The USA Today still considers the Buffalo Bills an NFL playoff team.

When handing out their mid-season grades, the site’s staff hands the Bills a “C,” but still predicts a trip to the postseason as an AFC Wild Card squad.

Prediction: Watch out for these guys. They could easily jump up and grab that final wild-card spot. In fact, we think they will.

Buffalo, sitting at 3-4 overall and 1.5 games back of first-place New England, is tied with five other AFC teams at 3-4 and trails four other conference opponents (4-3) by a game. It’s a logjam in the middle of the pack, in other words, and there is potential for the Bills to leap forward.

What are we missing here? We’re all for optimism—even if it’s blind at times—but the Bills have set a league record by allowing more than 400 total yards in each of their last seven games. This, friends, is disturbing.

While it’s basically impossible to spin these statistics positively, I suppose there are a few reasons for hope:

1) Mario Williams had successful wrist surgery during the bye week, and perhaps his 3.5 sacks in 425 snaps ratio will improve immediately.
2) Aaron Williams and Stephon Gilmore have been woeful in coverage, but they’re young and gaining game experience at a rapid rate. They shouldn’t be worse.
3) The linebackers…well, they still are terrible. Defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt still has a job directing the corps. These are not reasons for hope.

Remember when we posed that “What If?” the Buffalo Bills went undefeated article? Yeah, that’s not quite going so well.

If the Bills can win two out of the next three (@Houston, @New England, home vs. Miami), then we’ll start taking the Bills more seriously. Trust me, It’d great to see both C.J. Spiller and Fred Jackson split 40 touches in a ground-and-pound attack that keeps our overrated defense off the field—the playoffs are still possible. Just not likely.

(Photos courtesy of the Buffalo Bills’ Facebook page).