ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (WKBW) — It’s been 237 days since the Buffalo Bills' last game, and a lot has changed in those eight months. As the Bills begin a new season, they will have a new head coach, three new coordinators, and a bunch of new players. But will it lead to success in Week 1?
Houston has been a house of horrors for the Bills over the years. Josh Allen has never won there. He’s had some of his worst NFL performances there. In 2025, he was sacked eight times, and both of the Bills' starting tackles were injured.
Having success against the Texans is relative. A good day is scoring somewhere in the mid-20s and protecting the football. If you’re an optimist, you can say that in 2025 both tackles were banged up and the Bills played the game without Dalton Kincaid and Keon Coleman, and have since added DJ Moore. They’ll have far more firepower in this game than they did in that game.
But it’s a more nuanced conversation than that. In the last matchup, the Texans started backup quarterback Davis Mills, which allowed the Bills to really control time of possession, and it still didn’t matter. In that game, the offense accounted for just 12 total points and only three in the second half.
“For me personally, it can't get much worse,” right tackle Spencer Brown said this week. “So I'm pretty excited to go back down there and, hopefully, walk out with both my shoulders intact.”
The Bills would love that too.
They’d also love a strong debut from their defense. Jim Leonhard has preached that he wants to be an aggressive defensive play caller, but what exactly does that mean?
“To me, that just means you're not going to let the offense dictate the game, right?” Leonhard said on Thursday. “We have to throw our punches too. And they're strategic, right? You're doing them on purpose. I don't like to be reckless as far as how I call a game, but I'm not just gonna sit back and say, like, we're just gonna out-execute you week in and week out.”
If the Bills are going to be aggressive, they’re going to need to stop the run and put themselves in favorable situations. The Texans’ new running back David Montgomery is a good player. Woody Marks will also get plenty of action and was successful against the 2025 Bills, rushing for 74 yards and averaging 4.6 yards per carry.
So let’s answer the question posed in the headline.
Can the Buffalo Bills & Josh Allen exercise demons and knock off the Houston Texans on the road in Week 1?
Of course they can. I think this Bills offense is going to be good. But as evidenced by the first two NFL games of the season, sometimes offenses take longer to gel. I think the Bills should win this game, but that doesn’t mean I think they will.
You can watch our entire predictions and X-factors in the video attached at the top of the page!
