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Alaina Getzenberg, ESPN
ORCHARD PARK, NY — It was one of the Buffalo Bills’ newest players who best summed up playing alongside quarterback Josh Allen and the enormity of his scoring game that ultimately sealed the team’s 31-20 victory over Kansas City. Chiefs.
“Josh Allen’s experience, at this magnitude, has been phenomenal,” wide receiver Amari Cooper said. “…He’s a great player. The old saying goes that great players make great plays in big situations, and that’s exactly what he did.”
The move was improbable at best. On fourth-and-2 from the Chiefs’ 26-yard line in a two-point play with less than three minutes remaining, the Bills offense stayed on the field. Allen elected to keep the ball after taking a step back and faking a pass to running back Ty Johnson, weaving and dodging a variety of defenders into the end zone, somehow without being tackled again and again, for which he ended up being the game. -winning touchdown.
Allen made that decision in part because the play wasn’t actually called because of the defensive look the Chiefs ended up with.
“I really had a play for man [coverage]” Allen said. “They could have checked it, but they looked like a pretty good guy. They went out to the area again, [I was] I just try to create and keep the work alive. “There was a crease and I just trusted my feet.”
After the score, the defense clinched the game on the next possession with an interception by middle linebacker Terrel Bernard. The Bills handed Kansas City its first loss of the season and improved to 9-2, the team’s best start since 1992. Since 2020, Allen and the Bills are 4-1 in the regular season against the Chiefs and 0 -3 in the postseason.
The run was the second-longest touchdown drive of Allen’s career, and according to NFL Next Gen Stats, the play had a 1.2% scoring rate when Allen scooped the ball for a run.
His teammates saw it a little differently.
“As soon as I saw him go over the line of scrimmage, I knew he was scoring,” tight end Dawson Knox said. “And even though there’s a linebacker, two DBs right in front of him, I’ve seen him hundreds of times in the biggest situations, he seems to do that all the time and it’s amazing to see.”
“They brought four, I was in a 3 out of 2 situation with [center] Connor [McGovern] and having an internal clock in your head where you start watching once everything is secure and when it took off it was like, holy cow,” left guard David Edwards said. “And that’s what makes him the best in the world. So seeing that was crazy. That’s why he’s the best.”
Cornerback Rasul Douglas has a rule of sitting when the offense is on the field in fourth-down situations, as if he’s already converted. However, as Allen’s work progressed, he began to rise “like an airplane,” standing up at the end.
“When I see him run and I see him say, ‘hu hu,’ he got the ball out like Shady McCoy,” Douglas said. “I said, ‘Okay, put it in a little bit,’ and then he scored. So, that’s Josh, man, he’s the best quarterback in the league right now.”
The decision to try it on fourth down was not an obvious one. If the Bills hadn’t gained yardage, the Chiefs would have gotten the ball back with plenty of time to go downfield and would have needed only one field goal to win. However, trying was a decision the Bills felt strongly about.
“I just felt like we planned for it during the week and I felt strongly that it was the right decision,” coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t want to be the result, so to speak, but I would have kept it if it hadn’t worked out. I just felt like there have been too many games, as you know, where Andy [Reid] and patrick [Mahomes] They’re back and you kick a field goal and they score a touchdown or it’s overtime just different games they’ve been in and they get the ball first and the game is so they’re too good not to do well. there.”
Allen finished the game completing 27 of 40 passes for 262 yards, one touchdown pass and one interception. He led the team with 12 carries for 55 yards and the score. According to Elias Sports Bureau, Allen is the first player in NFL history to throw a touchdown to 11 different players in 11 games in two different seasons (2020, 2024). This was also his 30th career game leading his team in both passing and rushing yards, the fourth most in NFL history.
The Bills won the game despite being without three offensive starters: tight end Dalton Kincaid, wide receiver Keon Coleman and right tackle Spencer Brown. The offense still scored 30-plus points (the first team to do so in the regular season against the Chiefs since Week 4 in 2022) for the fifth straight game (tied with 2021 for the second-longest streak in franchise history).
“The league has stars and [Allen’s] one of them, you know what I mean,” Cooper said. “He’s just a tremendous talent, a very skilled guy. Some guys are just made for playing ball and the position they play, and he’s definitely one of those guys. So, yeah, it’s been a lot of fun to watch. I have had a lot of joy since I have been here. “We won every game, so it’s been great.”
The win keeps the Bills in position to compete for the No. 1 seed in the AFC, as Buffalo is now just a half-game behind Kansas City with the team’s upcoming bye week, and then six games left.
It is recognized that while this was a big game, as defensive end Von Miller said despite a speech McDermott gave to the team saying otherwise, “This is a big game. That’s why we’re here…when bright lights come on, “Rise to the occasion”; it’s also just Week 11. As Mahomes was heard telling Allen after the game: “We’ll do it again, baby.”
“Given our history, we tend to play each other in the playoffs, so again, we’re not there yet,” Allen said after the game. “We’ll focus on that when we get there.”
