Buffalo’s foundation is sturdy enough to absorb the change.
Lou Scataglia of NFL Spin Zone recently listed five teams that are “guaranteed to win double-digit games” in 2026, and the Bills were on that list alongside the Texans, Ravens, Lions, and 49ers. Three of those four teams are also set to face Buffalo this season.
" The Bills have won double-digit games each year since 2019, and they have also won at least 11 games each year since 2020. While the head coaching change is still notable, it's not something that should totally derail this franchise." said Scataglia.
" While there is no guarantee that Brady pans out as a head coach, the stability that this team has brought to the franchise in the Josh Allen era does not only give them a high ceiling, but the floor, as history tells us, is also very high. Buffalo will be just fine." Scataglia added.
That’s the core of it: change is real, but it doesn’t automatically knock Buffalo off course. Brady enters the job with an already-established connection to Allen and a roster that has been built to contend. The offense has had its issues, but it hasn’t been the reason the Bills kept falling short in the playoffs.
The target remains the same. Buffalo is still being viewed as a championship contender, and Brady steps into what looks like the best possible setup for a rookie head coach. Now he has to turn that stability into results.
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Buffalos scare came on a two-point attempt that stayed alive long enough to create the kind of chaos most teams never see, with the defense momentarily in a spot where one wrong step would have handed the Bills a single point. Instead, the play ended with Baltimore escaping the end zone area and the oddest scoring sequence in NFL history still sitting untouched. [Read more 🡒]
Bills Still Have One Flaw That Could Haunt Them In January
Buffalo spent the offseason patching holes on both sides of the ball, and on paper the roster looks deeper and more balanced than it did a year ago. The defensive front has more help, the offense has more options, and there is a real sense that the Bills have tried to make life easier on everybody else by strengthening the pieces around them.
Still, one area remains a little less settled than the rest. The linebacker group is built around Terrel Bernard, Dorian Williams and rookie Kaleb Elarms-Orr, but there is still a clear need for the group to prove it can hold up week after week. If the front does its part, the linebackers may only have to be solid. If not, it could become the sort of midseason issue Buffalo can live with in October and regret when the games tighten in January. [Read more 🡒]