The Kansas City Chiefs vs. Buffalo Bills was highlighted as a potential game of the season coming into the NFL’s Divisional Round weekend given the star power involved, most importantly at the quarterback position. Everyone was right. It was the game of the year (so far).
Between Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, the league had high hopes for this Sunday night primetime showing, and the game more than lived up to the hype as two AFC contenders went blow for blow with each other until the Chiefs came out on top in a 42-36 victory.
With the win, the Chiefs now move on to play the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship game and the chance to represent the conference in Super Bowl LVI against either the Los Angeles Rams or the San Francisco 49ers.
While there’s a lot of analysis to come, we’ve got a few quick thoughts from a game that will have everyone talking for quite some time.
A true rivalry at work
The Buffalo Bills had already signaled this was going to be a rivalry for the foreseeable future earlier this season when they came into Arrowhead and shocked Chiefs Kingdom with a lopsided win that only furthered the misery experienced early on by Kansas City to start the season. At the time, the bulk of attention was on the Chiefs’ overall inability to win against a contender, but looking back, it’s easier to isolate that game as a statement against the Chiefs.
On Sunday night, the Bills proved once again clearly a talented team that was ready to compete with a raucous home crowd. The Chiefs, however, stood tall as well and each team was able to match blow for most of the game. For all the hype before the game, it was the rare matchup that lived up to the billing and gave the NFL a riveting matchup to end the Divisional Round.
With so many lead changes in the final minutes of the game, it’s still hard to come to terms with the way the game ended. The sting will be tough for the Bills for the foreseeable future but they should feel very good about their window of opportunity in front of them.
The AFC has a lot of bright young talent at the quarterback position, and Joe Burrow is waiting to show what he can do in the AFC Championship game as well, but the crème de la crème in the conference will be found in these matchups year after year.
Patrick Mahomes can do it all
The Bills were already well-acquainted with the running ability of Patrick Mahomes, but for the casual fan, it’s an overlooked part of his game. From the outset of the contest against the Bills, Mahomes made sure to remind viewers that he’s certainly capable of moving the chains with his legs as well as his arm when necessary.
Mahomes put up a regular-season high of 61 yards on the ground against the Bills back in Week 5 and he opened the game with 49 more of them and a rushing touchdown on the Chiefs’ opening drive to tie the score at 7-7. He finished the game with 69 rushing yards on 7 carries and reminded us all of his incredible instincts, pocket presence, and vision that can work magic with his legs, too.
Of course, it didn’t end there. Mahomes was a beast all day through the air, too. He moved the ball long enough to get into field goal range with only 13 seconds left from his own 25-yard line. Overall, threw for another 3 scores and had 378 passing yards with a 123.1 passer rating to go with several memorable throws. It’s all part and parcel of being the best quarterback in the game.
The secondary was woefully thin
The single play that best illustrates just how thin the Chiefs were in the secondary came with two minutes to go in the third quarter with the Chiefs up 23-14. It was then that Josh Allen decided to take a shot down the field and found Gabriel Davis streaking past the entire Chiefs defense and beyond a clearly beaten Charvarius Ward for a 75-yard gain, the biggest play of the game. It was a one-play drive and it showed just how vulnerable the Chiefs looked in the secondary.
The problem for the Chiefs is that they came into the game a bit thin with the news that Rashad Fenton was going to be inactive after suffering from a back injury all week long. Fenton did not practice on any day of the week and was designated as questionable. From there, he was left inactive which meant more time for the guys down the depth chart like Mike Hughes and Deandre Baker.
What made matters even worse was that Tyrann Mathieu left early in the first quarter on the opening drive of the game with a head injury that left him in the team’s concussion protocol. A trip to the locker room confirmed things and he was out of the game. For a hot second, even Ward was in the blue medical tent. The bottom line is that the Chiefs were down their best overall player in the secondary and the emotional leader while also being down a couple of talented players as it is.
The secondary is always going to give up yards against a guy as talented as Josh Allen but it’s even tougher when the injuries start to rack up.
Nick Bolton’s future is bright
Every draft pick, they say, is really about finding a contributor in his second season. While it’s nice for some rookies to be able to find ways to impact the game during their freshman seasons in the NFL, most picks are about laying a long-term foundation knowing their first year will require a learning curve.
When it comes to Nick Bolton, however, the Chiefs have gotten plenty from the rookie linebacker out of Missouri. The Chiefs drafted him in the second round to form a dynamic young tandem in the second level of the defense with Willie Gay Jr., and he looked like the eventual successor for Anthony Hitchens. While that might be true long-term, Bolton has been a tackling machine for the Chiefs all season playing in place of and alongside both Gay and Hitchens when injuries crept in.
Even after such a long season, Bolton is still flying into opposing backfields at an alarming rate and he came up huge against the Bills multiple times with that same instinctual excellence that gave him 112 tackles including 11 for a loss during the regular season. He finished the game with 8 total tackles and another 1 for a loss. He’s going to be very good for a long time in the heart of this Chiefs defense.
Second-tier options come up big
Everyone knows that wide receiver Tyreek Hill and tight end Travis Kelce are going to get theirs in a given game. It’s why both players are perennial Pro Bowlers and likely future Hall of Fame candidates in Canton when they’re ready to call it a career. But a big storyline on Sunday night was just how ready the Chiefs’ second-level skill position players on offense were able to step up and produce when called upon.
Running back Jerick McKinnon continued his strong postseason showing with another solid game working in tandem with Clyde Edwards-Helaire, who returned to play after missing three weeks. Mecole Hardman came up big on multiple plays, including the touchdown run on which he displayed both patience and top speed. Byron Pringle came up with multiple big catches to both keep drives going and gain six points. Tight end Noah Gray had small but important catches that moved the chains, too.
The Chiefs might not have gotten what they thought they would from a Josh Gordon signing, but in the absence of a Sammy Watkins-like receiver, the team has watched several other players lean into their roles and contribute when asked—even when the lights are as bright as they were on Sunday.
Tyreek Hill has no equal
When it comes to offensive weapons, there is no one who can equal the potential of Tyreek Hill on the field.
Hill has been a Pro Bowl performer in each of his first six seasons in the league, which puts him on par only behind A.J. Green in terms of the number of wide receivers who have done exactly that through six (Green was a Pro Bowler through seven). Yet even after setting franchise records, earning the Cheetah nickname, and turning heads on a regular basis, we’re still finding new reasons to marvel at what Tyreek can do.
In this particular game, it was the go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter in which he took a Patrick Mahomes pass for 64 yards to the end zone to give the Chiefs the lead (for a hot minute). Before that, it was a punt return that put the Chiefs in prime position in the red zone after Hill ran it back 45 yards.
On the day, Hill finished with the long return and put up 11 catches for 150 yards and 1 touchdown on offense. It was an exciting reminder that Hill has no peers when it comes to how dynamic he can be in all facets of the game.