Missing Rings: Buffalo Bills flush away another Super Bowl opportunity

For the fourth time in five years, Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes ended Buffalo's season. A new team followed the same old script. Josh Allen's prime continues to be wasted. What now?

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With 13 minutes left in the AFC Championship Game, the Buffalo Bills had a choice. Bad breaks are a fact of life in the playoffs. These games are never scripted exactly to your preference, right down to majestic William Fichtner narration.

On fourth and 1 — no question — the Bills received an unfortunate spot that’ll likely serve as a source of pain for Western New Yorkers the next 12 months. But in that moment? Tough. Life goes on. What happened next was a painfully familiar sight for this defense, this time of year.

Buffalo folded faster than a rickety tailgate table.

In a humiliating five-play sequence, Patrick Mahomes made quick ‘n easy work of this unit. He dashed around the right end for seven yards, then gunned a 29-yarder to JuJu Smith-Schuster over the middle. After a pair of Kareem Hunt runs, the best player in the sport then tore around the edge of Buffalo’s defense for a 10-yard score. (More on this later.)

After a Buffalo TD tied it up, the Chiefs then pieced together a winning field goal drive.

Even with the benefit of a sack at the tail-end of that drive, the Bills surrendered an alarming 8.5 yards per play on the two most important defensive drives of the season. No pride. No fight. No will to win a championship from Sean McDermott’s defense. The Spot was rough, but The Response was 100x worse.

Yet again, a very real opportunity to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy has passed the Bills on by. This time, they lost 32-29 to the Chiefs in the conference title game. Honestly, there’s ample blame to go all around.

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Ideally, your defensive coach devises a defensive gameplan that isn’t decoded and dismantled so effortlessly. At least once. Instead, Mahomes and Andy Reid spanked McDermott for a fourth time — this is not a fair fight. Personnel problems were also exposed. The general manager’s top draft picks the last five years were underwhelming at best, disasters at worst at Arrowhead. This was not a good night for Brandon Beane. “Everyone eats” was a powerful rallying cry for a while. True unselfishness fueled a 15-5 season. But when the windows tighten in January, against NFL royalty, you need wide receivers capable of getting separation.

Amari Cooper had 26 receptions in 11 games as a Bill. His longest play in the postseason went for 10 yards.

All that matters right now is the reality that the Bills squandered yet another prime year of their Hall of Fame-caliber quarterback’s career. Josh Allen was not perfect, but Josh Allen still managed to throw the Superman cape on and deliver an extraordinary fourth-and-5 heave into the diving arms of tight end Dalton Kincaid. This drop is now tossed into the What-If bucket with Stefon Diggs’ drop vs. KC last season. No quarterback did more with less at receiver this season. This week, the head coach and GM will likely tell us that the Bills exceeded expectations in ‘24.

If expectations are based on daytime ESPN nonsense spewed in June, uh, sure. Raise a banner.

There’s no finessing the fact that the Bills had a golden opportunity to win the whole thing this season, and let it slip away. Allen turns 29 years old in May. Every team every season is different. Right back to base camp these Bills go to start climbing the mountain all over again. Eventually, these opportunities run out.

Mahomes is special. Reid, too. But too often, Buffalo fails its quarterback. And when Allen is forced to be perfect, he’s one play short.

Start with the defense. This team’s numbers in elimination losses continue to read like a horrid medical report that demands emergency surgery. All that stopped Kansas City in the first half was Mahomes dropping the ball on an RPO fake. Since blowing the 16-0 lead to the Houston Texans in the 2019 wild card — a brutal defeat in its own right — here’s how McDermott’s defense has now fared in Buffalo’s last five playoff defeats (four to Mahomes, one to Joe Burrow):

• 40 non-kneeldown drives

• 22 touchdowns

• 9 field goals

• 8 punts

• 1 missed field goal

• 2 turnovers

• 166 points allowed … good for 4.15 points per non-kneeldown drive.

That final kneeldown drive in KC was as bad as any, too. Mahomes killed Buffalo off with a pair of throws.

This latest faceplant cannot be written off as the result of injuries. This time, Buffalo had both of its star linebackers in the lineup: Matt Milano and Terrel Bernard.

Cornerback Christian Benford tried to play after suffering a concussion the week prior vs. Baltimore, and then suffered another scary concussion. The 185^th overall pick in the 2022 class has been one of Beane’s finest draft picks. The 23^rd pick in the same class? Not quite! The Chiefs mercilessly targeted Kaiir Elam, a player who probably shouldn’t be on the Bills roster, let alone the field. As Chiefs scout Greg Castillo meticulously broke down for us here at Go Long, Kansas City traded up for cornerback Trent McDuffie in the same round — two picks that had two very different impacts on their respective secondaries.

Ed Oliver has his disruptive moments, to be sure. He’s also often a soccer goalie guessing on penalty kicks. The former ninth overall pick making $68 million can get washed out of plays. Greg Rousseau took a big step this season. He also had zero quarterback hits on Sunday.

Keon Coleman (one catch, 12 yards) was drastically outplayed by Xavier Worthy (101 total yards, TD). Every fan’s worst nightmare last April.

Kincaid was unable to make that final play. He wasn’t featured nearly as much as we all expected in Year 2.

Back to the coaching. McDermott had no problem going for it on fourth down in high-pressure spots. I liked the two-point decision, too. All encouraging from the head coach who was kicking 20-yard field goals against this team in the 2020 AFC title game — he was aggressive. But at some point, you’ve got to get something other than calamities out of a defensive-minded head coach in these games. The Bills forced a pair of punts in the third quarter — that’s all — and, let’s remember, these are not the juggernaut Chiefs of yesteryear. Their 32-point total on Sunday evening marked the team’s highest point total in 36 games, dating way back to a Bears blowout on Sept. 24, 2023. All of this without No. 1 wideout Rashee Rice. He’ll be back from a torn ACL in 2025. We’ll see if Mack Hollins leads the Bills wide receivers in snaps again.

Just once, it’d be nice if the defense was capable of pulling its weight against KC.

Instead, Mahomes enjoyed the highest dropback success rate of his entire career. This was a 99th percentile game, as noted by NFL writer Sheil Kapadia. Translation: Mahomes did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.

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Of course, these Bills-Chiefs games always boil down to two or three plays.

The reason KC had three defenders instantly in Allen’s face on the final fourth and 5 with 2 minutes remaining was that Buffalo slid its protection left. At locker-room cleanup day on Monday, guard O’Cyrus Torrence detailed the diabolical nature of Steve Spagnuolo’s smoke and mirrors. Throughout the game, the Chiefs blitzed where they weren’t showing pressure pre-snap. When defenders stepped up to sell a pressure on Buffalo’s right side, they’d back off at the last split-second.

This time? They sold pressure to Buffalo’s right side… and brought the heat to that right side.

A blob of red bodies immediately greeted Allen.

“They showed it that way and actually brought it,” Torrence said. “They set it up. It was like they were waiting to get in that situation all game to bring out that one pressure.”

Play to play, facing “Spags” is a miserable experience. He’s still the sport’s preeminent defensive genius. Torrence has faced KC four times in two years and it seems like the coach is constantly adding wrinkles they never catch on film. Which begs the question: What can you even do to prepare for his X’s and O’s? Torrence isn’t quite sure. Picking up on tendencies helps but that would not have saved Buffalo on this fateful fourth and 5.

“He hides it pretty well so it’s hard to pinpoint one specific area to get better at because the D-Line is moving, the linebackers are communicating, the safeties are coming, the cornerback’s blitzing,” Torrence said. “So they’re all moving around. It's not like you just pinpoint one specific area and try to hold up. And then you’ve got Chris Jones up front. I feel like with a guy like Chris Jones — playing against him four times now — it makes it a lot easier to call defense because the offensive line has got to respect where he’s at.

“And if he’s on one end, you likely could bring it to the other side. But if they don’t come, now you’ve got him 1 on 1.”

In other words, Spags does just enough to throw Allen off-kilter. When these heavyweight quarterbacks clash, one disguise on one key play can be the difference.

Conversely, Mahomes never seems fooled by the Bills’ schemes.

One team plays chess at the crucial, gut-check moments; the other checkers.

On defense, Greg Rousseau knew that the Chiefs might use a diamond formation — Mahomes lined up between two tight ends with a running back behind him — but admits the Chiefs ran plays out of this funky alignment that the Bills had never seen before. Reid saved plays for this matchup. On the go-ahead TD in the fourth quarter, the Chiefs pulled a tackle left and a ran a quarterback keeper right. Buffalo’s best defensive player, Matt Milano, was caught flat-footed. Dawuane Smoot bit inside to JV extremes. Everyone appeared fooled. Mahomes plowed into the end zone.

“I didn’t see that in any of the breakdowns I watched,” said the defensive end Rousseau. “So they made some plays. They ended up coming out on top. They had a good gameplan.”

Mahomes has always been a threat to run. What surprised the Bills, per Rousseau, is when he ran for his 43 yards. They weren’t expecting him to boot in certain short-yardage situations.

“I know personally in my job, not just me, but the whole defense we’re thinking, ‘Alright, it was four-minute (offense), we got to get a stop on the run,’” Rousseau said. “Then he boots out. It’s like, ‘Damn.’ It happens. It’s part of the game and it's tough to stop when you have a quarterback who’s a dual threat.”

Again, this contrasted sharply with the Chiefs loading up to stuff Allen on telegraphed quarterback sneaks. They knew what was coming and — for whatever reason — the Bills avoid a true “push” on their iteration of the Tush Push.

Reid. Spags. Mahomes. The brains behind the Chiefs’ operation took it to Buffalo for the fourth time in five postseasons. They always have an ace up their sleeve in the fourth quarter.

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This time of year, opponents do not fear Buffalo’s coaching. But do they fear No. 17.

The clearest path to success in nut-cutting time remains a superhuman play by the quarterback that renders X’s and O’s nil. The Bills nearly got one on that fourth and 5, too.

Tight end Dawson Knox offered an impassioned defense of Kincaid, noting that his teammate is running full speed one direction before completely changing direction to dive for Allen’s pop fly. Next, he shared that Kincaid played this season with a torn PCL in one knee and a ton of fluid in the other. Kincaid has no clue what’s wrong with that knee, apparently. He hasn’t even gotten a scan done.

With two good knees, does Kincaid make this play? Maybe.

Said Knox: “It’s insane what he has played through.”

Either way, that’s how close Buffalo came to potentially tying or winning this game. The Bills would’ve had the ball at KC’s 36-yard line with 1:54 to go and all three timeouts. Despite Spagnuolo calling the perfect play, Allen nearly answered with an even better legacy throw we would’ve watched on highlight reels for years. Players are drafted 25th overall to make this play. This one will haunt.

Knox has been around for all four playoff losses to Kansas City. He cannot point to one common thread through all defeats, simply saying the Chiefs are “extremely talented” and “extremely well-coached.”

“They’ve set the standard for excellence in the league,” Knox said. “So for us to be the best team in the NFL, we’ve got to beat the best. Right now, the Chiefs are the best, so we’ve got plenty of time to figure out what it’s going to take for next year.”

McDermott’s defense isn’t outright stopping anybody this time of year. Yet, it’s also true that the Bills held the ball on offense in the waning minutes with a chance to both tie or win in each of the last two playoff losses… and came away with zero points. That’ll stick with Josh Allen all offseason. He’s got no choice but to score in the mid-30s minimum, turn the ball over exactly zero times and match schematic wits with Spags, all while Reid and Mahomes play a near-flawless game.

Not easy. Tom Brady had Bill Belichick. Mahomes has Spagnuolo. Even Peyton Manning had Tony Dungy defensively. On Monday, I asked the quarterback how much pressure he feels to keep up with the Kansas City machine.

“That’s why they’re the champs,” Allen said. “You have to go into it knowing that you have to be damn near perfect to win that football game and we just didn’t play well enough.”

At one point, Allen lamented a second and 6 in which he dropped the snap. Hold onto that ball and he would’ve hit Cooper for five yards to make it third and 1. Instead, the Bills faced a third and 9. The QB admits these plays will be on his mind because Allen knows that these opportunities to reach the Super Bowl are not “promised.” Getting back to this point is not guaranteed. That’s why he repeated multiple times that the Bills cannot merely knock on the door — they’ve got to kick it down.

Fully expect more challengers to emerge in 2025. Houston? Los Angeles? The Cincinnati Bengals may even vault themselves back into title-contending form alongside Kansas City, Buffalo and Baltimore. These Bills captured something special through this season, and it wasn’t enough. There will be another round of veteran transactions in March. Another draft in April. Hype and hope will build.

“The sun came up this morning,” Knox said. “Life’s not over.”

Now, the Bills wait for that sun to come up about 350+ more times before playing another game of substance.

Nothing matters for Allen, for McDermott, for Beane, for this entire team until they inevitably face Kansas City again.

And we’re also inching closer toward a grim thought: Will the outcome really be any different a fifth time around?

Podcast with Jay Skurski of The Buffalo News:

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What did players say inside the locker room? Here’s a tour through cleanup day: