The rivalry between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs added another thrilling, historic moment on Sunday in its incredible recent history.
But for the Bills, it has been nothing but torture.
The Chiefs once again beat the Bills, 32-29, in the AFC Championship Game, sending Kansas City to its third straight Super Bowl. And with it, the Bills fell to 0-4 in recent playoff games against their arch-nemeses.
"To be the champs, you've got to beat the champs," Bills quarterback Josh Allen said after Buffalo's latest loss, "and we didn't do that tonight."
Allen once again played well enough to win on Sunday. Once again, it wasn't enough. His battles with Patrick Mahomes have become the stuff of legends, but Mahomes was just a little better on this day as K.C. eclipsed 30 points for the first time this season.
The Bills' chances were thwarted with two memorable fourth-down failures, both of which will be burned into the heads of their fans all offseason. The first was a failed Allen sneak on fourt-and-1 from the Kansas City 41-yard line early in the fourth quarter, with Buffalo clinging to a 22-21 lead.
The initial call on the field had Allen short of the yard to gain, and replay did not overturn the spot, in spite of Allen and the ball appearing to come extremely close to -- if not across -- the 40-yard line.
"The look we had in the stadium … I thought he had it," Bills head coach Sean McDermott said after the game. "Just short of the line was actually the first down, what it looked like to me, when it was sitting next to me with the marker. Just inside that white stripe was the first down. It looked like he got to it. That's all I can say."
The Bills' second turnover on downs came with fewer than 2 minutes remaining in the game and Buffalo driving to either tie or potentially re-take the lead in what was a three-point game.
Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo sent a blitz on a fourth-and-five, and Allen drifted backward, throwing off his back foot. The desperate heave somehow hit Bills tight end Dalton Kincaid in his hands, but he couldn't corral the pass. The Bills would not get the ball again.
Allen credited the Chiefs for sending Trent McDuffie on the critical play with 1:58 left.
"They gave a good luck," Allen said. "Didn't see anything in my first cadence. They were sliding left. Corner came. … Yeah."
The first fourth-down turnover resulted in a Chiefs touchdown and two-point conversion. The second one allowed the Chiefs to run out the clock and secure another Super Bowl trip.
The Bills were 3 of 3 in the red zone on Sunday. They were also 4 of 6 on fourth downs. But the two misses came at two of the biggest junctures of the game.
"You can either get it done, or you can't," Allen said, "and we didn't get it done."
McDermott admitted how big the first fourth-down stop in a close game like Sunday's.
"Yeah. Of course it does. Darn right it does," he told reporters. "That's a possession. We're up one point at the time. A chance to go up maybe multiple scores at that point. It's a big call. It's absolutely a big call."
The Bills, however, also failed to convert multiple third- and fourth-and-short situations on Sunday.
McDermott had no regrets with his decision to continuously run Allen on those plays, even while wondering whether they did enough to keep the Chiefs on their toes.
"It's been our best play all year at one or inside of one yard (to go)," McDermott said. "We won some of those, but to your point, they were doing a good job.
"I thought overall, maybe we could have disguised it. Maybe not. But at the end of the day, we have confidence in Josh and our offensive line to get those. Been getting them all year."
But the year came crashing down in the most familiar way the core of this Bills team knows. That's four crushing playoff losses to the same team, ending the Bills' 2020 (AFC Championship Game), 2021 (Divisional Round), 2023 (Divisional Round) and now 2024 seasons. It's hard not to ask the same old questions when the losses come to the same old team.
"Man, after a loss like that, sometimes it's if we could have did this, if we could have did that, if we could have did this, maybe the outcome would have been different," Bills pass rusher Von Miller told ąú˛úÍâÁ÷ÍřNetwork's Cameron Wolfe.
"But we did everything in our power to win this game. It just wasn't for us. Losses hurt. It's supposed to hurt. Adversity like this reveals character. We've got high-character guys in this whole organization, and we'll be back."
McDermott also briefly turned his gaze toward the future while also giving credit to this year's Bills team for how hard it fought.
"We've got to keep working to get over that hump," McDermott said. "We've won a lot of tough games this year against really good opponents, (we have) good coaches and I'm proud of this football team for it."
But good enough to beat the Chiefs? The Bills' mission remains the same.
"This is obviously a challenge for us," McDermott said. "We'll figure it out."
