It's been nearly a week since the Kansas City Chiefs knocked the Buffalo Bills out of the playoffs, ending their season and heading to New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX as a reward for winning. Even with the game taking place last Sunday, Bills head coach Sean McDermott is still complaining and is turning to the same tired narrative as the media, which is that the refs helped K.C. win.
McDermott held his official end-of-season press conference on Thursday and spoke about how he and the Bills knew the refs wouldn't be on their side. He warned them of that as the team prepared to take on the back-to-back defending Super Bowl champions.
“We went into the game and one of my messages to the team, and this happens from time to time, is you’re going to have to — ,” McDermott said. “We’re not going to get calls. And I think just when you prepare a team, you prepare them ahead of time, mentally, for this is the way it’s going down. And you live with that. That’s not the reason why we lost. You start looking at that, you lose sight of all the things, all the adjustments you can make as a team, or as a person, coach, player, what have you to improve who we are and how we do things. So, there’s going to be some of that, and you have to be able to be above that and play above that.”
Sean McDermott told the Bills "We're not going to get calls."
This narrative is exhausting. Fortunately, McDermott did admit that the refs weren't the reason he team lost but some have clearly forgotten that the Bills had the ball with three and a half minutes remaining and a chance to either tie or win the game in regulation. Sure, some of the calls did skew in Kansas City's favor but games aren't won or lost by one play.
What this ultimately comes down to is that Buffalo had the ball with 3:33 to go and couldn't get the job done. If you had told a Bills fan that exact scenario would happen, they'd gladly take it because they'd assume that Josh Allen and that explosive offense would be able to execute and guess what? They didn't! Who's fault is that?
If the refs were truly favoring the Chiefs, then why would the Bills have even been in that position to begin with? Why not prevent them from getting the ball back at all in that game? I get that people are tired of the Chiefs being in the Super Bowl but instead of blaming the refs, a team needs to focus on beating them rather than harping on the calls they're apparently not going to get. Crazy thought, huh?
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