(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from Mike Sando’s Pick Six of Feb. 2, 2025.)
2. Do the Bills need to be as aggressive as the Eagles in the coming offseason?
Four of the Buffalo Bills’ past five seasons ended with playoff defeats to the Chiefs, including twice in the championship round. That led a reporter to ask GM Brandon Beane whether the team needed to do something extra to finally reach a Super Bowl. Beane did not rule out making an expensive addition, but he left a strong impression Buffalo would stay the course.
“You’re never one player away,” Beane said. “That is a dangerous mindset to get into.”
Is staying the course enough with the Chiefs in the way?
The Bills resemble the 1970s Oakland Raiders.
Chuck Noll’s Pittsburgh Steelers and Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins made the AFC treacherous back then. Those Raiders teams, led by future Hall of Famers in owner Al Davis, coach John Madden and quarterback Kenny Stabler, lost three times to Pittsburgh and once to Miami in the playoffs from 1972 to ’75. That included three consecutive defeats in the AFC Championship Game.
That Raiders team finally broke through in 1976, beating an injury-diminished Steelers team in the AFC title game before routing Minnesota in the Super Bowl.
The Raiders didn’t do it by standing pat.
Davis, then in his resourceful prime, signed 6-foot-8, 272-pound defensive end John Matuszak during the 1976 season. Matuszak, the first pick in the 1973 draft, had clashed with coaches, bouncing from the Houston Oilers to the Chiefs and Washington before finally getting cut. He blossomed in Oakland under Madden, an expert in getting the most from other teams’ outcasts. The Raiders won two Super Bowls with Matuszak, going 8-1 in the playoffs with him.
No. 46: Defensive end John Matuszak @Raiders
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— NFL (@NFL) October 12, 2019
“Buffalo needs somebody who is just going to freaking floor it and get there,” an exec from another team said, “instead of, ‘Hey, let’s keep ourselves in it and things will break our way eventually.’ That is all fine and good, and maybe eventually you do break through, but the reality is, if you make a go-for-it move, whatever that may be, the whole building feels that and it takes everyone’s game up a level.”
The Bills tried that by acquiring Stefon Diggs from Minnesota in 2020. They made another aggressive move in signing Von Miller three years ago.
Jeffrey Lurie’s Eagles lost in three consecutive NFC title games in the early 2000s. They added Owens in 2004 and reached the Super Bowl with him, but that marriage ended poorly. The Chargers of the later 2000s had Philip Rivers and a very good team around him, but couldn’t get past Tom Brady and Peyton Manning in the AFC. Manning himself failed to reach a Super Bowl until his ninth season at age 30. Allen enters Year 8 in 2025 at 29.
“Buffalo has a heckuva team, and they have gotten younger, but in the AFC, you are chasing generational quarterbacks in Mahomes and Lamar,” another exec said. “How are you going to overcome those two guys, by doing the same thing? I’d be desperate.”
If Beane is desperate, he’s hiding it well. He also could simply be taking a strategic approach. Setting high expectations for the offseason now would serve no purpose. The team has nearly six months until training camp begins.
“We also have guys coming up on extensions, so I don’t expect us to be big spenders in free agency,” Beane said. “We still have to manage this cap. We are not going to set this thing up to go into a year where we have to strip it all down while we have No. 17 (Josh Allen). We want to give him every chance, every single year, to see if that team in ’25, ’26, ’27 and as many years as he can play, can contend for a title.”
(Photo of Brandon Beane: Bryan Bennett / Getty Images)
