The Buffalo Bills have been a fairly disciplined team since head coach Sean McDermott took the reigns of the roster in early 2017.
The culture he’s created is one that focuses on character, culture, and work ethic, reflective in big part of the Western New York region and community that surrounds and supports the franchise.
Those values extend into the team’s scouting and prospect grading by general manager Brandon and his front office team, which helps to draft players that are a fit with the culture they’ve worked to build in Orchard Park.
That work is often reflected on and off the field by those players in their time with the franchise and is also reflected most recently in another way as well.
The Bills were one of the least fined teams in the NFL during the 2022 season, according to gaming site gambling.com.
The site analyzed the NFL’s Fines and Suspension Data over the past five seasons to calculate how much each NFL team has paid over that span of time for the type of in-game offenses that register a fine.
This is not altogether shocking given the aforementioned culture that McDermott and Beane have worked together to create, but it is a positive mark and bright point on what can otherwise be a dubious list should a team find themselves high on that list.
The only teams that were fined less than the Bills last season were the Arizona Cardinals ($10,609) due to a DeAndre Hopkins taunting call, and the Chicago Bears ($14,993) who came in just ahead of Buffalo.
Since high fines can be a reflection of personnel on teams who register such a consequence by way of lack of discipline in play or by getting frustrated or losing their composure the most, low fines suggest the exact opposite.
During the 2022 campaign, the Pittsburgh Steelers ($196,480), Denver Broncos ($187,565), Tampa Bay Buccaneers ($135,905), and Cincinnati Bengals ($118,959) rounded up the top four spots as the most fined on the list.
Meanwhile, over the past five NFL seasons, the Las Vegas Raiders ($1,934,927), Cleveland Browns ($1,841,502), the Jets in New Jersey ($1,096,743), Pittsburgh Steelers ($795,857), and the Cincinnati Bengals ($741,457) took the top five most-fined rankings.
While penalties are certainly an area that Buffalo has dealt with at times over that span, and one that McDermott speaks to with frequency in terms of the need to ‘not beat ourselves’, that the team doesn’t incur many fines is important.
Especially considering the up-and-down roller coaster ride of a season the Bills had in 2022, there were times emotions ran high and it would have been easy to lose composure instead of keep it.
With the importance of the organization’s finances, that they managed to be in the top three least fined teams is a good sign going into the 2023 NFL season.