The Sunday AFC championship game was a view too familiar for the Buffalo Bills fans: their favorite team walking outside the defeat field, while Kansas City chiefs celebrate and continue in the playoffs.
Four times in the last five years, the postseason of the Bills has ended at the hands of the Chiefs. Kansas City beat Buffalo for the AFC championship in seasons 2020 and 2024, and in the division round of 2021 and 2023 seasons.
“To be the champions, you have to defeat the champions,” said Campo de los Bills Marshal, Josh Allen, after the last defeat of his team on Sunday. “And we didn’t do that tonight.”
Allen, despite launching for 237 yards and two touchdowns, run for 39 yards and have no ball losses on Sunday, now is the owner of an ignominious record: the greatest amount of losses before a single field marshal in the history of The NFL playoffs, since it is 0-4 against Patrick Mahomes in the postseason.
This is especially worrying for Buffalo’s fans of a certain age who are old enough to remember when the Bills lost four, four! – Super Bowls followed from 1990 to 1993. Buffalo is simply destined to lose again and again when it is in the precipice of the final success?
Bills fans probably don’t want to hear this right now, but this team is extremely close, extremely – To overcome the city of Kansas. And that’s why Buffalo should not lose hope.
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Let’s start with the fact that, well, the Bills have really defeated Mohamses several times.
In the regular season, Allen has a 4-1 record against Mohamses and the Chiefs. Buffalo has even won his last four regular season clashes against Kansas City, including three times on the road.
Therefore, it is not as simple as the number of bosses who have the number of Bills. Buffalo has shown that he has a formula to beat Mohamses, he simply can’t do it in the playoffs.
And those last three postseason losses? Everyone has been games that turned in a couple of plays, and some of those plays were balanced by inches.
There was the infamous game of 13 seconds in the playoffs of 2021, when the teams scored 25 points combined in the last two minutes. What would happen if the Bills had won the launch of the extra time currency and conduct the field instead of Kansas City?
In the 2023 division round, Buffalo lost a game kick with less than two minutes to the end.
And on Sunday, Bills may have won if they were not for two wild plays with a fourth attempt. The first was Allen’s advance that a first Down should have been governed. The second was a desperate shot of Allen who bounced in the hands of a Dalton Kincaid of diving.
To drive more home how thin it is the margin between these two teams, they have played nine times since 2020, and all the games were initiated by Allen and Mohamses. In those nine competitions, the combined score is 245-240, Kansas City. Chiefs have 5-4 in those competitions: their average margin of victory is literally a point.
Yes, it is more heartbreak for Buffalo. But this is not like the Super Bowl streak of the early 90s. The Bills lost their first appearance in the Super Bowl largely due to a lost field goal, but lost by multiple scores in each of the next three games , and the last two were not especially close.
This time, Buffalo does not fade. Even as the mystique of the Chiefs and Mohamses grows, the Bills are still there with them almost every step of the road, except for the ball bounce or an obstructed angle in a repeat review.
Buffalo, of course, is not guaranteed to return here next season. But if the Bills play Kansas City again, as close as the teams have been, it is not an inevitable conclusion that the chiefs win.
“We have to continue working to overcome that hump,” said Buffalo chief coach, Sean McDermott, Sunday.
He added: “Obviously, this is a challenge for us. We will solve it. “