The NFL was cruel to both the Bills and the Jets in 2025, but for completely contrasting reasons. Buffalo’s superstar quarterback Josh Allen ended the season in tears, saying that he “let his teammates down” after throwing for his life in the Divisional Round against Denver, only to watch Ja’Quan McMillian pick him off on the Bills’ first overtime possession, leading to a 33-30 loss. The 2024 MVP knew that he would never have a better chance of lifting the Lombardi with a wide-open bracket that didn’t feature Mahomes and the Chiefs, Jackson and the Ravens, or Burrow and the Bengals.
Across the state, the Jets were also enduring pain, albeit one of humiliation as opposed to heartbreak. The Green Machine hadn’t just been bad in 2025 — they’d achieved something historically awful. Last in the NFL in points differential. Last in yard differential. Last in turnover differential. The first franchise in league history to post all three at once. Not one wide receiver eclipsed 400 receiving yards. The defense went the entire season without an interception. The final five losses came by an average of 23 points.
And yet, with Darren Mougey’s haul of future picks stacked up — Sauce Gardner to Indianapolis, Quinnen Williams to Dallas — the Jets owned two first-round picks heading into April. That pair would become a trio of first-round picks on draft night when they traded up to 30th overall. Rock bottom, it turned out, had a blueprint.
So, with the NFL draft now in the books, how are both of the Empire State’s AFC East contenders shaping up with training camps starting to loom on the horizon? Let’s take a look.
Bills
Here’s what makes that Denver defeat so brutal: the Bills played genuinely well last season. James Cook led the entire NFL with 1,621 rushing yards. The team averaged a league-leading 159.6 rushing yards per game. Allen posted a career-best 69.3% completion percentage, the best yards per attempt of his career, and 39 total touchdowns — his third straight season hitting that number.
Twelve and five. Second in the AFC East, yes, but a legitimate, dangerous, playoff-caliber team. None of it mattered after McMillian’s interception. That’s the specific cruelty Bills fans have learned to metabolize — not blowout losses, not embarrassing playoff exits, but close games in January where your quarterback is one of the three best players alive and the wrong bounce goes the wrong way. Allen hasn’t been to a Super Bowl. He is 29 years old, in his prime, and 0-3 in overtime playoff games. The window is open. It is not open forever.
Brandon Beane seems to understand that. His offseason response was pointed, purposeful, and more than a little urgent. D.J. Moore arrives from Chicago to finally provide Allen a number one target after years of improvising around a receiver corps that couldn’t consistently threaten downfield. Bradley Chubb, cut by Miami, signed for three years and $43.5 million, bolsters a pass rush that ranked 27th in win rate, while Allen dragged this team to the postseason almost singlehandedly. Jim Leonhard takes over as defensive coordinator, bringing C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Geno Stone alongside Cole Bishop; Dee Alford replaces Taron Johnson at nickel.
Then, TJ Parker came at No. 35. Fourteen and a half sacks and a 20.4% pressure rate at Clemson. Mel Kiper called him one of the draft’s steals. He lands across from Chubb and immediately makes this the most threatening edge tandem in the division. Is that enough to make 2026 finally the year? According to online betting sites, it should at the very least be enough to win the division.
The early 2026 NFL odds from the popular online sports betting at Bovada currently make the Bills a mighty -140 favorite to reclaim the AFC East from the Patriots (+135 second favorite) next season. But it isn’t divisional honors Allen and the Bills are interested in anymore. It’s the big one, and it’s by any means necessary.
Jets
Don’t let the excitement of three first-round picks sanitize what 2025 was. Last in points. Last in yards. Last in turnovers. A defense that went sixteen games without picking off a single pass. An offense so broken that no receiver, not one, managed 400 yards in a season. The final five losses weren’t close. This was an organizational implosion, not a bad stretch of games, and it needs to be acknowledged before we rightfully celebrate what came next.
David Bailey at No. 2 overall — the Texas Tech edge rusher with 14.5 sacks, a relentless motor, and the kind of pass-rush credentials that make offensive coordinators lose sleep. Kenyon Sadiq at No. 16, a tight end-receiver hybrid out of Oregon with speed and height capable of creating mismatch potential every single week. Then Omar Cooper Jr. at No. 30 — traded up for the Indiana wideout who scored 13 touchdowns in the Hoosiers fairytale 2025 national championship run. Day 2 brought D’Angelo Ponds, seven career interceptions, directly answering that historic zero-pick season. Kiper handed the class an A-minus. “Most exciting Day 1 haul in recent memory.”
GM Darren Mougey built nine total picks, four inside the top 44. Geno Smith returns from Las Vegas as the bridge starter, a caretaker until the 2027 quarterback class yields names such as Arch Manning and Dante Moore. Bailey, Sadiq, and Cooper echo the 2022 energy of Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson — two picks that became the foundation of something worth believing in, right before the organization proceeded to waste it around them.
How long before this rebuild actually bears fruit? Honestly? Not 2026. Geno Smith at quarterback means the ceiling is seven or eight wins on their very best day. Divisional odds of +2200 mean that the Green Machine is an afterthought in a battle between the Bills and the reigning AFC East champion Patriots. Still, at least Miami is the fourth team in this division, and a team that is somehow in a worse state than even the Jets. Geno and Co. should find a pair of wins against the Dolphins at the very least.
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