ORCHARD PARK — Arrowhead Stadium has become a slaughterhouse for opposing teams.
The deafening noise, sea of red and overuse of the Tomahawk Chop swirl through the stadium. The Kansas City Chiefs are 57-14 at home with Patrick Mahomes as the starting quarterback, including 11-2 in the playoffs.
It’s an imposing stadium for most teams. Not the Buffalo Bills.
The Bills are responsible for three of those losses in Arrowhead. Only the AFC West rival Chargers and Raiders have won twice there since 2018, but no team has won in Kansas City than the Bills.
The problem, though, is that all three of Buffalo’s wins are in the regular season. Mahomes’ Chiefs are 1-4 against the Bills in the regular season, but 3-0 in the playoffs, with two of those postseason wins coming at Arrowhead.
Buffalo won’t be afraid of Arrowhead, just as the Chiefs weren’t intimidated traveling to Highmark Stadium in the divisional round last season. But finding some new wrinkle to thwart the other is the most difficult task this week.
Beyond familiarity on the field, Bills coach Sean McDermott worked under Kansas City coach Andy Reid and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo in Philadelphia. It’s been a common theme with the Bills this week that it’s developed into a divisional rivalry, playing twice per year for the fourth time in five seasons.
“They know who we are, we know who they are,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said. “It literally just comes down to who executes well on Sunday. We can put all these plays in and expect one thing and they can throw a wrinkle and do something completely different and vice versa. Again, just trust your rules, trust the guys on the field and just play football.”
The Bills-Chiefs rivalry has reached the pinnacle of the era. The Packers and 49ers or Packers and Cowboys of the 1990s or the Patriots-Colts rivalry of the 2000s defined those eras, but few reached this level.
The Bills-Chiefs rivalry now joins Packers-49ers (‘95-98) and Cowboys-Rams (‘75-76, ’78-80) as the only matchups to square off four times in a five-year span since the merger in 1970. Meanwhile, Allen and Mahomes are now one behind Tom Brady and Peyton Manning for most head-to-head playoff games.
Brady and Manning squared off 17 times in 15 seasons, while Jim Kelly and Dan Marino had 18 head-to-head matchups and they were guaranteed two games per year in the AFC East. Allen and Mahomes are on pace to smash both, with their ninth game in five years.
“When you look at the great rivalries of the NFL, it comes with this,” Mahomes said. “It comes with playing each other every year in the regular season, it comes with playing in the playoffs. You have to combat, you have to look at your weaknesses and try to make those strengths and then your strengths, make them even better because you know that they’re going to go out there and try to take away those things.”
The Allen-Mahomes rivalry has similar trends to Brady-Manning. Brady won three Super Bowls in his first four seasons as the starter, while it took Manning eight years before getting to his first.
Brady also won the first two playoff matchups before Manning finally won in the 2006 AFC championship. Brady’s teams won the regular season matchups 9-3, and while Manning’s teams went 3-2 against Brady in the postseason, he never shook the stigma of the first two losses.
Marino went 0-3 against Kelly in the playoffs, while Brett Favre never beat Troy Aikman. But the Bills are still seeking answers as to why they have beaten the Chiefs in the regular season four years in a row, but have three playoff losses.
Four of the eight games between the two teams have been decided by one score and could have easily gone the other way. That’s why they have split those four games, Kansas City’s wins just happened to come in the playoffs.
“Sometimes the ball is going to roll the opposite way from you, sometimes going to bounce into your arms, and just taking advantage of every opportunity that comes our way,” Allen said. “And this is a fun game to play in, I’ll tell you that.”