NFL analyst predicts disappointing record and divisional freefall for Bills in 2024

Predicting how an NFL team will perform each week of an upcoming season in June is ultimately futile. There are too many variables; rosters may change between now and when the game is finally played, injuries may occur, momentum may change, et cetera. There are six months and a multitude of circumstances standing between us and these teams’ final records – confidently predicting their win totals, at this point, is trivial.

That doesn’t stop NFL Network analyst Adam Rank from participating in the exercise every year. He has long predicted every NFL team’s record in the upcoming campaign this past offseason, with some of his projections aging well and others not so much.

The NFL’s official YouTube channel recently uploaded a video featuring all of Rank’s record-breaking predictions for the 2024 season; The analyst projects that the Buffalo Bills will finish the 2024 NFL season with a 9-8 record, which would be the club’s first single-digit winning season since 2018.

Rank projects Buffalo to finish third in the AFC East, behind the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets (predicting 11-6 records for those two teams). Analyst predicts losses to Miami Dolphins (away), Baltimore Ravens, New York Jets (away), Seattle Seahawks, Indianapolis Colts, Kansas Chiefs City, the Los Angeles Rams and the Detroit Lions.

It’s fair to expect the Bills to regress a bit in the 2024 season given their offseason changes – the team moved on from several loyal starters (including perennial Pro Bowl wide receiver Stefon Diggs) and largely replaced those players with valuable free agents and rookies – but finishing just barely above .500 seems a bit alarmist, especially given some of Rank’s projected losses.

A loss to the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium, while not outside the realm of possibility, seems premature to predict; The Colts are a young, up-and-coming team that could be surprisingly competitive in the new campaign, but they’re probably not on the same level as the Bills. What follows is a home loss to the Kansas City Chiefs – despite the fact that Buffalo has played its last three regular-season matchups with its rival – while that’s not unrealistic, it once again seems alarmist.

Related: 4 bills that deserve a contract extension

Aside from wins over the Houston Texans and San Francisco 49ers, Rank essentially made the team lose every game on its schedule, even losing a few it probably should win along the way. Could this happen? Of course, anything is possible. Is this okay? Probably not.

It is, once again, fair to expect some regression from Buffalo this year; the team relies heavily on young pass catchers like Dalton Kincaid and Keon Coleman to lead its aerial attack, and it’s fair to wonder if the team has injected too much changing in your locker room too abruptly. That said, it’s hard to imagine otherworldly quarterback Josh Allen not single-handedly carrying the team to double-digit wins.

NFL slates aren’t ultimately shown in YouTube videos: they happen on the field. The Bills will attempt to prove Rank wrong by being competitive again in the 2024 season.