Buffalo Bills 2026: The Coverage Report — 999 Takes, 332 About the 53-Man Roster, One Graded

Buffalo is not an under-covered team. Across every outlet MissedTakes tracks, the Bills are the subject of 999 predictions — more than any other club in the database. The league total is 19,341 takes across 32 teams, an average of 604 per club. Buffalo runs 65 percent above that.

One caveat, stated once and meant throughout: this measures the outlets we track, not all football media. Our sample skews toward national radio, podcasts, and draft coverage, plus the club-specific shows we ingest.

Graded volume tells the same story with a smaller number. Buffalo has 309 graded takes, third behind Kansas City (389) and the Rams (326). The average accuracy on those 309 is 47.8, with an average skill delta of +3.52 — barely better than the naive baseline. For scale, takes about Seattle grade at 75.0 accuracy and takes about Baltimore at 29.9.

The club's results, for context: 12-5 in 2025 with a playoff berth, 13-4 in 2024, and a playoff appearance in each of the last seven seasons on record. Owner Terry Pegula, GM Brandon Beane, head coach Joe Brady.

The cutdown: 332 calls, one grade

The news hook of this series is the 53-man roster, and here the honest answer is that the record barely exists yet.

There are 332 roster-spot calls on Buffalo in the database. Exactly one is graded. The other 331 are pending.

That is not a Buffalo-specific quirk of coverage volume — the volume is there. It is a grading-lag problem. Most of these calls landed on August 28, the Friday before cutdowns, and roster-spot claims resolve over weeks of active-list transactions, not on deadline day.

The one graded call belongs to head coach Joe Brady, speaking on January 30 about Keon Coleman: *"And, you know, he's gonna be a Buffalo Bill."* Graded 100 for accuracy, skill 0 — Coleman logged 19 weeks on the 53, but the naive baseline ("he was on somebody's 53 last season") scored 100 too. Correct and worth nothing. That is the entire graded Buffalo roster-spot record.

What is pending is more interesting than what is graded, and it includes a direct contradiction. Both calls were published August 28:

• Ralph Ventre on linebacker Joe Andreessen: *"Third-year backup linebacker Joe Andreessen faced some uncertainty over the offseason, but it turns out that he apparently remains in his hometown team's plans… it's likely a sign that he locked up his roster spot."*
• Randy Gurzi, in a full 53-man projection, lists Andreessen under *"Notable cuts"* and writes that *"Keonta Jenkins did just enough to edge out Joe Andreesen."*

Gurzi's projection also cuts Geno Stone and Sedrick Van Pran-Granger; Carter Bahns named Mecole Hardman among five veterans he expected to be released before the deadline; John Green, on September 3, predicted Greg Dortch gets elevated off the practice squad and onto the active roster *"by the time the end of September comes around."* None of these are graded. When they are, we will have a real Buffalo cutdown record. Right now we have one call about a receiver who was never in danger.

The volume is concentrated: Locked On Bills accounts for 328 Buffalo takes with 18 graded, which is most of the roster-spot backlog in one place.

What is graded: the floor was easy, the ceiling was a wipeout

Strip out the pending roster material and Buffalo's graded record splits cleanly. Pundits were right about Buffalo being good and wrong about Buffalo being great.

Playoff berth: 26 graded calls, average accuracy 100. Everyone who said the Bills would make the tournament was right, and the skill delta of +15.38 says it was slightly harder than the baseline assumed.

Season win totals: 8 graded, 77.5 accuracy, +19.79 skill. The 2025 field on Buffalo was five calls — 11, 12, 14, 12, 12 — against an actual 12 wins. Buffalo does not appear anywhere near the league's worst collective win-total misses; the field simply got this one.

Division winners: 30 graded, average accuracy 6.7. All 25 of the most recent graded division calls — every one from the 2025 cycle — scored zero. Colin Cowherd alone has four of them, including *"Josh Allen's gonna win the division for as long as he's in his prime."* Nick Wright was still on it in mid-October: *"I still think they're gonna win the division."* Richard Sherman: *"I just don't see this division being anything but the Buffalo Bill's winning by multiple games."* New England finished 14-3.

Super Bowl picks: 13 graded, average accuracy 0.0, skill −19.23. Not one Buffalo Super Bowl call in the database has ever cashed. Seattle won the 2025 title with New England as runner-up; Philadelphia won 2024. The names on the zeroes include Kyle Brandt (*"The Buffalo Bills are going to win the Super Bowl this year"*), Albert Breer, Jason McIntyre, Cynthia Frelund, Gregg Rosenthal, Cowherd, and John Middlekauff. Four of those January 2025 calls carry a −50 skill penalty because the naive pick reached the game and Buffalo did not.

Conference champions: 14 graded, 14.3 accuracy, −15.46 skill. Same pattern.

Player coverage concentrates on one man. Josh Allen is the subject of 59 Buffalo takes, 31 of them graded, at 36.3 accuracy and +23.37 skill — low hit rate on hard claims. He drew 5 of 100 MVP votes in the 2025 ballot; Matthew Stafford won. James Cook has 36 takes but only 6 graded (80.6 accuracy).

Who has a named record here

Fifteen pundits clear five graded Buffalo takes. Seven clear ten, which is the floor we'd use before saying anything comparative, and even ten is thin:

Crabbs is the instructive row: 21.7 accuracy with the best skill number on the board, because his Buffalo work is mock-draft picks, where the baseline is also terrible. Below ten graded, Cynthia Frelund sits at 77.8 on nine and Marcus Mosher at 76.0 on five — real numbers, samples too small to rank on.

The summary: our tracked outlets talk about Buffalo more than any team in football, they were right about the parts that were easy, they were 0-for-13 on the part that matters, and the 332 calls about who makes this year's 53 have produced one grade so far. Check back when the transactions settle.