BUFFALO QUANT DESK
Bills · Week 10 preview

Bills at Jets: our prediction. Buffalo's passing game gets one of the NFL's leakiest pass defenses

We project Bills 29.9, Jets 22.1: a 75% chance Buffalo wins. The biggest mismatch is the Bills' passing game against one of the NFL's leakiest pass defenses.

November 14, 2026 · Buffalo Quant Desk

Finding: We project the Bills for 29.9 points and the Jets for 22.1, which gives Buffalo a 75% chance to win. The biggest mismatch on the field: the Bills' passing game, 4th-best in the NFL, against a Jets pass defense that's 7th-worst. Our matchup model gives an 80% chance the Bills' pass plays gain ground Sunday, our most confident pass call yet, and the model's confident calls have held up.

Bills at Jets, Sunday, Nov. 15, 1 p.m. ET, MetLife Stadium. Numbers are 2026 through week 9. Last week's prediction and how it went: 5 of 7 calls hit.

Chance each team reaches each scoreline

The matchup that decides it

We grade every play in points, though not scoreboard points: every play moves a drive closer to scoring or further away, and we turn that into points. Last week at Minnesota, Josh Allen's 36-yard completion to Ty Johnson on third-and-8 was worth about 3.8 points; a 7-yard sack on third-and-14 cost about 1.8. Add up every pass play and divide by how many there were.

This season the Bills' pass plays have gained 0.26 points each on average, 4th in the NFL, over 273 pass plays (sacks and scrambles count). The Jets' pass defense has given up 0.16 a play, 7th-most of 32, over 312 pass plays. An average pass play gains 0.05.

Our matchup model counts every game equally instead of every play, so the numbers shift a little. In a typical game the Bills' passing gains about 0.27 a play, the Jets' pass defense allows about 0.19, and an average game is 0.05. Start from average, add half of how far above average the Bills are and half of how far the Jets' defense is, and you get about 0.23 points a play for Buffalo on Sunday. Games swing a lot, so that's not a promise; the model says there's an 80% chance that, all told, the Bills' passing plays leave them better off than they started.

Is 80% too bold? It's the most confident pass call we've made, so we checked the model's record at that level. We tested it on 990 past team games from 2023-2025 that it had never seen. In the 134 where it gave a passing game 70% or more, it said 75% on average, and the passing game came out ahead 78% of the time.

The rest of the game is closer to even. The Jets score 1.92 points per drive (19th of 32); the Bills' defense allows 2.10 (16th).

The scoreboard ladder

For each scoreline, here's our chance that each team gets at least that many points Sunday:

Points Bills Jets
10 or more 99% 90%
14 or more 95% 80%
17 or more 92% 69%
20 or more 85% 58%
24 or more 72% 41%
27 or more 61% 30%
30 or more 48% 20%
35 or more 29% 9%

Read it like this: there's a 72% chance the Bills score 24 or more, and a 41% chance the Jets do.

Where the 30 comes from

Points come from drives. Four steps:

  1. How good is each side? This season the Bills average 2.89 points per drive, the most in the NFL (1st of 32). The Jets' defense allows 2.37 per drive, 6th-most. An average offense scores 2.05.
  2. Don't overreact to nine weeks. We mix in last season and an average team. That makes the Bills' offense 2.73 and the Jets' defense 2.40.
  3. Let them meet. Both sides tilt toward Buffalo: its offense is well above average and the Jets' defense is below it, which leaves about 3.07 points per drive.
  4. Count the drives and check against history. About 11 drives a game gets you to about 34. A final check against past games pulls extreme projections like this 34 back toward normal and gives the home team about 1.5 points. Buffalo is on the road, so it lands at 29.9.

The Jets go through the same steps from the other direction. After mixing in last season, their offense rates 1.81 per drive against a Bills defense at 2.08, plus the home bump. That's 22.1.

How a 30-point projection becomes 75%

Nobody scores exactly what we project. We looked at 2,494 past team scores from 2019-2023 and asked how far off we were. Half the time, a team landed within about 6 points of our number; eight times in ten, within about 12. (On games the model had never seen, our average miss was 7.5 points.)

Then we play Sunday's game over and over, once for every one of those past misses. Eight times in ten the Bills land between 18 and 42 points. For who wins, we took 1,247 real past games, noted how far off we were for each team in that same game, applied each pair to Sunday's projections, and checked who came out ahead: Buffalo, 75% of the time. (A game tied after 60 minutes counts as half for each side.)

The calls going on the Ledger

Call Our chance Where it comes from
Bills win (overtime counts; a tie counts as a miss) 75% Points model, win chance
Bills' pass plays gain points overall 80% Matchup model
Jets' pass plays gain points overall 55% Matchup model
Bills' runs lose points overall 66% Matchup model
Jets' runs lose points overall 75% Matchup model

The calls

A team's runs "lose points" if, all told, its running plays left it worse off than before. That's normal: in 990 past team games, runs lost points overall 64% of the time.

Why no 20-point calls this week. Last week we said our chances of a team reaching 20 points ran a few points low, and that we'd fix that before using those 20-point chances again. We haven't fixed it yet, so they're still in the ladder above but aren't logged. The whole middle of the ladder has the same issue: on games the model never saw, when it gave a team a 40-60% chance of reaching a scoreline, it said 50% on average and the team got there 55% of the time. Read the middle of the ladder as a little low.

Logged on the Ledger on Nov. 13 at 7:54 p.m. ET, before kickoff. All 5 calls are graded after the game, hit or miss, and stay up either way.

Did we check it?

The win chance. On 632 games from 2024-2026 the model had never seen, the team it gave the better chance won 63% of the time. Taking the home team every time would have been right 52%. When it gave a team 70% or more, as it gives Buffalo Sunday, it said 75% on average and that team won 74% of the time (102 games; a tie counts as half a win).

Win chance test

The pass and run calls. These come from a simpler model, tested on 990 past team games (2023-2025) against just guessing the league's usual rate. It beat the guess on pass calls and edged it on run calls.

What the model doesn't know

For the stat-heads