A thrilling comeback victory propels the Bills closer to the postseason, but what's the team's path toward clinching a playoff spot next week?
The Buffalo Bills are getting close to locking down a spot in the 2025 NFL Playoffs. With their 35-31 comeback win over the New England Patriots on Sunday, not only did they keep their slight AFC East hopes alive, but they inched closer to clinching, at the very least, one of the three wild card positions.
Before getting into what the Bills need to do, let's look at what happened during Sunday's Week 15 action.
As far as who's already going to the postseason, the Denver Broncos were the first team in the AFC to clinch after they beat Green Bay. That win paired with the New England loss also puts them a game up in the race for the conference's top seed.
Looking at who won't be playing after the first week of January, both the Cincinnati Bengals and Kansas City Chiefs were officially eliminated Sunday afternoon. It's the third year in a row the Bengals will miss the playoffs and the first since 2014 for the Chiefs.
Now, moving on to the task at hand, the Bills sit in the AFC's sixth seed, tied with the Los Angeles Chargers, but behind them due to the conference record tiebreaker. At 10-4, they are also one game up on the seventh-seeded Houston Texans and two games up on the first team on the outside, the Indianapolis Colts.
While worrying about being caught is likely on the mind of many fans, the Bills path to the playoffs has become clear. In fact, there's a way they can clinch their seventh straight postseason berth next week.
For the Bills to lock up a spot, they first need to win against the 3-11 Cleveland Browns on the road. If they do that, then they just need one of Houston or Indianapolis to lose next week.
Houston faces Las Vegas and Indianapolis hosts San Francisco. With that slate of games, envisioning a loss from one of those two teams isn't so farfetched. That said, you can't rely on other teams to do your job for you. The focus should be solely on getting the win in Cleveland and then looking towards the final two games against Philadelphia and the New York Jets. Both of those last two games, by the way, are at home.