We made it, Bills Mafia.
The NFL season kicks off tonight. We have hours and hours of meaningful football ahead of us this weekend, and we definitely aren’t going to watch it without choosing sides. We’re the number one fan base in the league, after all.
There’s just one problem: We don’t really know who all of our enemies are yet. We know we will almost never root for the AFC East, but beyond that, there are no playoff scenarios to calculate, no strength-of-victory tiebreakers to chase, and no late-season games where we suddenly find ourselves cheering for a team we’ve spent the previous four months making fun of.
Rooting Interests is almost ridiculous in Week 1, but we’re Bills fans, so of course we’re doing it anyway.
We don’t know which AFC teams will be standing between Buffalo and the Number 1 seed in January. We don’t know which teams will be fighting for the final wild-card spots, which supposedly good teams will fall apart, or which team nobody is thinking about right now will become a problem.
But we still need somebody to root for; so, until the 2026 season gives us enough information to know exactly what Buffalo needs, we’re going to make our own rules.
Think of this as the early-season Rooting Interests constitution:
- Always root for the Bills
- Build Buffalo’s tiebreakers for later.
- Knock last year’s AFC division winners down a peg.
- Push struggling AFC teams away from premium draft picks.
- Keep the best draft picks in the NFC.
- When two irrelevant NFC teams play, root for the better team to win and the worse team to lose.
- When the rules conflict, Buffalo’s 2026 interests come first.
- And, above all else, never forget that the Patriots, Dolphins and Jets can lose every single game they play, and we won’t feel even a little bit bad about it.
One important reminder before we get started: These are rooting interests, not predictions. We aren’t picking who we think will win, who Vegas favors or even necessarily who we think is the better team. We’re simply deciding which outcome Bills Mafia should want based on what could help Buffalo — now, later or somewhere way down the road.
AFC East
Buffalo Bills over Houston Texans
Seattle Seahawks over New England Patriots
Tennessee Titans over New York Jets
Las Vegas Raiders over Miami Dolphins
Rest of the AFC
Cincinnati Bengals over Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Batlimore Ravens over Indianapolis Colts
Cleveland Browns over Jacksonville Jaguars
Atlanta Falcons over Pittsburgh Steelers
Los Angeles Chargers over Arizona Cardinals
Kansas City over Denver Broncos
NFC vs NFC games
LA Rams over San Francisco 49ers
Chicago Bears over Carolina Panthers
Detroit Lions over New Orleans Saints
Green Bay Packers over Minnesota Vikings*
Philadelphia Eagles over Washington Commanders
Dallas Cowboys over New York Giants
*This one doesn’t really matter. Buffalo plays them both. They had a half game separating them in last year’s final standings. But I’m petty, and the Vikings made me mad, so I’m going Green Bay.
Are we going to look back at some of these picks in October and wonder what we were thinking? Almost certainly. There’s a decent chance one of the teams we’re rooting for this week becomes the team we need to lose games in December.
But that’s a problem for future Bills Mafia. Right now, we have a full slate of football, a handful of rules, and absolutely no intention of sitting through any of these games without knowing who we want to win.
Soon enough, we’ll be digging through strength of victory, conference records, and playoff scenarios looking for every tiny advantage Buffalo can get. The rules will change. The priorities will shift. And the standings will eventually tell us who the real enemies are.
The math will come later.
For now, we pick sides.
