As the Chiefs were in the process of getting themselves knocked out of the NFL playoffs a few hundred miles west, we had reached a kind of dead end with the Bills, a team that has a clearance in the AFC the size of the Grand Canyon but had not behaved in kind (at least to that point). With the Bills down by as much as 21 against the Patriots in New England, a real question about which team may stumble into the Super Bowl out of the conference that may not see Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes or Joe Burrow in the field this January was starting to disturb like expiring milk left out in the open too long.
What happened in the second half—outside of being the largest comeback in the history of Gillette Stadium—was nothing short of stunning.
- A six-play, 44-yard touchdown drive.
- An 11-play, 70-yard touchdown drive.
- A 13-play, 91-yard touchdown drive.
- A seven-play, 65-yard touchdown drive that answered what could have been a gutting 65-yard touchdown run by TreVeyon Henderson.
To say this was Buffalo’s awakening to a Super Bowl destiny may even be putting it lightly. While it’s hard to describe, Buffalo’s sheer unflinching nature after a first half in which it was absolutely hammered on the road against the division leader—in a hostile, wintry setting, facing a quarterback who, in every way, resembles a younger version of its own—was the perfect depiction of a team with the foundation to weather anything it may face in the playoffs.
There were a few beneficial second-half calls—a pass interference on Christian Gonzalez that was questionable at best and offensive at worst, and a series of tie-goes-to-the-receiver pass interference calls that helped Buffalo on both offense and defense—that tipped the scales in favor of a Bills comeback, though nothing rising to the level of conspiracy-inducing. In short: This is not a game where we would start the conversation anywhere other than Buffalo looking inward and finding, like Pinocchio, all the necessary components of a “real” team.
Buffalo came out of halftime trailing 24–7 and ran the ball five consecutive times (though one was a designed Allen run and another was an Allen scramble). On the drive after Henderson’s touchdown run, the Bills did not revert to Allen hero ball, which has been a kind of default setting for this team that, on some level, masks an outward display of panic. Teams with a quarterback this good can have the tendency to break away from a balanced set of play calls.
While we shouldn’t go so far as to say that the Bills have found a system, or an offense, they have found a soul, be it Joey Bosa swatting a critical fourth-down pass or Matt Milano breaking a running back and offensive lineman double team to sack Drake Maye with one arm. This is one of the best second-half offenses and defenses in the NFL and, while that felt like nothing but a comical sidenote to a season full of these ridiculous and frantic comebacks before Sunday, it clicked in a way that felt sustainable. An identity, almost.
If the playoffs started tomorrow, the Bills would be favored to reach the Super Bowl despite being the No. 6 seed. The objects in their path are: a resilient but ultimately flawed Chargers team; a molasses-slow Steelers team that, almost like the antithesis of Buffalo, fails to attend the second half of most of its games; a Jaguars team that is improving, but cannot shake the Jekyll and Hyde performance schedule of its quarterback; a Patriots team that Buffalo has exposed in a few meaningful ways; and the Broncos, another team that leans heavily on one side of the ball to mask deficiencies.
While all those entities are threatening to some degree, none of them, when at full strength, equal what we saw from Buffalo at the height of Bills-Patriots. And, while nebulous, isn’t that often the best way of forecasting which team will make it to the season finale?
A Bills Super Bowl in their final season at this run-down, Grandma’s-house-looking stadium, with Josh Allen’s first child en route, 25 years after the first of the franchise’s four consecutive Super Bowl appearances (and losses) all felt poetic over the course of this season, in theory. Now it feels possible. That’s way more exciting.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Bills’ Comeback Win Over the Patriots Gave Them More Than Just Super Bowl Hopes.