Bills-Chiefs: Close But Not Really

The Chiefs have ended the Bills' season. This statement would have worked in 2021, 2022, 2024, and of course, it applies in 2025. The Bills have now lost 4 straight playoff games to the Kansas City Chiefs with the last 3 losses being a combined total of 12 points. Will the Bills ever get over the hump? It's tough to answer that question now but as long as Mahomes and Reid continue to represent that team down in Arrowhead, I wouldn't pick the Bills to get past them. That's not an inditement on the Bills, it's more of me paying my respects to the dominance of the Chiefs. I was convinced the Bills had a good shot vs. KC this year. But after watching that game, I realized that the Bills just don't have what it takes to win an important game against the gold standard of the league. This is what I mean:

The Bills ran the tush push around 5 or 6 times this game and were only able to pick it up twice. The Bills were up 22-21 on the KC side of the ball early in the 4th quarter. A score here would have put them in a great position. They faced a 4th and 1 and they decided to tush push. We can argue about whether Josh Allen picked up the first down or not. I thought he did but the spot was close. The refs, after reviewing it, called it short and the Chiefs got the ball and eventually scored going up 29-22. The Bills knew that the tush push wasn't working all game because the Chiefs had it figured out all game. Instead of handing it off to James Cook, who was averaging more than 6 yards a carry, they decided to go with a play that had a less than 50% success rate in that game. It's easy to blame the refs but they shouldn't even have let it get to the point of being under review. This just highlights their lack of attention to detail.

On the flip side, the Chiefs have incredible attention to detail. They knew that Allen loves to go left on those tush push sneaks and guess what they did, they loaded that side of the line and prevented 3 or 4 first downs on short yardage positions.

To me, after watching this game, the games may be close, but the teams aren't. The caliber difference between the Chiefs and Bills is not marginal. The Chiefs are head and shoulders above everyone in the AFC, if not the league. The Chiefs jump on every little advantage they feel that they have throughout the game. They do not waste opportunities. They are extremely well-coached, and oh yeah, they have the best QB in the league. To beat them, you have to play A+ football. Not A-, not even A. A+ football. The Bills are just like every other good team in the AFC. Superhuman at QB with a good coach. Most of the time that's all you need to win a Super Bowl. But when the team you are chasing has a coaching staff that leaves no stone unturned coupled with the fact that their QB is Patrick Mahomes, you have to be perfect in every aspect of the game and maybe just maybe you can pull off the win.

The Bills did enough to beat 30 teams in the NFL on Sunday. They usually do. However, that 31st team will continue to haunt them and there's nothing they can do about it.