If the Buffalo Bills manage to lose in week 8, they’ll make some pretty unfortunate history that no other NFL team wants to make.

It’s safe to say that the month of October has been quite difficult for the Buffalo Bills. Buffalo was unsuccessful with winning a single game this month and if this poor losing streak somehow continues on Sunday against Carolina, it will put the Buffalo Bills in a seemingly complex predicament.

While this Bills had a pretty successful start to the season managing to be 4-0, and ever since then they’ve lost two consecutive games and if they by some chance end up losing to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday they would become the seventh team since the NFL-AFL era to lose three consecutive games after a perfect 4-0 start. It’s a unique situation as it’s only occurred once before over the past two decades, which happened all the way back in 2012 when the Arizona Cardinals lost nine straight games after a 4-0 start to the season.

Statistically speaking, this particular trend only seemed to occur every other season, as there have only been about six total teams that began the season at 4-0 only to have the success completely vanish with a rather unfortunate three game losing streak immediately following their impressive start.

This Sunday, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen will more than likely have no choice but to put the bills on his back to get their record back in the right direction, however even if he does manage to play well there are some other concerns that are associated with what could happen as the Bills have two major flunks within their current play style. For starters, they’re defense seems incapable of stopping or rather slowing the run game, as going into week 8 the Bill’s are given up roughly 156.3 yards per game on the ground alone, which is currently the second highest in the league. Even though the Bills are favorites to win the game by approximately 7.5 points this week, this game will likely not be a run in the park and that’s because the defense will likely receive a wake up call from a panthers run game that currently ranks third in the league with 140.1 yards per game.

No team within the entirety of the league has had the amount of luck that the panthers have had over the past two weeks. Behind Rico Dowdle, the Panthers are as of right now 193.3 yards per game on the ground since week 5, which is ranked at the highest number within the league over that period of time. The 4-3 panthers also happened to be undefeated at home this season (3-0). Carolina will likely also start quarterback Andy Dalton, who will be covering an injured Bryce Young. Dalton also had the opportunity of backing up during last season and even the first game of this season as well, throwing for around 319 yards and three total touchdowns, so the Bills better play their best.

The other obvious and/or key issue for the Buffalo Bills, is that their previously disruptive offense hasn’t looked very disruptive as of lately. Statistically they’ve averaged only 17 points per game throughout their two game losing streak and the absence of their number one starting receiver is really starting to become a plainly obvious problem amongst the entirety of the offense. Josh Allen has reached no higher than 255 yards throwing in a single game this season and that only occurred back in week 1. In their most recent game, Allen only ended up throwing for just 180 yards in a 24-14 loss to the Atlanta Falcons.

The only good aspects of this bye week for Buffalo is that Allens still healthy and they can give him a chance to rest before the next big matchup.

• Allen has never managed to obtain a three game losing streak at all during the course of his career. The 2024 NFL MVP has completed 116 straight starts without losing three games consecutively, which is currently ranked as the second longest streak in the history of the league following Kansas City Chief’s’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Josh Allen has also never gotten a loss following a bye week going 7-0, which is as of right now the fourth longest streak in the history of the league by the quarterback position.
• As a team, the Buffalo Bills have been frankly unstoppable coming off of a bye. They’ve won around ten straight games coming off of a bye week, which as previously stated is the second longest streak in NFL history, only directly following the footsteps of the Philadelphia Eagles, who won thirteen straight games from 1999 to 2011.

With the Kansas City Chiefs as their next opponent following the Carolina panthers in week 9, the Buffalo Bills can’t afford to disregard the Carolina Panthers, as Buffalo still haven’t beaten a team this season that currently holds more than a single win, as they’ve beaten four teams total that are at a measly 3-24 going into week 8, so a win in Carolina could really boost both their confidence and get that winning streak back on track. Despite failing to capitalize on various different plays and their lack of efficiently executing the run game, Buffalo can rebuild what they started out with through careful decision making, and appropriately managing the play clock.