NFL Power Rankings Week 7: Buffalo Bills a near-universal #1

The Buffalo Bills topped the NFL’s power rankings last week. With another win down the clutch road under their belt, this time a 24-20 comeback win over the Kansas City Chiefs, their place in the polls is more consistent.

Buffalo is now a near-universal No. 1 roster, and while they’ve trailed the Chiefs in some polls before, a win over Kansas City has left the Bills just one team, if any, ahead of them. That makes for an easy summary, as Buffalo is either up front — or one spot behind the Philadelphia Eagles — in six games.

We’ll start with Dan Hanzus nfl network, who ranked the Bills #1 in his poll this week. He wrote that Kansas City quarterback Josh Allen couldn’t hit with the blitz, and he’s mostly right with that assessment. At first, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo was able to throw Allen out of rhythm, but as the game progressed and the Bills adjusted, Allen found his stride. Allen’s touchdown passes to wideouts Gabe Davis and Stefon Diggs were lightning bolts, and Hanzus put the Bills first thanks to their “rematch win” over the Chiefs.

The next is Pro football talk and Mike Florio, who ranks the Bills #2 in their bye week. As is his style, Florio writes brief summaries for each team, and for the Bills, he admits they beat the Chiefs at Arrowhead for the second year in a row. “This year,” he writes, “[The Bills] really need their regular-season win in KC to lead to a rematch in Buffalo.

The rankings at ESPN have the Bills at No. 1 this week and Alaina Getzenberg has been hired to write on pre-season predictions for the club. She wrote that the Bills proved they could be the best team in the league, even with the sky-high expectations they faced early in the season. While the prompt for the week appeared to be to discuss what predictions the crew made preseason and which to this day aren’t accurate, Getzenberg instead focused on how talented this Buffalo team is.

Peter Prisco at CBS sports has Buffalo at No. 2 this week. He acknowledged how big this week’s win was for playoff placement as Buffalo now tops the AFC rankings with wins over each of the other three division leaders in its conference. Prisco notes that edge rusher Von Miller was “the closer” in the game, and that’s exactly why they gave him the contract they did this offseason.

Conor Orr at sports illustrated Buffalo took first place this week. He called Buffalo’s win over the Chiefs this week a “thorough, masterful performance” that left no doubt as to which team is the best in the NFL right now. Orr names Kansas City as Buffalo’s only true rival, hinting that it would take “some kind of bad weather game or injury to bring this team back to earth a little bit.”

Continuing its trend for the last few weeks, Per Football Network’s Dalton Miller has Buffalo in the “Elite” league of teams. He didn’t create a traditional power ranking by numbers. He compared Allen to a hack in a Driving me crazy Video game, suggesting that the create-a-player quarterbacks are what happens to a 6’5″-245-pound quarterback like Allen. Orr was clearly impressed with Buffalo’s win, although he wasn’t ready to Allen to be crowned best in the league at his position.

Vinnie Iyer at Sporting News the Bills has number 2 in their farewell this week. He noted that Buffalo made some mistakes on offense against Kansas City — a fumble in the red zone on an option pitch and a dropped touchdown on 4th & goal — but he also wrote that Buffalo’s defense made the deal against an excellent squad the Chiefs could seal . He wrote that “an active secondary school” and Von Miller made the difference.

Nate Davis at United States today also has the Bills at No. 1, and this week he’s much more flattering to the team than usual. Davis begins with a rhetorical question, asking if there’s anyone who would play Buffalo on a neutral field in a game. At the moment it seems pretty clear that the answer to that would be no, the Bills would be favored pretty much everywhere when they played. Davis mentions some rumors that reinforcements could be on the way in the form of Odell Beckham Jr. or running back Christian McCaffrey.

Finally, Frank Schwab Yahoo! Sports also has Buffalo on top. He notes that with last week’s win, Buffalo has “no excuses” for not being the top seed in the conference. While correctly writing that the same situation played out last year, he writes that this time the Bills should be able to finish the job. They are the only team in the AFC to have lost and they have beaten every current division leader.