ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Five games into this National Football League season, the Bills seem determined to prove the oddsmakers right.

Starting last spring, Las Vegas assessed Buffalo to be the favorite to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl, if not win it, and speculated quarterback Josh Allen was the leading candidate to be chosen league MVP.

So far, so good.

To be sure, next Sunday’s road game against Kansas City will be a telling yardstick of how these teams compare as the winner would have a leg up on home field advantage in the playoffs.

There’s certainly familiarity between the two as they’re meeting for the sixth time in the last four seasons.

KC has won three of the last four games, but two of them have been at Arrowhead Stadium in the playoffs, a 38-24 win in the conference final after the 2020 season and last year’s nightmarish 42-36 overtime “13 seconds” defeat in the divisional round.

STILL, Buffalo has proven it can play with the Chiefs, mostly because the 2018 drafting of Josh Allen has given the Bills a weapon who’s the virtual equal of Kansas City’s prolific quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

Allen, in the first five games, leads the league in touchdown passes (14) and passing yards (1,651) and is third in passer rating behind Seattle’s Geno Smith, of all people, and Mahomes, whose numbers will change after last night’s game against Las Vegas.

There are those who have been a bit dismissive of Buffalo’s start as the excitement over the impressive 31-10 season-opening win over the defending Super Bowl champion Rams has lost some of its luster via their 2-3 start and coach Sean McVay’s “genius” reputation has taken a bit of a tarnish.

But the 41-7 win over a good, but not great, Tennessee team was the real deal.

To be sure, the blown victory at Miami was a lost opportunity, but the Ravens surrendered their own seeming triumph to Buffalo a Sunday later in equally hurtful fashion, so they evened out.

And Sunday’s complete domination of the rebuilding Steelers, 38-3, was impossible to ignore.

THE OTHER reality is that almost as important as trading up to draft Allen, which general manager Brandon Beane did in the face of near-universal second-guessing, was owner Terry Pegula’s hiring of coach Sean McDermott in 2017.

To be sure, McDermott isn’t a fountain of information in interviews and shows his sense of humor only infrequently, but he’s undeniably put together a bonded, resilient team that’s among the league’s best.

He’s had his issues with clock management and in-game decisions but the reality is, with Sunday’s win, he passed Hall of Fame coach Marv Levy in all-time winning percentage with the Bills, .616-.615. That, of course, can change Sunday, but clearly, no matter how his record ends in Buffalo, succeeding at Levy’s level speaks to the job McDermott has done.

He’s made the playoffs four of his first five seasons, the only miss being Allen’s rookie year. And while McDermott made the postseason in miracle fashion his first year as Bills coach — a 49-yard touchdown pass by Cincinnati QB Andy Dalton to wideout Tyler Boyd on fourth down at game’s end to eliminate Baltimore — the last two years have hardly been luck.

Nor is this start.

ALLEN, of course, is the main reason … that and some shrewd acquisitions via trade and free agency by Beane. But due to the Bills’ dominant passing offense, the performance of Buffalo’s defense has been somewhat lost.

Yeah, the Bills led the NFL in scoring headed into last night’s game at Kansas City game — 30 points per — and they also top the league in average total offense (440) and passing yards (324) per game. But the Bills also are tied for the league lead in fewest points surrendered with San Francisco (12 a game) and are giving up the second least yards per start (260), 11 more than the 49ers.

And that’s not a mirage.

Last season, Buffalo led the NFL in fewest average points, overall yards and passing yards per game and also topped the league in interceptions.

In short, those 2021 defensive stats and the fact Allen accounted for 42 touchdowns (36 passing, six rushing) last season might just have accounted for the bookmakers’ projection this year.

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