Are the Bills becoming the NFL's Maple Leafs?

The NFL preseason is covered with granular detail. Practices are described, depth charts are analyzed, fringe roster decisions make headlines. And all of it has an audience.

As such, the Buffalo Bills get the standard treatment: Which defensive backs are seeing more time with the first team? Who's taking the running back snaps? How's the new-look defensive line coming along?

And yet, it's hard to escape the feeling that none of it matters. This is a team that has a 17-week runway to get ready for the playoffs and the inevitability of its Thanos, the Kansas City Chiefs.

Even the one storyline that threatened to have a significant impact on the Bills' fortunes, the contract dispute with running back James Cook, was resolved without much fuss, with the team and the player reportedly agreeing to a long-term extension.

Neither franchise would likely appreciate the comparison, but there's a distinct whiff of the Toronto Maple Leafs about the Bills these days. The closest NFL team to Toronto has been on a similar, and repetitive, voyage. Excellent regular season? Check. Heartbreaking playoff loss? Check. Mild offseason tinkering because most of the core remains in place? Check. Repeat the cycle over again? Check.

Much like Toronto's Auston Matthews, Buffalo's Josh Allen is a spectacular regular-season performer who hasn't been able to hit quite the same heights in the playoffs. And while most of the attention has been on their offensive stars, both the Bills and the Maple Leafs have been undone in their playoff quests by shaky defenses.

The comparison is, obviously, not perfect. The Leafs have had multiple significant shakeups over the last few years - they replaced the coach, general manager, and team president, and lost one of their most gifted players in Mitch Marner to free agency. The Bills haven't undergone anything like that. Coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane have each been with the Bills for eight seasons. There's been some typical NFL roster churn behind Allen, but nothing that counts as a Marner-like departure, depending on how you feel about Stefon Diggs.

The Bills-Leafs parallels are mostly about vibes. There's a certain anguish that comes with building a strong team that's repeatedly among the preseason favorites only to have it step on a rake again. For several years running, the Maple Leafs have spent the entire regular season haunted by questions that could only be answered in April. That's pretty much where the Bills are now, except their questions can only be answered in January. They have the best odds of any NFL team to make the playoffs, and barring injury complications, the months from September through December should be a dress rehearsal for the only part of their schedule that will determine whether they'll finally get over The Hump.

But while Toronto's annual spring disappointments have come to a variety of opponents, Buffalo has just the one bully acting as its final boss: Kansas City. The Bills have lost to Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Andy Reid, and the rest of the Chiefs when that team was a high-flying superpower, as in 2020, and they've lost to them when they were much more plodding, like last year. They've been beaten thoroughly (2020), lost a couple they could have won (2023, 2024), and lost one they absolutely should've won (2021). Adding to the frustration, they keep beating the Chiefs in the regular season.

Can the Bills finally get past the Chiefs-shaped speed bump in 2025? Of course. Allen is coming off an MVP season and playing at the peak of his ability. He's a game-breaking weapon who's also learned to avoid the costly negative plays that held him back early in his pro career. With Cook's contract impasse resolved, Allen will again have an assortment of skill players to help keep the offense moving, even if there's no clear top receiver.

But the story of Buffalo's recent seasons is that the team hasn't been able to get the defensive stops when it needed them, which just always happens to be some point in January when Mahomes is running around and making a killer play out of structure. Whatever happens in the coming months, there will be no way to know if they can stop Mahomes from leading a fourth-quarter playoff drive until they actually do it.

Between now and then, there's a lot of football to be played. Bills fans might as well just enjoy the ride. The really important stuff won't happen for some time.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.