(Fwrd Axis) — 13 seconds.
Not many things take that much time, you can’t make ramen in that amount of time, but that’s all Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs offense needed to drive 75 yards to tie the AFC divisional game on Sunday night at Arrowhead Stadium that would eventually see them drive 75 yards again, only this time it would be sudden death overtime to end the Buffalo Bills’ season.
As the game ends the questions arise, do overtime rules need to be changed? What could have been to stop them? Are the Bills heading to a decline?
Time will answer those questions and that won’t be the goal of this article. The goal here is simple, to go back and look at the body of work we saw from the Bills this season. It wasn’t always pretty, losing to the Jacksonville Jaguars and being gashed by the lowly Indianapolis Colts, and losing to a Mac Jones lead Patriots team who only attempted three passes at home no less.
There was also plenty of good to see. Josh Allen continued his growth in year three to (and with my limited expertise will declare this) his ascension to superstar status in the NFL, the receiving core with Gabe Davis seems to be heading in the right direction, and the secondary without Tre White seemed to be in every game, so again the body of work what do we see when looking back at it? As the pain from the playoff begins to subside you see that the Bills are one of the league’s best. One stat that I will point out is this in close games this season the Bills were 0-5 (we change one to a victory and I don’t write this article right now). The reason this is important is that even if we pick up two close victories the record changed to 13-4 and maybe the Bills see the playoffs go through Buffalo.
As I write that though as if you could change those the expectations (and maybe the pain) are only amplified had the Bills lost in the divisional round. The problems from the Bills this season would have to be the inconsistent defensive play. I realize I say that as the Bills were the number one defense in many categories, but if we look towards the games the Bills did lose (besides the Jags, but we’ll get there) you could point to the defense as the weak point in the armor. Tennessee, Indianapolis, and New England, if you add those three games together, would account for 23 percent of the total yards given up by the Bills all year. The game that really sticks out is the 264 which accounts for 14 percent of the yards given up all year. As we move on the Jaguars’ loss for the Bills was probably Josh Allen’s worst game of the year as he threw 2 interceptions that day was simply an anomaly, a reminder if you will, of the example that in the NFL “it’s any given Sunday”.
In all honesty, I didn’t help either when you recall that Josh Allen was under duress this entire game. The Jags defense did what they had to that game to hold the Bills to six points. Overall the bright side for the Bills is you have many places to look. When the Bills did take victory this season there was no doubt in fact 425-152. That number represents the combined scores of the Bills victories to opponents including the postseason. Overall while the loss may sting for the next coming weeks, months, years we can always reveal in the fact as Bills fans, Josh Allen is our quarterback and we don’t even have to question if our guy is the guy, because he is.
