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What Happened: Not a snap of NFL football has been played since the Seattle Seahawks won Super Bowl LX. But with free agency and the draft behind us, teams have to be reconfigured in post-free agency and post-draft power rankings. Which teams have used the offseason to improve, which GMs are whiffing this offseason, etc.

Because I feel the need to saturate my brain with these rankings instead of more useful information, I’ve been checking in on various outlets’ lists. And there’s one team that keeps rankings high on these lists — too high, by my estimation.

Why You Care: The Buffalo Bills are riding a streak of seven consecutive seasons making the playoffs. For six years running, Josh Allen and Co. have won at least one postseason game. That’s a lot of success! Still no Super Bowl appearance, but a steady presence and a dangerous one come playoff time.

Of course, Allen wasn’t the only mainstay of all those playoff teams. Sean McDermott took over the Bills in 2017, made the playoffs in Year 1, missed out after a step back in 2018, and then began the current run of success.

Allen isn’t going anywhere, but after falling short in January again, the Bills canned McDermott and handed coaching duties over to offensive coordinator Joe Brady. When you have a future Hall of Fame quarterback at your disposal, the Big Game is the goal. Any season that ends without a Vince Lombardi trophy feels like a failure. McDermott seemingly couldn’t push this team over the top, and so Buffalo decided to move on.

Was that the right move? Remains to be seen, obviously. But it’s not encouraging that McDermott was fired because the Bills owner witnessed Allen taking a playoff loss hard in the locker room afterwards. And it’s not as if the Bills moved on from their longtime coach because some obvious upgrade hit the coaching market and they had to act fast. They just bumped up Brady from a big chair to the bigger one!

Back to those power rankings: ESPN and NFL.com both rate the Bills as the NFL's fourth-best team. Warren Sharp has them at third, as does Austin Mock of The Athletic. Having a star QB puts the Bills ahead of plenty of teams. But I don't see any big-ticket additions that make me think this Bills team is going to be better than last season. They made three trades to exit the first round of the draft entirely, skipping the chance to add a high-impact player.

I’m sure fans got fed up with the team’s annual trip to the divisional round. Some fanbases would murder for that sort of sustained success; for others, it becomes not enough. I think Buffalo is going to miss McDermott more than it might think. I think Brady will be a downgrade as a head coach. And I think the power rankings have this one wrong. Change for the sake of change doesn’t always work out.