Last season, the Buffalo Bills secondary was a mess. Communication, coverage, you name it; the Bills defense couldn’t function. They were a broken defense without direction.

Former-Buffalo head coach, Rex Ryan expected the secondary to have a wide range of responsibilities. This lead to confusion, players being out of position, and the defense giving up a total of 40 touchdowns to opponents in the 2016 season. Not a stout force by any definition.

Nearly half of a year later and not much is the same in Western New York. New faces on and off the field of play and scheme changes have revived the defense of the Bills. In just two weeks of play, Buffalo has the second-best defense in the NFL, allowing an average of just 234.5 yards per game. The one team ahead of the Bills, the Carolina Panthers who ousted Buffalo in a touchdown-less game in Charlotte.

The man at the center of the revival for the Bills is safety Jordan Poyer, an ex-Cleveland Brown who showed flashes of excellence with his old squad. Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott recognized his potential and fit and nabbed the 26-year old in early March.

Jordan Poyer touched on the team’s chemistry that’s quickly developed in just six months.

“I wouldn’t say I’m surprised, we work hard. Our secondary works hard each and every day, each and every week. We watch film together, we understand what each other’s thinking and we practice hard too, so I wouldn’t say I’m surprised,” said Poyer.

“I just know that we’ve got to keep working and continue to keep getting better and continue to feed off of each other’s work ethic and I think we’ll be fine.”

Poyer already has two of the Bills’ seven sacks this season and has been flying all over the field. Through two weeks, Pro Football Focus has already graded him as the best safety of the 2017 season thus far, a strong statement from someone who had one hit sideline him for the season just six weeks in.

Jordan Poyer knows the outside perception of the Bills. He knows what people expect to see and is giving them the opposite.

“Like I said, we all just gel with each other. We all understand what the outside world expects out of our group. I think we take that personally, I think each day we come in here and we have that approach that we want to be the best. In order be, you have to work to be the best, so when we’re out there in practice, we work hard, and we all work well together. ”

For Jordan Poyer, he knows he building something special in Buffalo. The team locked him and fellow-safety Micah Hyde up for four and five years a piece to help lead the McDermott revolution.

When asked about what he thought the ‘outside world’ was expecting of himself and the Bills secondary, he made it clear how they see themselves.

“I do not know if any of you knew who any of us were. You hear a little bit of the noise but at the end of the day we know what we expect out of ourselves. We just use our play Sundays to speak for ourselves,” said Poyer.

This Sunday, Jordan Poyer and the Buffalo secondary will use New Era Field as a proving ground. They’ll use it to try and show the nation they can hang with Trevor Siemian and co. They’ll use it to try and show the Bills revolution has started and they’re the ones leading it.