Grading the Bills' offseason and their chances to topple the Chiefs

Will Buffalo finally get past Kansas City, or will history keep repeating itself?
ByBrandon Ray|
AFC Championship Game: Buffalo Bills v Kansas City Chiefs
AFC Championship Game: Buffalo Bills v Kansas City Chiefs | Aaron M. Sprecher/GettyImages

We are blessed to be experiencing an era where we see two of the top quarterbacks in Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen face off against each other year-after-year. It’s always an epic battle when these two go against each other. With the way history has been going, Allen and the Bills are always getting the best of Mahomes and the Chiefs in the regular season. However, we all know that it’s all about what you do in the playoffs.

In four of the last five postseasons, the Chiefs have eliminated the Bills from the postseason which includes two AFC championship games. Kansas City has Buffalo’s number and no one can deny that.

Each offseason, we have seen the Bills try to do whatever they can to get past the Chiefs but each year, they have failed. Surprisingly, the Bills made it to the conference championship last season even though they lost more than they gained in the offseason. That itself should show just how dangerous they can be.

During this offseason, Kansas City’s biggest threat to them has gone out and addressed various needs, but was it enough for them to finally topple the Chiefs?

Grading the Buffalo Bills' offseason and whether or not it's enough to get past Chiefs

Here is a list of the free agency signings the Bills have made:

New Bills players

WR Joshua Palmer: 3 years, $36 million

DE/DL Michael Hoecht: 3 years, $24 million

RB Darrynton Evans: 1 year, $1.21 million

RB Ty Johnson: 2 years, $5 million

DE Joey Bosa: 1 year, $12.6 million

DT Larry Ogunjobi: 1 year, $8.3 million

S Damar Hamlin: 1 year, $2 million

S Darrick Forrest: 1 year, $1.3 million

WR Laviska Shenault: 1 year, $1.2 million

CB Dane Jackson: 1 year, $1.3 million

OL Kendrick Green: 1 year, $1.2 million

In addition to these free agent signings, the Bills also extended WR Khalil Shakir, LB Terrel Bernard, DE Greg Rousseau, QB Josh Allen, and CB Christian Benford to new contracts to keep them in Buffalo for the foreseeable future.

Looking at the free agent signings alone, the Bills made bigger moves this offseason than they did last year. The most notable signing is none other than Joey Bosa, who the Chiefs are very familiar with. While Buffalo made some improvements, they are still lacking in their secondary and two of their free agent signings (Michael Hoecht and Larry Ogunjobi) are facing six-game suspensions for violating the league’s PED policy.

The signing of Joshua Palmer was a bit of an overpay, but Palmer more than likely will take the role that Amari Cooper had last season with the Bills. The rest of the signings seem to be nothing more than depth signings.

So essentially, the Bills replace Von Miller with Joey Bosa and they also replace Amari Cooper with Joshua Palmer. They got younger for sure, but until the Bills can prove that their new signings can help them get over the top, it’s hard to make the argument that the Bills are going to take down the Chiefs in the playoffs.

Final analysis: Bills get a B for offseason moves but did not do enough to overtake the Chiefs.

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