SportsLine NFL futures simulations have little love for the 6-2 Buffalo Bills
Are the Buffalo Bills realistic Super Bowl contenders? They are 6-2, just a game in the loss column behind the suddenly mortal-looking New England Patriots in the AFC East and tied for the second-best record in the AFC with the Baltimore Ravens. Yet, the SportsLine Projection Model's NFL simulations give Buffalo just a 0.75 percent chance of winning the Super Bowl.
Buffalo might be a bit of a fraud as its wins are over the New York Jets, New York Giants, Cincinnati, Tennessee, Miami and Washington – the Titans are OK but those other teams are truly horrible. The Bills have played two good teams in the Patriots and Eagles and lost both. Buffalo is in Cleveland this Sunday and is a 2.5-point underdog on the NFL odds to a 2-6 team on a four-game losing streak. The Browns are down to a 6.3 percent chance of making the playoffs and it's only that high because the team has a very easy schedule left.
The big story of Week 9 was the unbeaten Patriots being largely dominated in a loss in Baltimore. That dropped the Pats' simulated percentage to win the Super Bowl from 32 percent to 28.3 percent because they are still projected to be the AFC's top seed and have home-field advantage in the playoffs. The Ravens would now win any head-to-head tiebreaker with the Patriots, but Baltimore's Super Bowl percentage only improved from 5.1 percent to 8.1 percent. The Kansas City Chiefs are at 8.5 percent to win the Super Bowl and there's no other AFC team above 2.6 percent.
The San Francisco 49ers are the lone unbeaten left but their Super Bowl percentage actually dropped from 19 percent to 18.3 percent because the Niners' defense wasn't nearly as good as it had been in a Week 9 close victory in Arizona. New Orleans now has the NFC's best Super Bowl percentage at 19.5 percent. Green Bay's dropped to 2 percent with a lopsided loss at the LA Chargers.
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