More from the MMQB: Recap | Playoff picture | What we learned | Trade deadline buzz | Derrick Henry cashing incentives | Lions solidify Super Bowl contender status | AFC midseason grades | NFC midseason grades
Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott was watching the World Series pregame the other night, and Los Angeles Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw, who missed the playoffs with a bum shoulder, was on with the Fox crew. The 10-time All-Star brought expertise and baseball knowhow to the broadcast, for sure.
But what caught McDermott’s attention was Kershaw’s perspective.
“He’s banged up, couldn’t contribute on the field,” McDermott says from his office inside Highmark Stadium late Sunday afternoon. “He was just saying how close the Dodgers team was. Here’s a future Hall of Famer and veteran player, and it’s his perspective on why that’s so important. Usually your better teams are the ones that are the closest—I think it’s an outlier if you can find a team that’s really good, but they’re not close off the field.
“We’re fortunate in Buffalo that we have a community built on that, and is rich and fertile for that kind of team bond and development.”
This year’s Bills are missing a lot of what they had the past few years. Six of the 2023 team’s eight captains are gone. The undisputed Alphas of McDermott’s defense, going all the way back to his first year—safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer—are part of that equation. So, too, is the five-year leader-pivotman of the offensive line, Mitch Morse, and also Stefon Diggs, a Pro Bowler for all four of his years as a Bill.
And, yet, McDermott, in the bowels of the team’s venerable old home, on the first weekend of November, in the first season after all of that attrition, was talking about what the Bills have rather than what they have lost.
It’s not, to be clear, that he wanted to see all of those guys go at once (that part’s more just the reality of the NFL). In fact, maybe as much as anything, that he was sitting there, able to say what he did, was a tribute to what all of those guys helped build, something strong enough to withstand a mass exodus like the one the Bills endured.
So here’s what else, in the end, the team was left with in the aftermath—its undeniable dominance over the AFC East that the Bills hadn’t won in a quarter century before this run.
Sunday proved it once again.
A Miami Dolphins team in desperation mode, with its season sent sideways by injury, did all it could to keep up. Buffalo kept swinging back. It was Taron Johnson punching the ball out and Kaiir Elam covering it at the start of the second half. It was McDermott pushing his chips to the center of the table on a key fourth down. It was having faith in Tyler Bass from 61 yards. It was, of course, Josh Allen, over and over again.
In the end, it was Bills over Dolphins, 30–27. It put Buffalo (7–2) up four full games on the field in the AFC East, just midway through a year that was supposed to be the one where the other teams could finally get the Bills. But it was about more than just that.
It was what this season has shown—the strength of what’s been built in Western New York.
