Rex Ryan was very, very impressed by the Bills’ performance Saturday night at Highmark Stadium.
So much so that the NFL head coach-turned-analyst believes Buffalo now is the team to beat in the 2021 playoff field. Ryan only was concerned about one potential flaw for the Bills, but Sean McDermott’s team made him a full-fledged believer with its 30-point wild-card win.
“The way this team is playing — look, they’re No. 1 in the NFL at defense, all right, and they have this great offense. It’s about them right now,” Ryan said Sunday morning on ESPN. “Are they the favorites to win the thing now? Yeah. The only thing they had to prove to me was that they could stop the run. You knew New England was going to come in committed to pounding the football. Why? Because in the season we saw New England run it, the Colts run it and Tennessee run it. All three, losses for the Bills. That’s the only thing they had to prove and they proved it last night.”
Do Josh Allen and Co. have the makings of a Super Bowl-winning team? Absolutely, but Ryan might be a bit too confident in the Bills here. Buffalo, in all likelihood, will have to travel to Kansas City for the divisional round. The Chiefs have been playing spectacular football since their early-season woes, and Arrowhead Stadium is one of the most difficult places to play for visiting teams.
You also could argue we shouldn’t put a ton of stock in Buffalo’s playoff opener. A postseason score that lopsided isn’t small potatoes, but the Patriots simply were not a good football team for the majority of December and early January. Any team the Bills run into the rest of the way will be leaps and bounds better than New England.
