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The Buffalo Bills defense needs to step it up this season.

The Buffalo Bills finished with their third 13-win season in the last five, on their way to winning their fifth straight AFC East division title. And yet, their season once again ended in disappointment, with a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the conference championship game.

What happened? The reasons for the crushing defeat were, as they usually are, complex. But if they could be summed up in one word, it would be — defense.

In that AFC title game, the Bills defense surrendered 32 points to a team that had not topped the 30 mark all season — and had reached it only twice. The defensive breakdown was made all the more frustrating by the fact that, two weeks later when they faced the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 59, the Chiefs scraped together just 22 points on there way to a lopsided, 18-point loss.

But the Bills’ defensive struggles were not confined to just one game against a team that was coming off back-to-back Super Bowl championships, and was about to make its fifth Super Bowl appearance in the last six seasons.

Under their rookie defensive coordinator, 41-year-old Bobby Babich, the Bills defense was surprisingly mediocre throughout 2024, especially for a team with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations.

Bills Defense Let the Team Down All Season

The Bills placed 12th in the NFL in points allowed, with 368. In yardage allowed, they finished even lower — 17th, in the lower half the league — with 5,806. Their passing defense was especially inadequate, giving up 3,843 yards in the air, 24th of the NFL’s 32 teams. It probably didn’t help that Bills defense was notably undisciplined, giving up 1,016 yards on penalties — 28th-worst in the NFL.

“Where have the Bills fallen short in the biggest moments? Coaching,” wrote SB Nation Bills correspondent Matt Warren. “Boneheaded mistakes in big moments like 13 seconds are one thing, but allowing the Chiefs to score their highest point total of the season two weeks before getting absolutely rocked by the Eagles is another. (Head coach Sean McDermott) and his hand-picked protege Bobby Babich need to step up, especially in the playoffs, and especially against the Chiefs. This ain’t news.”

McDermott seems unlikely to go anywhere, having led the Bills to the playoffs in seven of his eight seasons at the helm at Orchard Park after taking over a team that had not sniffed the postseason since 1999.

Team Still Holds ‘Belief’ in Babich

But Babich may be another story. Without an immediate improvement in the Bills defense, the second-year coordinater could definitely be on the hot seat, according to one prominent analyst.

“I think there is pressure on Bobby Babich,” said Locked on Bills podcast host Joe Marino on his Thursday program. “I think with in the NFL everything is so performance-driven. It was either good or it was bad, right? You can get caught up on that. But I think at at some point you also have to ask yourself the question, ‘Is this person the right one for the role?’ And the answer to that might not always be rooted in if what they’ve done has been successful.”

Marino said that though there is pressure on Babich, the Bills still have “belief” that he can do the job.

But another season of heartbreak could go a long way toward shattering that belief.

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin