Buffalo Bills 2026 Profile

Coaching Staff

Head Coach: Joe Brady
Offensive Coordinator: Pete Carmichael, Jr.
Defensive Coordinator: Jim Leonhard
Special Teams Coordinator: Jeff Rodgers

2025 Summary (W-L Record: 12-5)

The Bills’ 5-year reign of dominance over the rest of the AFC East came to an end in 2025, as did the tenure of head coach Sean McDermott.

As you can see from the numbers below, the Bills were one of the best overall teams in the NFL. But something seemed just a bit off all season:

As the Patriots were bursting onto the scene and taking care of business, the Bills failed to keep up. In a year where they had little margin for error, they made far too many. They had puzzling losses to teams like the Falcons and Dolphins that all but knocked them out of contention for the division title.

Along the way, their run defense let them down time and time again. They finished 28th in rushing yards allowed per game, 30th in yards per attempt, and 29th in runs of 10 or more yards allowed.

Their inability to stop the run either led to those puzzling losses (they gave up 210 and 197 rushing yards to the Falcons and Dolphins respectively) or allowed inferior teams to keep games close.

The offense had a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde element to it. They were 15th in giveaways one year after having the fewest in the league. Josh Allen was a little more careless with the ball, and that played some part in Buffalo’s inability to keep pace with the Patriots.

But possibly the most difficult pill to swallow about the 2025 season was that Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs were finally not in the way. Lamar Jackson and the Ravens also failed to make the playoffs. The Bills entered the postseason as the most experienced team in the AFC.

They ultimately couldn’t take advantage. Their 33-30 overtime loss to the Broncos was a game with missed opportunities on both sides of the ball. The offense committed 5 turnovers. The defense let Denver off the hook.

Sean McDermott was not allowed to stick around as a result.

Key Additions

WR D.J. Moore
WR Skyler Bell (4th Rd, 125th Overall)
TE Shane Zylstra
OG Austin Corbett
C Lloyd Cushenberry III
OT Jude Bowry (4th Rd, 102nd Overall)

DL Zane Durant (5th Rd, 181st Overall)
EDGE Bradley Chubb
EDGE Mike Danna
EDGE T.J. Parker (2nd Rd, 35th Overall)
LB Kaleb Elarms-Orr (4th Rd, 126th Overall)
LB Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles
CB Dee Alford
CB Davison Igbinosun (2nd Rd, 62nd Overall)
S C.J. Gardner-Johnson Texans
S Geno Stone
S Jalon Kilgore (5th Rd, 167th Overall)

Key Losses

FB Reggie Gilliam
WR Gabe Davis
WR Brandin Cooks
LG David Edwards
OT Ryan Van Demark

DL DaQuan Jones
DL Larry Ogunjobi
DL Jordan Phillips
EDGE Joey Bosa
EDGE A.J. Epenesa
LB Matt Milano
LB Shaq Thompson
CB Tre’Davious White
CB Taron Johnson
S Jordan Poyer
S Cam Lewis
S Taylor Rapp

Biggest Questions Entering 2026

Will the team around Josh Allen finally rise to his level?
Most still focus on Allen’s super-human physical abilities when discussing him, but his game really has become more and more advanced with each season.

I wrote about a couple of great examples showing this from Buffalo’s playoff win over the Jaguars last season:

Allen can’t do it all alone, though. And unfortunately, he hasn’t had the help around him that he’s needed to win a Super Bowl.

His receiving corps has been underwhelming. The league agrees with this because the Bills have seen the highest frequency of man coverage over the last 3 seasons according to Cody Alexander of MatchQuarters.

You don’t traditionally see that against a quarterback who can burn you with his legs because defensive coordinators don’t want their defenders turning their backs to him. Opposing teams have had such little respect for the ability of Bills receivers to win their 1-on-1 matchups, however, that they’ve bucked this tradition and chosen to smother those receivers in man.

That’s forced Allen to be extra precise with his passes to get big completions or turned games into sandlot showdowns between one man and the rest of the defense.

Allen has been so good that he’s been able to have success playing this way. Every year, however, it seems to catch up to Buffalo by season’s end.

James Cook and the run game were definitely the most complementary element of Buffalo’s offense last season. They finished the year with the number-1 rushing attack in the NFL (159.6 yards per game) and the 2nd-most runs of 10 yards or more.

Allen is obviously a huge part of making that Bills run game the best in the league, though. He led all quarterbacks with 579 rushing yards, 46 first downs, and 14 touchdowns last season.

The Bills traded for wide receiver D.J. Moore this offseason. That’s definitely a good start in giving Allen a receiver that defenses actually have to be concerned about.

Hopefully tight end Dalton Kincaid can stay on the field this year and continue to be more of a threat as well. He actually had a decent season last year (with career highs in yards per reception and touchdowns) despite only playing in 27% of the offensive snaps during the regular season.

The bottom line, though, is that someone besides Allen has to step up and make a play in the most critical moments.

Will the situational lapses go away?
Scheme was never really the issue on the defensive side of the ball with Sean McDermott. The Bills always used a good assortment of disguise and trickery, and there were several years where the defense ranked at or near the top of the league.

The issue under McDermott was always the poor defensive performances in the playoffs and the situational lapses.

Last year they allowed 33 points to the Broncos in the Divisional round, ending their season.

The year before, it was the AFC Championship game against the Chiefs. They allowed 32 points to an offense that really struggled all year.

The year before that, they allowed 27 points to a Chiefs offense that again wasn’t rolling on all cylinders.

The year before that, they allowed 27 points at home in the snow to the Bengals.

The year before that, they allowed 42 to the Chiefs.

The year before that, they allowed 38 to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game.

All with a defensive head coach.

Their inability to manage end-of-game critical situations was even more damning.

We can go all the way back to 2019 and Josh Allen’s first career playoff game. The Bills were in Houston playing the Texans. Not only did they blow a 16-0 lead in the second half, but when they were in overtime, the Texans faced a 3rd-and-18 in their own territory. Buffalo should have been able to easily get a stop, force a punt, and then hopefully drive down the field to kick the game-winning field goal.

But Deshaun Watson dumped the ball off to his running back, and he was able to easily scamper for the first down:

That’s inexcusable on 3rd-and-18. The Texans would eventually go on to kick the game-winning field goal, ending the Bills’ season.

Fast forward to 2021 vs. the Chiefs in the Divisional round. “13 seconds.” This is the one that every Bills fan remembers in what was an absolutely unbelievable back-and-forth game between Allen and Mahomes.

Allen finally put the Bills ahead, 36-33 with 13 seconds remaining:

They should have won the game right then and there. But then the Bills made a bunch of critical mistakes in their decision-making, beginning with the decision to kick the ball into the end zone for a touchback and not take any time off the clock.

And then they allowed the Chiefs to cover 44 yards on two plays, only taking 10 seconds off the clock in the process.

The defense they played was ultra-passive. They allowed receivers to get free releases off the line. They allowed Mahomes to plant his back foot and get the ball out immediately:

They seemingly didn’t take the clock into account. They didn’t have a strategy deployed to force the Chiefs to waste any time. And we all know what happened. K.C. kicked a relatively easy game-tying field goal. They won the coin toss in overtime and scored a touchdown.

Game over. Season over.

Then you had last season against the Broncos. This one won’t go down as quite as obvious of a blunder, but the Bills led 27-23 with about two and a half minutes to go. The Broncos had the ball and faced a 3rd-and-11.

The Bills started in single high. They were trying to disguise and ended up playing a non-traditional Tampa-2 coverage.

Cole Bishop, who was the deep safety to start the play, ended up dropping down to become the hook defender. He should have been in the throwing lane where Bo Nix ended up delivering the ball. But he inexplicably decided to jump a receiver at the line of scrimmage who was breaking to the flat:

Now that’s one of those situations where you do not react to receivers in the “no-cover zone.” This is an area of the field near the line of scrimmage (depending on the down and distance) where defenders are not supposed to match up to routes until receivers have gotten far enough downfield. You stay in position, hold your ground, and mind the first down line.

Bishop didn’t do that here. He broke for the flat when there was no need for him to do so. Nix threw the ball right behind him for a big completion, and the Broncos would go on to score a touchdown and take the lead.

But that’s just another example of poor situational football. You can blame the player all you want, but we’ve seen too many instances where the individual players on the Bills continue to have these blunders. All that can indicate is that situational football is not something that was emphasized and/or drilled enough by the coaching staff.

And ultimately, that’s why McDermott had to go. It kept happening year after year.

So while the defense will be running a new scheme this year, and new head coach Joe Brady might alter his approach on offense now that he’s calling the shots, both of those are less significant questions to me than “can the Bills handle critical situations better?”

And we won’t know if Brady and Leonhard are the guys to help them do that until February of next year.

What will Jim Leonhard’s defense look like?
That said, I am still very interested (and excited) to see how the scheme that Leonhard implements helps this defense.

Overall, the Bills are going to look much different on this side of the ball than in years past.

First, they had a fair amount of personnel turnover this offseason. Of the 14 defenders who played more than 40% of snaps last regular season, 8 are no longer on the roster as of right now.

Schematically, Leonhard will likely have a far more aggressive approach than McDermott did. We’re going to see an attack 3-4 centered around disruption and penetration, complete with a variety of blitzes and sim pressures.

I tend to think the defenses that can make the biggest impact in year 1 are the aggressive ones that put offenses on their heels mentally. To me, that provides hope for the Bills that this isn’t a multi-year reboot on that side of the ball. They can become dominant immediately.

And an aggressive approach on defense might be a way for the Bills to win games without Allen needing to be Superman every week.

2026 Outlook

The Bills should still be one of the favorites in the AFC. Perhaps they should be THE favorite entering the season.

Josh Allen has been the best player in the NFL over the last few years. And no team has been more dependent on their quarterback than Buffalo has.

It’s long past time for everyone around him to pick up the slack. Maybe a new head coach and defensive approach can finally help the Bills find a way to do that.