By Noah Gould
The Buffalo Bills schedule was easily one of the most exciting for the fans in years. If the date of their week 11 game didn’t jump out at you then you definitely weren’t looking hard enough. The game will be Monday night football on ESPN. The Bills haven’t played a Sunday or Monday night game since 2009. This isn’t a result of any bias on the part of the NFL. The Bills have simply been really bad for each of the past few years. Now, with the improvements of the young team and the addition of Rex Ryan as head coach the team has garnered some interest across the nation. The NFL has taken an interest in this season and pundits and fans across the nation have said that the Bills have a good chance to make the playoffs if they can get good play out of the quarterback position. Of course, that has been a huge problem for the team for all of recent memory. A national TV game does represent a huge step up in national perception of the team that has been considered a lovable loser for years.
Another item of note, team has a “road game” against the Jaguars in England. This does present an advantage for the team because the crowd will most likely be neutral. The trip comes the week before the bye, so the team won’t have to worry about being over tired going into the next week.
3 of the teams first 4 games and the last 2 games of the year are all at home. These stretches will be very exciting for the home crowd especially if the team is once again in the playoff picture late in the season. This is a nice change from last year when the team had only one of their last four games at home while trying to make a playoff push. On the flip side of the equation, the Bills have a stretch where 5 of 6 games are on the road. It will be interesting to see how the home crowd and the team react to such a long stretch of road games.
It is way too early to discuss things like which games will be though for the BIlls or how hard the schedule as a whole is. From year to year it is very difficult to determine which teams will have good season or which players might get injured. Additionally, the draft hasn’t even happened yet so teams will probably fill all of their outstanding needs.
