The phrase, ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride,’ has been used a lot in sports over the years, but perhaps never as often or as accurately as it has been with the Buffalo Bills. They lost the Super Bowl to come second (the bridesmaid) in four straight seasons in the early 1990s.
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And now, the Josh Allen-era Bills are doing the same … though some believe that this Buffalo team is no longer even a bridesmaid and may fall out of the wedding party altogether.
Allen and company just suffered arguably the most embarrassing upset loss of the 2025 campaign on Sunday against the hapless Miami Dolphins, and the questions have begun to surface. Damien Woody, a former Pro Bowl guard for the Patriots and Jets, believes that with Drake Maye’s rise, the Bills have already “lost their window” to win the franchise’s first-ever Super Bowl.
“They’ve lost their window, they’ve royally messed up their window. They’ve had the AFC East locked down for six years. And they have nothing to show for it,” said the analyst on Get Up.
“And guess what… here are the Patriots. They’re back again. And so you look at Josh Allen, you look at this game yesterday, you heard whispers of, ‘Oh, it was the Miami Dolphins.’ This is not a trap game! I’m sorry. Buffalo, you’re not even leading the division, and it’s a divisional game,” Woody added.
.@damienwoody says the Bills have "royally messed up" their Super Bowl window 😳 pic.twitter.com/ghjFo6JlRT
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) November 10, 2025
The Bills have been one of the best teams in the league for over a half-decade now, led by a perennial MVP candidate in Josh Allen. Yet they have not won or even reached a Super Bowl during that span. And now, as Woody pointed out, the New England Patriots are creeping back into the picture in the AFC East. The Pats sit atop the division at 8-2 while the Bills fell to 6-3.
Woody, who won two Super Bowls in New England in 2001 and 2003, went on to lambast the Bills for not just losing to the previously 2-7 Dolphins, but getting their “butts whipped” 30-13 in a sloppy performance that featured six penalties for 67 yards as well as three turnovers.
“You got your butts whipped against the Miami Dolphins that we had written off dead to rights! Fired the general manager, their coach is basically out the door. And all they did was whip your behind down there in South Beach… This is a bad sign for Buffalo in my opinion,” concluded the former guard.
The AFC has not been more wide open than it is this season in decades. That’s what makes it even more unfortunate that the Bills have not been able to seize this opportunity with both hands.
However, we wouldn’t quite agree with Woody all the way. The Bills have certainly wasted much of their Super Bowl window with their constant playoff losses to the Kansas City Chiefs bogeyman. But Josh Allen is still only 29. And as long as he is their quarterback, the window remains very much open.
