Bills Claim to be Over Heartbreaking Playoff Loss, but Will Have to Prove it on Field
We'll probably have to wait until someone writes a book or some such to find out what really happened in the final 13 seconds of regulation last January in a playoff game the Buffalo Bills would lose to the Kansas City Chiefs in overtime.
All anyone outside One Bills Drive knows is that Buffalo deployed the absolute wrong defensive alignment and coverage scheme to keep the Chiefs from going 44 yards on two plays to set up a game-tying field goal as time expired.
Maybe coach Sean McDermott and defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier didn't want Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce to get free releases from the line on back-to-back plays, and maybe the Bills' ultra savvy defensive backs were just momentarily confused.
Or maybe the players were attempting to do what was called. And if that was the case, who gave the orders? Frazier or McDermott?
McDermott has been cryptic about the details at every turn.
At the NFL Meetings last month, he said: "I know people want to know more, and I understand that. The fans want to know more. My job is to get our team ready to win the next game. And that next game is this coming season.
"I've addressed what I did after the game in the way I did it, which I felt like in a professional manner and how I do business in terms of, you know, not going into great detail and things like that, and I just think that taking the high road is the right approach and getting our team ready to win the next game."
All McDermott said about it Wednesday, a day after the start of their voluntary offseason program, was that "I think that's life when you go through some adversity and you've got to face it head on and you've got to learn from it. And we've been doing that. We've researched and we're going to continue to research, but at some point you've got to move forward, and we've turned the page and it's now the 2022 season and this version of the Buffalo Bills."
Which begs the question: Can this version of the Buffalo Bills truly turn the page after such an egregious malfunction?
The good news for Bills fans is that their most valuable player, quarterback Josh Allen, seems to agree with McDermott's contention that they already have.
"Everybody wants to talk about that," Allen said. "It is what it is it. It happened, there's there's no going back. It was three months ago, might as well been 10 years ago, you know so we've completely turned our focus towards this next season and trying to figure out how do we take that next step, how do we win that Super Bowl? And again, every team's goal is to win the Super Bowl every single year.
"You know, it's 31 teams that are going to be unhappy at the end of the season. So we've got to find a way to get to it and win it."
Von Miller offered a necessary perspective as well when asked if he felt any sense of a "hangover" among his new teammates.
"I mean, we talk about hangovers, I've been in Denver. We didn't go to the playoffs for six years. We don't have a hangover here. We just lost one game. That's how football is. I was watching the game on the plane, and, you know, things like that happen. You know games don't happen like that two times in a row, for sure. And I know the Buffalo fan base and Bill's Mafia and everybody wants that game back and everybody's thinking about that game this offseason. But I'm here to tell you, We've just got to let that stuff go. We've got a great team. You know, we're building a lot of stuff. Coach McDermott, you know, he showed us a great slot, you know, yesterday to get us pumped. Up for you notice this coming up offseason and you know is we ready to go we got players this is this is one of the most talented teams I've ever been. And I'm talking about I'm not even talking about the stars I'm talking about like the bass fundamental players like we got guys we got we got guys. We're gonna be ready to go play in the AFC East. I'm excited you know some games like that you should use them for motivation but you got to be able to let them go and push past that, you know, this this AFC East Division, they've gotten better. The whole AFC, the whole AFC has gotten better as well. We can't be caught up on you know, Kansas City. We just got to keep it going. Keep taking it one step at a time.
What he didn't even talk about was going through similar traumas with the Broncos before earning his first ring in the 2015 season.
In the 2012 postseason, they suffered a brutal overtime loss at home after Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco tossed a 70-yard touchdown bomb to Jacoby Jones with less than a minute remaining in regulation. Then Peyton Manning was intercepted in overtime to set up the game-winning field goal.
The following season, the Broncos advanced to the Super Bowl but were blown out by the underdog Seattle Seahawks.
Yet two years later, they were back in the Super Bowl and beat the favored Carolina Panthers for the Super Bowl.
McDermott and Bills general manager Brandon Beane remember that one well. They were with the Panthers then.
Point is, brutal playoff losses don't necessarily shut windows for good, though, though the Bills better not lose again in the playoffs like they did last January.
Because then the coaching staff might not even get another chance to recover."
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Nick Fierro is the publisher of Bills Central. Check out the latest Bills news at www.si.com/nfl/bills and follow Fierro on Twitter at @NickFierro. Email to Nicky300@aol.com.
