When the Lions made the playoffs last season, sole possession of the NFL’s longest playoff drought moved to Buffalo, where the Bills haven’t made the postseason since losing the “Music City Miracle” in the wild card round following the 1999 season. But Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick sounds like a man who’s confident that playoff drought will soon end.
Fitzpatrick said on WGR in Buffalo that this year’s Bills are better than last year’s 6-10 club, and he and his teammates don’t see any reason they won’t make the playoffs this season.
“I think you expect big things out of us this year,” Fitzpatrick said, via SportsRadioInterviews.com. “Our defense and just going up against them in OTAs — they have really improved and they’re pushing to make us better, and so that’ll help us out a lot as well. But we’ll sit down. We haven’t really set any team goals or offensive goals yet, but feeling in the building right now is we gotta get back to the playoffs. We gotta get in the dance and see what happens.”
When Fitzpatrick says the Bills have to get back to the playoffs, he may be thinking not only of what it would mean to the franchise, but about his own future with the franchise. At the time that the Bills signed Fitzpatrick to a six-year, $59 million contract in late October, it appeared that Fitzpatrick would lead the Bills to the playoffs last season. Instead, after starting the season 5-2, the Bills went 1-8 the rest of the way.
If Fitzpatrick is wrong in his prediction about big things for the Bills this year, this may be the last year he’s in a position to make a prediction for the Bills.