Bills ready to go as anticipated season kicks off in L.A.

LOS ANGELES — And so the most anticipated Buffalo Bills season in more than a generation opens in the land of glitz and glam with a visit to the defending Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams Thursday night.

It’s been a long time since the Bills had this much marquee value, and just the fact that they’re part of the NFL’s opening night act tells you all about the expectations surrounding them.

During training camp there was precious little drama, as most of the roster was set in stone back in the winter and spring.

Put simply, the days of selling hope in Buffalo are over. This is a team that’s expected to win and compete for a Super Bowl right out of the gate. And it all begins with them as betting favourites on the road against the defending champions.

The reasons are obvious.

The Bills last season had among the NFL’s best offences and defences, a team loaded on both sides of the ball with players who’ve mostly grown-up together and are in either the early or mid stages of their prime years.

That begins with 26-year-old quarterback Josh Allen, who last season entered the conversation about the game’s very best players and who is beloved in Western New York for both his play and seeming as comfortable in Buffalo as if he was born and raised there and not in California before playing collegiately at Wyoming.

The Bills are one of four NFL teams that have been to the playoffs in each of the past three seasons, the most recent of those trips ending in heartbreaking fashion when they couldn’t protect a lead with the ball on the kickoff tee and 13 seconds showing on the clock.

With that painful memory behind them, Bills general manager Brandon Beane went out this off-season and tried to put the finishing touches on his masterpiece. He added future Hall of Fame defensive end Von Miller via free agency from the Rams, reinforced the offensive line and interior defensive line while promoting from within among a group of receivers that said goodbye to Cole Beasley and Emmanuel Sanders.

The fact that four players cut by the Bills this season landed up on the active rosters of other teams tells you how deep they are.

One of the few mysteries around this team is what happens when you put the NFL’s most productive offence into the hands of someone who has never called plays at any level of football.

When last season’s offensive coordinator Brian Daboll departed to become the next head coach of the New York Giants, the Bills had a choice to make. They could recruit an experienced play caller for the job, or they could opt for consistency by promoting the only quarterback coach Allen has had since he entered the league as a Bills rookie in 2018.

The fact that Ken Dorsey landed the job tells you he was Allen’s choice, as the quarterback’s voice matters more in Buffalo than it does on some NFL teams.

Dorsey has the challenging task of trying to improve upon an offence that tied for the lead in touchdowns among AFC teams, which could mean utilizing the team’s group of running backs to a greater degree than Buffalo has recently.

The Bills were one of the strongest running teams in the NFL, thanks in large part to Allen’s scrambling ability and how difficult he is to bring down. As a group, Bufffalo’s running backs were near the bottom of the league in production, both when it came to rushing the ball and catching it out of the backfield.

With second-round pick James Cook out of Georgia joining Devin Singletary and a healthy Zack Moss, Buffalo should get better production out of this position group and take some of the pressure off of Allen, whose primary target this season will again be Stefon Diggs, with Gabe Davis and Isaiah McKenzie each moving-up into more prominent roles from within.

The secondary has been a position of strength for the Bills in recent seasons. But starting corner Tre’Davious White will miss at least the first four weeks of the season (and likely more) while continuing to rehab a torn ACL he suffered last November.

That’s going to put a lot of pressure on a pair of rookie corners, first-round pick Kaiir Elam and sixth-round pick Christian Benford. They are expected to both see playtime opposite Dane Jackson, the Bills other starting corner who is in just his third NFL season.

The Rams will provide a suitable test for the secondary out of the gate where Buffalo will be counting heavily on the veteran experience of their two All-Pro safeties in Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde.

There is still the matter of how this group of players will handle such lofty expectations when things inevitably don’t go their way, be that on Thursday’s big stage or elsewhere during the schedule.

But a franchise and a fan base that has waited awfully long to be in this position can’t wait to get started.