Entering Week 14, the Buffalo Bills are fighting for their playoff lives after a dismal start to the season. The fact that the squad must travel to Arrowhead Stadium in order to play the Kansas City Chiefs also doesn’t help.
But there’s some bittersweet news: this crew has experience here. Obviously not the exact roster. It includes a sizable portion of not only players but also team captains and veterans, or in other words, most of the squad’s most crucial players. That’s hardly the best experience in the world, either, as it indicates that the Bills have struggled and underperformed in the past, especially late in the season.
However, they have also demonstrated their ability to overcome large deficits, most notably in 2021 when they overcame a 7-6 start to win four games in a row and advance to the postseason against the New England Patriots.
And the Bills accomplished more than just win those games. They outscored their opponents by an average of fifteen points per game, dominating them. They destroyed the Patriots 47–17 in the playoffs, and ever then, that team hasn’t been the same.
Consequently, it’s safe to assume that the Bills have the ability to win big when everything is on the line. and heaving a powerful stroke.
“You take each game as it comes, but you have to rely on Micah Hyde and Jordan Powell as this team’s leaders.” Josh Allen told reporters on Wednesday, “You rely on guys who have been in these situations before, like Mitch Morse and Stefon Diggs.” We don’t want to find ourselves in circumstances like these all the time, so it’s not like this is something completely new to us.
However, we believe that we have experienced this before, and it has resulted in some of our best games. Thus, there are still a lot of games and a lot of time left, but it all begins on Sunday.”
For the Bills, the Chiefs game serves as both an anchor and a springboard for the remainder of the season.
Only when it comes to the attacking end of the ball are the Chiefs not who they usually are. Regardless of how the offense is performing at any given moment, they have an outstanding defense that will keep them in every game.
Beyond that, though, another loss in the AFC would virtually end the Bills’ chances of making the playoffs. They presently behind the top eight AFC teams by at least two games and even three games behind a team like the Jacksonville Jaguars, who defeated the Bills in a head-to-head match earlier in the season. As it stands, they are 3-5 in conference games.
The Bills would be all but done when they faced the Dallas Cowboys in Week 15 and were 3-6 in the league. Given that their final three games are against AFC teams, they would still have a shot, but they would require a miracle to advance to the postseason.
But they’re not there yet. While there are still many reasons to be optimistic, there also needs to be a grave sense of urgency in One Bills Drive.
“I wouldn’t say it’s hard to believe, [but] it’s hard to win this league,” Allen stated. “I am aware of that, for sure. Although I haven’t played in this league for very long, I think I understand it well enough to know that it’s difficult to win this league consistently. Any given week, if you’re not at your best, you could lose or succeed. We must thus play each game as it comes and just keep going forward and standing by one other.
And we will act in that manner.”
Though it’s reasonable to argue that the Bills lost that game due to a few unrelated factors, they still put up a strong fight against the Philadelphia Eagles. This is not a squad that will give up, and they have the necessary players in place to ensure that it doesn’t happen anytime soon.
“I think so,” Allen said when asked if the tumultuous season could bring the team together. “I think that the guys that we have in this locker room, obviously, we’ve been brought here for a reason… We can embody that type of mentality and I think that’s something we’ve done in the past and, you know, maybe that’s what we need.”
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