It’s appropriate that the Buffalo Bills are preparing to enter Arrowhead Stadium at a crossroads.
The Bills are the only team to beat the Patrick Mahomes-led Kansas City Chiefs in their home venue, but it’s also the site of the franchise’s most crushing losses in the last 20-plus years. In other words, Buffalo has proven capable of winning at Arrowhead, but not when it matters most.
After all four games at Arrowhead since 2020, the Bills were supposed to come for the better and it hasn’t happened.
They were the young team on the rise after losing the 2020 AFC championship game, inflated after an 18-point win in 2021, only to go 3-5 in the ensuing eight games. Returning three months later for the AFC divisional round, a red-hot Josh Allen had many people thinking he might be on the verge of overtaking Mahomes as the NFL’s premier quarterback after the game, but his team left haunted by an unthinkable collapse.
When they met again in Kansas City in Week 6 last season, Allen led the Bills to another late go-ahead score, only that time his defense didn’t wilt. All of the preseason Super Bowl predictions seemed accurate, only to hold off injuries and weather mayhem until it came to head in a resounding playoff loss to the Bengals.
The Bills decided to run it back, allowing the veteran core of the team to have one more chance at the elusive jump they have been unable to make. Injury woes have returned, dysfunction has emerged and now the team is clouded by domestic violence charges against Von Miller, the man who was offered $120 million to be the fixer of late-game debacles against the Chiefs.
But at 6-6, the Bills may be facing their last chance to climb their Everest. The team will look different next season regardless of what happens, but the outcome could determine how different.
Buffalo likely needs to go 5-0 to make the playoffs, with an outside shot of getting in with a 4-1 record. But if the one comes against the Chiefs, it leaves no guarantees and no room for error.
“The encouraging thing is all the goals that we set for ourselves are still within our reach,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “… Obviously we have some adjustments we need to make. When you look at overall with the games we have lost, they’ve been either turnover-based or one-score-based. On the on the defensive side getting off the field, and then obviously special teams is baked into all that. So there’s a lot of positives.”
The optimistic have attempted to paint a picture similar to the end of the 2021 season, when the Bills, 7-6 after Week 14, went 4-0 down the stretch to win the AFC East and qualify for the playoffs. They point out that the Bills offense, iffy for weeks, broke out in the second half of an overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, similar to the pre-bye loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
There are two big differences during those occurrences, however. Buffalo’s remaining opponents in 2021 were a combined 26-42 and only one — the New England Patriots — made the playoffs. This season, the final five opponents are 33-27.
Twenty-four players on the active roster remain from the 2021 team, but that was two years ago, an eternity in football. Bills cornerback Dane Jackson couldn’t recall much from that season and neither could offensive tackle Dion Dawkins.
In 2021, there wouldn’t be much pushback if someone called Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer the best safety tandem in football. Now they are aging and their futures in Buffalo beyond the remainder of this season are murky.
Gabe Davis, who has 14 receptions for 275 yards and five touchdowns in his last two games at Arrowhead, appears to be playing out the final weeks of his Bills tenure, with his contract expiring at the end of the season and has the same number of games with fewer than 50 yards and than more than 50 yards this season.
“I’m extremely confident in our guys,” Allen said after losing to the Eagles. “The men that we have in this locker room, we understand where we’re at. So, we’ve got good things going.”
More than any player, McDermott will arrive in Kansas City fighting for his future. Fair or unfair, his tenure with the Bills is most synonymous with his management over those fateful 13 seconds, and two seasons later, he is still under fire for his late-game decision-making.
The Bills currently may not be thinking about a coaching change, but a loss to the Chiefs puts playoff hopes on life support for a team that was perceived to be a legitimate Super Bowl contender in Week 4 and is still has the ninth-best betting odds. That can change thinking quickly.
Oddly enough, for all the mismanagement and chaos on both sides of the ball over the last seven weeks, the Bills are still talented enough to beat the Chiefs and run the table. If only they can find consistency from week to week.
And for all of McDermott’s blunders thus far, he is 6-0 coming off the bye week, winning each of the last four by double-digits. That’s going to be tested by a Chiefs team that is coming off a loss to the Green Bay Packers and has unbelievably scored 20 points or less seven times this season, but has lost back-to-back games three times and three out of four twice since Mahomes became starter in 2018.
“I think (the bye) gives you a chance to reset more than anything,” McDermott said. “We’ve been able to do that effectively here over the course of our career here in Buffalo and I expect the same going forward. Some of the adjustments we need to make and the gaps we have to close were some of the things we were focusing in on so that we can close that gap, whether it be the turnovers or closing out games.”