What a difference a week can make in the National Football League standings … even if a team doesn’t even play.

That’s the reality the Bills are facing heading into Week 8 of this season tomorrow afternoon against Miami at Highmark Stadium.

Two Sundays ago, Buffalo was in a three-way tie atop the AFC, sharing the lead with the Ravens and Chargers with 4-1 records.

But the next night the Bills endured a demoralizing 34-31 loss to the Titans in Nashville. It’s a defeat that hindsight-aided fans feel would have been reversed had coach Sean McDermott kicked a tying-field goal in the closing seconds of regulation rather than failing on 4th-and-a half-yard at the Tennessee 3-yard line.

In any case. the defeat was particularly punitive in that it dropped Buffalo to 4-2, the same record at the Titans, who also earned the advantage of a head-to-head win come tiebreaker time.

And the AFC standings became even more muddled in Week 7 with the Bills on bye.

Now Baltimore, Cincinnati, Las Vegas and Tennessee are tied atop the conference at 5-2 with their bye weeks still to come. Buffalo and the Los Angeles Chargers are a half-game back at 4-2 with their byes already over.

Missing from that list is Kansas City (3-4), the preseason favorite to make the Super Bowl for the third straight year and to play in the AFC Conference Championship Game for the fourth consecutive season.

Also not listed are Pittsburgh (3-3), the defending AFC North champion, and 2020 wild-card teams Cleveland (4-3) and Indianapolis (3-4).

In short, of the 16 franchises in the conference, 10 are viable playoff contenders with the season approaching the midway point.

INTERESTINGLY, even with Buffalo’s loss to the Titans, the Bills remain the favorite to win the AFC while, after the Week 7 games, the odds for the Titans, Bengals and Raiders have gotten better while those for the Chiefs, Ravens and Browns have slipped.

The reason the Bills favored status has remained, even in defeat, is their weak schedule.

Over the next three weeks, Buffalo is playing the conference dregs: Miami (1-6), Jacksonville and the Jets (both 1-5).

More compelling is that, over the final 11 games, the Bills play only two teams currently with winning records: Tampa Bay (6-1) and New Orleans (4-2). However, it’s worth noting that their four wins (Dolphins, Texans, Chiefs and Washington) have come at the expense of teams which are a combined 7-21 while their losses have been to the Titans and Steelers, collectively 8-5.

Still, only Tennessee and the Chargers have as few as two upcoming opponents which currently have winning records and neither’s remaining season foes has a combined record as dismal as those of Buffalo.

However, it should be noted that over the Bills’ final eight games, besides the Buccaneers and Saints, they host Indianapolis which gave them all they wanted in last year’s playoffs at Orchard Park, and twice face the Patriots who, though sweeping them last season, hadn’t previously accomplished that feat since 1999.

IT’S ALSO hard not to devalue Buffalo’s win over the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, at the time an impressive 38-20 victory, after the Titans dominated Kansas City, 27-3, last Sunday in Nashville.

Clearly, besides the obvious, KC’s horrific defense (surrendering 29 points per game), something else is wrong. Patrick Mahomes, after signing a half-billion dollar contract extension this offseason, looks nothing like the quarterback we’ve seen the last three years.

The Chiefs, who are 1-2 at home, besides suffering losses of 18 and 24 points to Buffalo and Tennessee, respectively, have fallen to two other good teams, the Ravens and Chargers.

Thus, you get the idea, given the congested nature of the AFC standings, that KC might be in a dogfight just to get one of the conference’s seven playoff spots.

(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)