PITTSFORD, N.Y. — About the only certainty for the Bills these days is that this star-crossed franchise’s playoff drought is currently the NFL’s longest at 14 years.
So many other things about the Bills — from the identity of their next owner to the status of their stadium to their future in Buffalo beyond 2019 — are very much up in the air since founder Ralph Wilson’s death in March at the age of 95.
How far up in the air?
Jon Bon Jovi could soon be signing their checks.
New Jersey’s second-most famous rock star indeed is in the running to buy the team after it was confirmed this month he is part of a group of deep-pocketed Toronto investors with their eyes on the Bills.
The situation isn’t any clearer on the field, either, as former Syracuse coach Doug Marrone tries in his second season to lift Buffalo out of a playoff-less funk that began in 1999 and has seen the Bills finish 6-10 or 7-9 in seven of the past eight seasons.
Marrone, who went 6-10 in his debut last season and finished last in the AFC East, said Monday he decided putting on the blinders is the best approach to the Bills’ cloudy future in Western New York.
“As coaches, we learn a long time ago that you can control what you can control — and that’s what I’m doing,” Marrone told The Post after an afternoon practice at scenic St. John Fisher College, near Rochester.
“That’s what you have a team president for, and he’s handling all that [ownership] stuff. Our focus is on playing football games and winning football games. We’re focused on the season and playing.”
Despite Bon Jovi’s Toronto-laden ownership group, the constant speculation around the league about the Bills moving there or to Los Angeles appears to be overblown and more than a bit misguided.
That’s because Wilson worked out a complicated but unusually ironclad lease with the county and state before his death that pretty much locks the Bills into Buffalo for the next decade.
The new ownership would have to pay a whopping $400 million penalty if it tries to move the Bills between now and 2018 or between 2020 and 2023. The only window is an very narrow one, with relocation possible in 2019 for a mere $28.4 million penalty.
Initial bids are due next week, and the NFL hopes to have the sale completed by early October. Pro football is so lucrative, sports business experts expect the final price to be at least $1.1 billion, even in the league’s oldest stadium — 73,000-seat Ralph Wilson Stadium, built in 1973 — in one of the league’s smallest markets.
Donald Trump, Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula and billionaire businessman and former Sabres owner Thomas Golisano have also expressed serious interest.
Watching all of this from afar, Marrone, team president Russ Brandon and young general manager Doug Whaley certainly act as if they’re auditioning for the team’s next owners — whomever that might be.
The Bills were among the league’s most aggressive teams in the offseason, trading up five spots to take Clemson wideout Sammy Watkins No. 4 overall and trading for Buccaneers wideout Mike Williams and Eagles running back Bryce Brown.
Watkins has been outstanding in pre-camp workouts, but the Bills still have unproven 2013 first-round pick EJ Manuel and a motley crew of backups at quarterback.
They also have already been hit hard by the injury bug, losing sensational young linebacker Kiko Alonso for the season to a torn ACL. And promising defensive tackle Marcell Dareus failed his initial physical last week after getting arrested twice during the offseason, which could result in an NFL suspension.
At this pace, finding a new owner might be a lot smoother process than making it back to the playoffs in 2014.
“We haven’t done anything,” Whaley said. “We’ve got a lot to prove. It is what it is. Like Russ [Brandon] said, ‘We won’t hide from it.’ We haven’t been in the playoffs in a long time and we owe it to the fans, our late Hall of Fame owner and everybody in this business to show that we’re not the Bills anymore.”
When it comes to the Bills, that’s easier said than done.