KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dating to the NFL’s 2020 season alone, the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs have met eight times, building such an intense, competitive rivalry in the first half of this decade that Chiefs safety Justin Reid admitted he and his teammates just assume they’ll see Buffalo twice a football year.
Once in the regular season and once in the playoffs.
So the Chiefs begin their preparation in the offseason, studying everything the Bills do on offense and defense with their eyes on January. And it must be paying off, because while the Bills have won four of five matchups in the regular season — including handing the Chiefs one of their two losses this season — Kansas City has won all three games played in the postseason.
The top-seeded Chiefs (16-2) will try to do it again Sunday night at their own Arrowhead Stadium as they pursue an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl championship, while the second-seeded Bills (15-4) will try to end what is fast becoming a postseason curse by finally beating Kansas City for the AFC championship.
“You always remember the feeling of not pulling through. That sticks with you for a while, and it really doesn’t leave,” said Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen, still seeking his first Super Bowl appearance in his seventh pro season despite having missed the playoffs only as a rookie.
“But again, I think every year you go through in this league, you learn more things about yourself, about your team, about the game of football. We’re just grateful and humbled to have another opportunity at it.”
It’s hardly surprising the Bills and Chiefs have met so often, or that they are meeting again, when you consider the collective star power. Allen could be headed to his first NFL MVP award this season, while Kansas City counterpart Patrick Mahomes already has two.
The Bills have running back James Cook and receiver Amari Cooper on offense, along with edge rushers Von Miller and Gregory Rousseau on defense, while the Chiefs will have receiver DeAndre Hopkins, tight end Travis Kelce, defensive tackle Chris Jones and cornerback Trent McDuffie on the field for Sunday’s 6:30 p.m. Eastern matchup on CBS.
(And the home team will almost certainly have Taylor Swift — Kelce’s girlfriend — cheering them on in a luxury suite, too.)
Talk about star power.
“I don’t think anyone is making this too big of a moment,” said Mahomes, the eighth-year pro and three-time Super Bowl MVP who is 4-2 in AFC title games, with both of the losses coming in overtime. “Everybody knows how big it is, but at the same time, we have to go about our process.”
After all, why mess with success?
AP photo by Jeffrey T. Barnes / Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, right, slips past Kansas City Chiefs safety Bryan Cook to score on a 26-yard run during an NFL regular-season game on Nov. 17 in Orchard Park, N.Y.As for the Bills, who have not made it back to the Super Bowl since losing to the Dallas Cowboys in their fourth straight appearance in the big game to cap the 1993 season, all of those playoff losses to Kansas City over the years have come in heartbreaking fashion.
They put up the first nine points of the AFC title game in January 2021 before getting outscored 38-15 the rest of the way at Arrowhead. Back there in the divisional round the next year, they took the lead on a touchdown with 13 seconds left, only to watch Mahomes lead the Chiefs to a tying field goal as time expired, then beat them with a touchdown in overtime. And in the divisional round a year ago, Isiah Pacheco’s short touchdown run with 40 seconds left lifted the Chiefs to a 24-20 victory at Buffalo.
“It feels like a divisional game. We know them really well, they know us,” Reid, the Kansas City safety, said of the nine-time reigning AFC West champions playing the Bills, who have won five straight AFC East crowns.
“In the offseason we’re preparing for each other because we know we’ll face each other twice, because it seems to happen every year. And it’s always a tough challenge, but it’s one we’re excited for, and another good one for all the fans.”
The Bills are 0-4 on the road in the playoffs under eighth-year head coach Sean McDermott, and they’ve dropped seven straight since a 29-10 victory against the Miami Dolphins in the AFC championship game for the 1992 season. Two of their losses have come in overtime: a 22-19 loss to the Houston Texans in the 2019 season’s wild-card round and that 42-36 loss at Kansas City in the 2021 season’s divisional round. There’s also the “Music City Miracle,” their 22-16 loss to the Tennessee Titans in the 1999 season’s wild-card round that was decided on a kickoff return in the final seconds in Nashville.
There are, to be sure, positive signs for this bunch of Bills no matter where they’re playing.
For one, Buffalo converted 16 of 22 times when going for it on fourth in the regular season for a 72.7% success rate that was second in the NFL. It’s a big improvement from McDermott’s first season, when the Bills were 2-for-15.
“You grow through the years. You learn things. You learn about a bunch about your team for that season,” McDermott said. “So all are a little bit different. But you continue to try to put your team in position to win. And that’s what we do.”
Another plus? Turnover margin.
The Bills had a league-best plus-24 differential in the regular season, and they’re plus-3 in two playoff games. The Chief were merely plus-6 in the regular season, but they’re plus-11 and have not lost a turnover since their 30-21 loss to the Bills on Nov. 17.
“Every team that’s won ball security, won the turnover battle, has won the game so far,” Mahomes said in regard to this year’s NFL playoffs. “That is important to us. Buffalo does a great job it. I don’t think they’ve lost a turnover battle this season.”
Finally, while the Chiefs had eight sacks against the Texans last weekend, the second most in a playoff game in franchise history, getting Allen to the ground is a tough task. The 6-foot-5, 237-pounder was sacked 17 times in the regular season, and Kansas City failed to do it at all.
“Once you have a hold of him,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said, “you’d better know he’s going to be difficult to bring down.”