The Buffalo Bills enter their bye week with the same problem staring back at them from the numbers: the defense has not kept pace with the offense, and the secondary is the clearest place to start.
Buffalo is averaging 32.8 points per game, tied for the most in the NFL. It is also giving up 28.5 points a game, and its pass defense ranks 31st in the league at 285.8 yards allowed per game. That gap has made the bye week less about rest than about accountability — and about whether the Bills can use the break to help their defensive players keep growing into Jim Leonhard’s new system.
That process is still underway. The Bills head into the bye feeling the need to help their defensive players continue to grow into the new scheme run by Leonhard, and the timing matters because the next opponent is not a soft landing. Buffalo has two weeks to prepare for the Baltimore Ravens at home, which turns the bye into a specific checkpoint rather than a vague reset.
The run defense is the one area that has shown real movement under Leonhard. He made it a priority to immediately improve the run defense in Year 1, more than during the last two years with Sean McDermott, and the Bills have done that to a degree. They are still giving up over 101 yards per game on the ground, but that is a better place than where the unit was before. The problem is that the improvement in one area has not solved the larger issue in the back end.
That is where the pressure now sits.
Buffalo’s pass defense has been the more obvious flaw, and the numbers are hard to ignore. The Bills are allowing 285.8 passing yards per game, second-worst in the NFL. The defense has not been hurt too much by that yet, but the schedule is about to get less forgiving, and the margin for error shrinks when the competition stiffens.
The secondary is also dealing with a personnel wrinkle that makes the bye week more complicated. C.J. Gardner-Johnson will be out for Week 8 after being suspended for one game for spitting toward a Las Vegas Raiders player, and Buffalo responded by adding cornerback Tre’Davious White to its practice squad.
White’s arrival gives the Bills another option, but it also comes with a different kind of challenge. He is learning Leonhard’s aggressive 3-4 scheme, and this is a different situation than during his first two stays with the Bills. The team signed him to the practice squad, but the question is not just whether he can help — it is how quickly he can absorb the responsibilities that come with this defense.
That same question hangs over the rest of the secondary depth chart. With Gardner-Johnson out for Week 8, the Bills have to look at alternatives in the secondary, and the bye week gives them time to do it. But time alone does not solve the issue if the available pieces cannot execute the plan.
Jalon Kilgore is one of the players the Bills have envisioned as a higher-ceiling, more athletic type of safety, which gives him a clear place in the conversation about depth. The same is true of the broader group, where the staff has to decide how much it can ask from players still settling into roles. The challenge is not just identifying talent; it is finding enough reliable snaps from the right combination of players.
That is what makes the next two weeks so important. Buffalo does not need a general defensive reset as much as a targeted one: cleaner communication, better coverage, and a secondary that can hold up long enough for the rest of the defense to function. The Bills have already shown they can score. Now the bye week is about whether the defense, and especially the secondary, can catch up before Baltimore arrives.