Try as I might, I still haven’t found the right word to describe the particular level of devastation delivered upon the Bills and their fans Sunday night as they fell in overtime to the Chiefs, 42-36, the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs.
I am not going to go through the whole game as I have with others this season because a.) I’m sure most people have already seen it and b.) it’s painful. It was a great game, arguably the best playoff game of all time, but that doesn’t take the sting out of it.
The Bills were aggressive from the beginning and jumped out in front with an early touchdown. The Chiefs showed why they have been in the AFC title game four years running and Patrick Mahomes put his greatness on full display on KC’s opening drive, breaking constant pressure and scrambling for 55-yards and a TD to tie the game. At that point, I knew it was going to be a long night of back-and-forth action.
Buffalo squandered their next couple of drives and the Chiefs were able to take the lead with another TD when a Matt Milano sack on Mahomes on 3rd & goal was erased by a defensive holding call on rookie Dane Jackson. The penalty reset the downs and effectively turned a field goal into a Mahomes to Byron Pringle TD for Kansas City. Jackson has played well in multiple games since Tre White was lost for the season back on Thanksgiving, but that was a massive penalty. I’ve seen it floated on Twitter in the aftermath that having White wouldn’t have made a difference. That’s a strange hill to die on considering that his absence was felt massively on that play alone, not to mention a slew of missed tackles at the second level throughout the rest of the game.
The Bills would respond with a TD of their own, this time to second-year man Gabriel Davis who had a monster game with 8-receptions for 201-yards and 4-TDs. It was a welcome sight as I had been pushing for more usage from him all season for the very reasons we saw on Sunday. The Chiefs did a great job taking away almost everything else, including both Stefon Diggs and Dawson Knox as if KC was game planning on how to stop their own offense. It will be curious to go back and see the coverage looks the Cheifs were putting up as a way to mitigate the #1 WR and TE spots. It was a tie game at the half, so it was shaping up to be a close game but I don’t know if anyone could have predicted just how down-to-the-wire it was going to be.
Kansas City got the ball to start the 2nd half and immediately cashed in with a FG and a Mecole Hardman 25-yard TD run that highlighted those missed tackles I mentioned. A missed PAT from Harrison Butker kept it a 9-point game and the Bills finally decided to take a shot. Chiefs starting safety Tyrion Matthieu was hurt on the game’s first play, but Buffalo hadn’t really tested those waters in the passing game in his absence. That changed in one play as Josh Allen found Davis again, for his second score, on a 75-yard TD catch and run.
There would be some punts exchanged, but the track meet was on at that point. KC tacked on a FG after Tyreek Hill returned a Matt Haack punt 45-yards to the BUF 16-yard line. On the previous play, the Chiefs committed a low-block personal foul on the initial punt return and the Bills gunner was out of bounds, both drawing flags. For whatever reason, by rule, the penalties offset and Chiefs coach Andy Reid got to decide whether or not to re-kick. How a personal foul allows for the offending team to have discretion is beyond me. I get the offsetting part, which is also weird when one penalty is of more value than the other, but KC shouldn’t get the option to decide.
Buffalo responded with maybe their best drive in the Sean McDermott era. They would go 17-plays, 75-yards and Allen would find Davis for his 3rd TD of the game and then Allen to Diggs on a masterful, wizard-like 2-point conversion to put the Bills up 29-26 inside the two-minute warning. That was more than enough time for Mahomes and company to respond and they did, going 75-yards in 5-plays, finding TE Travis Kelce for a big conversion on 3rd & 11. Then Hill struck on a crossing route he took 64-yards for the go-ahead TD, making it 33-29 KC.
Buffalo still had all 3-timeouts and 1:02 left in the game to make something happen. Allen tried to get Diggs involved but ultimately peppered Davis to get big chunks into Chiefs’ territory. Emanuel Sanders picked up his only catch of the game to get into the red zone. With :13 left in the game, Allen connected with Davis for their 4th TD o the game to put the Bills back on top. McDermott opted for the point-after kick and Buffalo led 36-33. That’s when the little details boiled over.
The Chiefs had all their timeouts and needed a FG to tie the game and my first thought on the ensuing kickoff was “don’t kick the ball to Tyreek Hill”. However, when I saw Pringle lined up deep to receive the kickoff, the obvious choice is to either pooch it way up in the air or squib it on the ground to make sure that the ball has to be fielded and some time comes off the clock. Tyler Bass did neither as he kicked the ball through the endzone for the touchback. So, KC would start at their 25-yard line, still with the full 13-seconds and all their timeouts.
Compounding one mistake with another, the Bills’ defense came out in a four-man pass rush with off coverage. Mahomes to Hill for 19-yards. Timeout, but down to :08 on the clock. Same coverage. Mahomes over the middle to Kelce for 25-yards down to the BUF 31-yard line. That’s 44-yards on two plays to get into Butker FG range and, naturally, he didn’t miss that one despite a couple of earlier misses.
The game would head to overtime. The Chiefs would win the toss and elect to receive and the Bills defense would have to take the field with very little break down the stretch. Kansas City didn’t have an empty or negative play in their whole possession and they marched right down the field with full confidence. On 1st & 8, Mahomes found Kelce in man coverage against Milano and put the ball on him in the endzone for the game-winner. Pain.
Going from the elation of taking the lead with nearly no time left and sitting with a 98% chance of victory to getting marched on for the game-winning TD the other way is a lot to handle. It’s this generation of the Music City Miracle for Bills Mafia and it hurts in a different way. There was this sense that the winner of this matchup would go on to win the Super Bowl and to be that close, with a chance to play in Buffalo with the right to go to the SB on the line would have been something special. Alas, that will have to wait for another day.
The overtime structure will likely get changed going forward as a result of this game because for that game to come down to a coin toss was not a great look for the league. What we saw Sunday night was the two best QBs, on the two best teams, in the NFL going head-to-head. Hats off to the Chiefs who played a hell of a game themselves, but there will always be that feeling that the Bills just let it get away from them. Sadly, that was sort of the theme with most of their losses this season and it’s something that will need to be addressed by McDermott and the rest of the coaching staff in the offseason as they have plenty of personnel decisions to make too.
I am going to skip the Performance Grade this week because I know the players left it on the field. A lot of things could have gone better defensively from scheme to tackling to matchups to strategy, but I know that group played hard and that’s all that I can ask for from them. Until next season, always, forever, Go Bills!
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