The Chiefs have knocked the Bills out of the playoffs four times since 2020, acting as a major roadblock.
Despite recent comeback wins, quarterback Josh Allen acknowledged the team needs to start games faster.
Maybe the stars are aligning for the Buffalo Bills.
Go ahead, tell me how a team – and one with a suspect, 30th-ranked run defense – can rally from a 21-0 deficit on the road to beat an opponent that was seemingly on the verge of breaking out division-title swag. And this, a week after overcoming a 10-point fourth-quarter hole.
We know: The Bills are plenty resilient.
Insert Chris Berman soundbite here: No one circles the wagons like…
The Bills have had four games this season when they allowed at least 30 points, and guess what? They won all four of those games.
With Josh Allen or not that’s seriously living right.
Yet the Bills (10-4) also received quite the bonus attached to their latest triumph, the 35-31 thriller at New England:
The Kansas City Chiefs were eliminated from the playoffs.
No, that hasn’t happened in a decade. You could set your clock to Patrick Mahomes, bless him, making a run at another Super Bowl.
But not now. Now, the Bills Mafia can really look to the stars.
The witch is dead. But will Bills travel yellow brick road to Super Bowl?
The Chiefs have been some kind of boogeyman to Buffalo’s (long-suffering) vision of finally winning a Lombardi Trophy. They were like Freddy Krueger, Jason and Chucky all rolled into one when it came to Buffalo’s Super Bowl-seeking nightmare.
It’s no wonder that the Bills knew better than to get giddy after they battered Mahomes and blasted Kansas City in November at Highmark Stadium. No big deal. They have repeatedly proven able (five times since 2020, to be exact) to handle Mahomes & Co. in regular-season showdowns.
It’s just that beating the Chiefs in January has been the issue, with Buffalo getting knocked out of the playoffs by that dreaded rival four times since 2020.
But it can’t happen this time because the witch is dead.
Hey, who knows what will actually go down on the yellow brick road of the upcoming playoffs? It has the potential to be wide open, like something cooked up by the ghost of Pete Rozelle, father of NFL parity. Aaron Rodgers might be in the mix. Philip Rivers? Never say never. Sean Payton and the magnificent Denver Broncos defense will surely have a say.
One glance at the dizzying lineup of playoff-clinching scenarios on tap for Week 16 emphasizes the range of possibilities. Nine teams can clinch playoff berths this week and the Broncos can even lock up a No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs by defeating the Jaguars while three other things happen: The Chargers lose or tie. The Patriots lose. The Bills lose or tie. If. If. If.
Yet one thing is now certain: The Chiefs will not end Buffalo’s season again.
Without Chiefs roadblock, a path clears for Buffalo – maybe
The Bills had a chance to advance to the franchise’s first Super Bowl since the 1990s (hello, Bruce Smith and Jim Kelly), if only they could have pulled off a last-minute rally in the AFC Championship Game at Kansas City in January. But it ended with a 32-29 loss, as Dalton Kincaid couldn’t make what would’ve been a difficult catch of Allen’s fourth-down throw. And the setback came with the officiating controversy of a spot in a scrum.
Previous heartbreak moments included the 44-yard field goal try by Tyler Bass that sailed wide right – how cruel, given Scott Norwood’s miss at the end of Super Bowl 25 – to seal a three-point loss in the 2023 AFC divisional playoff at Buffalo.
Before that, the Bills were victimized in the 2021 divisional round when Mahomes needed just 13 seconds to engineer a field goal drive that forced overtime with Harrison Butker’s 49-yard kick. Then the Chiefs won the coin toss and promptly produced a 75-yard drive capped by Mahomes’ 8-yard TD pass to Travis Kelce. Sorry, Buffalo. It wasn’t until after that episode that the NFL changed the overtime rules, allowing for both teams to at least touch the ball.
Enough of such details. The Bills in current form need not to rehash the pain.
After all, with the Chiefs out of the way, there is a clearer view of the stars that seem to be aligning in the so-called Super Bowl window for the Bills.
Maybe.
On top of the past two comeback victories, the Bills won a 44-32 shootout against the Bucs in Week 11 when the lead changed nine times. They beat the Ravens in the season opener despite trailing by 15 points with five minutes to play. And the way they pummeled Pittsburgh, rushing for a James Cook-powered 249 yards, left track marks on the Steelers defense.
You can’t blame Buffalo for feeling that this season, the final one in their rickety stadium in Orchard Park, will be something special.
Still, even with the Chiefs finished, they are warned. The Bills can’t expect to keep pulling out inspiring comebacks when the competition rises to another level in the playoffs.
“Obviously, we want to start faster,” Allen, the reigning NFL MVP, said after the win at Foxborough on Sunday. “We don’t want to continue to find ourselves in these holes that we’re finding ourselves in.”
It’s a good thing to be “battle-tested coming down the stretch,” as Allen went on to describe it.
“I’d love to find ways earlier on in the game to get things going,” he added, “so we don’t have to put ourselves in that situation.”
At least there’s one situation – facing Kansas City in the playoffs – that the Bills can thank their lucky stars that they don’t have to worry about this time around.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on X: @JarrettBell