Today, they’ll make this about Josh Allen—and they’ll be correct.
For the past five years—and everyone who follows the NFL should hope for the next decade or so—these Buffalo Bills–Kansas City Chiefs showdowns have been headlined by Allen and Patrick Mahomes. How they play is the bellwether, which was the case at Highmark Stadium on this temperate November afternoon.
We’ll all remember how Buffalo’s 28-year-old monster truck of a quarterback went into superhero mode on fourth-and-2 to end the two-time defending champs’ run at a perfect season with a 26-yard touchdown run, securing Buffalo’s scintillating 30–21 win and positioning the Bills—if Kansas City slips up—for a shot to steal the No. 1 seed and home field in the AFC playoffs.
We’ve known that Allen could make a highlight-reel play like that for a long time. What we didn’t know is if what’s around Allen in Orchard Park could get him back into that fourth-and-2, with a chance to slay this NFL era’s great dragon. Gone are so many of the pieces that starred in the early editions of Allen vs. Mahomes, in the 2020 AFC title game, and, of course, the divisional round classic of ’21.
Over the past two years, sans Tyreek Hill and a host of others, Kansas City has shown an ability to withstand attrition and keep giving its once-in-a-lifetime quarterback title shots. This year, the Bills are proving themselves capable of doing the same.
“The standard that we’ve set as a team, as a culture, whoever’s playing is expected to play at that level and that standard,” fresh-faced, third-year linebacker Terrel Bernard told me from the victorious locker room Sunday night. “That’s been our motto. We lost a lot of great players, lot of veterans and captains on this team last year. New guys got to step up and play to that level and rise to the occasion. That’s what we’ve been doing.”
Bernard did it himself, with a game-sealing pick of Mahomes at the end to salt away what was, yes, a big win, but one that Sean McDermott and the rest of the guys in Western New York hope is the launching point for bigger things to come a couple of months from now.
We’ve known for a while that Allen’s good enough to get the Bills there.
Sunday showed that what’s around him, even after all the attrition, may be, too.
Now that was a great NFL Sunday, and we’re recapping all of it today. Over in the Week 11 Takeaways, you’ll find …
• How the Pittsburgh Steelers’ experience pulled them through against an archrival.
• Geno Smith willing the Seattle Seahawks back into the NFC West race.
• The Los Angeles Chargers’ signature win over the Cincinnati Bengals in a Sunday-night thriller.
• Why the Jacksonville Jaguars need to clean house.
And a whole lot more.
But we’re starting with one of the season’s most highly anticipated matchups, which sure felt like a heavyweight prize fight—one that could foreshadow a much bigger rematch to come.
McDermott said as much as he broke down his team postgame in the locker room.
“Hey, it took all of us, right? They threw a punch, we didn’t go anywhere,” McDermott said. “You finished—17, you’re freaking incredible! Listen up, listen up … This is not our Super Bowl. It’s not the end of the line. It’s not the finish line. We’ve got a lot more. Let’s stay humble in victory. Humble in victory, and hungry.”
His point, of course, was well taken, and more or less reiterated what Allen said last week when the quarterback was asked about his success against the Chiefs, and responded, “I know we haven’t beaten them in the playoffs. And that’s the only thing that matters.”
So, as big as this one felt around 7:30 p.m. ET Sunday, there was a dose of reality that the older guys in the Bills locker room, and the coaches, wanted to inject the team with.
That said, the “it took all of us” part?
That, to the Bills, is what made this one feel the way it did. Bernard is just one in a growing crew of younger guys whose part in the squad’s equation was pretty massive against the Chiefs.
Bernard, a third-round pick in 2022, became a starter when Tremaine Edmunds, a piece of the Allen 1.0 era’s foundation, bolted for Chicago in free agency in ’23. He became even more important after Matt Milano went down for the year that October, and did enough for the Bills through the rest of last season to become one of just two team captains this year.
Mitch Morse, the team’s center from 2019 to ’23, and another team leader, was released in March with his 32nd birthday a month away. Buffalo had Connor McGovern, a former Dallas third-round pick who is five years younger than Morse, ready to roll.
Trading away Stefon Diggs, of course, grabbed attention, and Gabe Davis, a homegrown receiver who’d made big plays in big spots for the Bills, left with him in the offseason. But Buffalo had Khalil Shakir ready to go, and tight ends Dawson Knox and Dalton Kincaid in big roles, then drafted Keon Coleman, and signed Mack Hollins and Curtis Samuel in free agency.
And then, there was the turnover in the secondary, with the heart-and-soul safeties of the McDermott–Brandon Beane rebuild—Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer—gone. McDermott’s inaugural first-round pick in Buffalo, Tre’Davious White, got his walking papers, too. So, Taron Johnson, Christian Benford and Damar Hamlin have come up through the pipeline, with veterans like Taylor Rapp and Rasul Douglas coming in from the outside.
You can keep going, too. James Cook and Ray Davis filled Devin Singletary’s spot. Young defensive linemen such as Ed Oliver, Greg Rousseau and A.J. Epenesa have come of age, and on and on and on.
“This business is tough,” McDermott told me a couple of weeks ago. “It’s transactional at some points. We try our best to make it transformational here to the best of our abilities. That transactional piece is undefeated. Just being able to keep the thing on the tracks is a combination of having the right people, leaders developing inside of our building—number one being Josh and his leadership, the rudder he puts in the water every day and every week.
“Guys developing, too, and being able to step up in new roles that were once occupied by guys that you were mentioning, having the right DNA there is important. I also think the coaches are doing a good job of helping these players develop. It’s really not one clear answer I can give you other than it’s really a full building deal, when you can sustain it the way that we’ve been able to.”
And it all came to bear Sunday.
The cool part, though? When it works like the Bills have it working now, it’s easy to see that the best may well be yet to come.
There were three pieces to the Bills’ big win over the Chiefs, and the first was that young defense finding a way to slow down Mahomes and the Kansas City offense. And developing that strategy started with the team’s playoff ouster last January, and the hard lesson a proud unit had to take from it.
Simply, it’s hard enough to beat Mahomes as it is—it becomes almost impossible if the Chiefs run the ball well, and keep down and distance manageable. Indeed, in that 27–24 divisional round loss, Kansas City rolled to 146 yards on 24 carries, good for a 6.1 yard-per-carry average, which is why the quarterback only needed to throw for 215 yards to get to the AFC title game.
“It’s starting up front in the run game,” Bernard says. “Pat’s a Hall of Fame quarterback and multiple-time Super Bowl winner. He’s great at what he does. They’re really good at running the ball. That sets them up in the pass game. Once you can eliminate that as much as possible, then you’re able to win a little bit more on third down. That was our plan—try to get them to third-and-longer situations and try to win from there.”
The Bills weren’t perfect in that area Sunday. But they were a lot better. The Chiefs rushed for just 78 yards on 17 carries. Outside of a 17-yard burst in the fourth quarter, when Kansas City was scrambling to come back, Kareem Hunt was held to 43 yards on 13 carries. And those things created a third-and-10 in the second quarter where Von Miller registered a crucial sack, and a third-and-14 in the third quarter on which the Bills could allow Travis Kelce to get the ball and just tackle him, winning possessions for the defense.
Ultimately, that’s how the Bills ended up going into the game’s final 10 minutes with a 23–14 lead, ready to withstand the expected final flurry of Chiefs blows.
And the anticipation of those haymakers helped inform the second piece to Buffalo’s win—which is, simply, that the Bills can counter all of that with their quarterback.
McDermott said postgame that the Bills mapped out the scenario during the week and that the decision was mostly made out of respect to McDermott’s old boss Andy Reid and the generational quarterback at Reid’s side. “There have been too many games where Andy and Patrick have come back.”
Essentially, the Bills’ coach chose to fight fire with fire, putting the ball in his superhero’s hands to stop the other guy’s superhero from even having a chance to win the day. It was a decision that, as you’d expect, was applauded by his players. Even the defensive guys, who were at attention for the fourth-and-2.
“I was actually standing on the sidelines for the play, just like everybody else,” Bernard says. “Once he pumped, I knew that he was going to run. Once he took off, he’s one of the best running quarterbacks in the league, really probably ever. He made a couple guys miss and then ended up lowering his shoulder and getting into the end zone. That really sealed the game right there, put us up by two scores and gave us a shot to go close it on defense.”
This is where the third element—actually closing the game out—came into play.
As fate would have it, that happened because the defense got the Chiefs in long yardage and desperation mode, one last time. The Bills dropped Samaje Perine for a three-yard loss on the second play of Kansas City’s final drive, putting the Chiefs in a hole they couldn’t dig out of. Three plays later, it was fourth-and-13, and Bernard’s spot to make a big play.
“We were in quarters,” Bernard says. “One of their staple routes is [Kelce] looks like he’s running an over route and then comes back and runs a slim corner, and sits between the numbers and the hash. The situation, they had to push the ball down the field, and we ended up going and trying to match them. I felt him working the scramble drill a little bit. Once I got close enough, I tried to get connected and then try to slip the route.
“Really, when I slipped the route, I turned back and the ball was right there.”
So was the game, with Bernard hauling the ball in to close out the champs.
“Huge win for us,” Bernard says. “It’s crazy, man. It’s fun. Bills Mafia was fun. It was a big win.”
Then, there was the sobering part of McDermott’s final message to the team: This wasn’t the Super Bowl. It was a mid-November win. A big one, yes, that could eventually dictate where an even bigger game in January is played.
But the hard truth is that the Bills have been here before.
Last year, Buffalo beat the Chiefs in the regular season, then lost to Kansas City in the aforementioned divisional round game. In 2022, the Bills edged the Chiefs at Arrowhead but were denied a rematch in the playoffs by the Bengals. The ’21 playoff classic that went to the Chiefs was also preceded by a Buffalo regular-season win.
So as good as Sunday felt, it won’t mean much if these Bills don’t secure a different result in January.
On the other hand, the win did show that Buffalo’s plenty good enough to get that second shot at the Chiefs. And that they’ll go in armed, not just with a quarterback capable of going punch-for-punch with the mighty Mahomes, but a team that’s going to keep swinging, and, as much as anything else, follow the lead of the quarterback like the Chiefs do theirs.
“Josh sets the tone—he’s the leader of the team. He does what it takes to win,” Bernard says. “When you see that, you want to lay it on the line for him, too. Then, you get a group of guys playing for each other and trying to get the job done. So we’re a really close team. Everybody cares for each other. Everyone’s doing their absolute best to go out and win. You saw that tonight.”
And if things go according to plan, down the line, all of us will get to see it again, only on a much bigger stage.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Josh Allen, Bills Hope Chiefs Win Foreshadows Something Bigger.
