How a Week 18 Win over the Jets Cost the Bills a Trip to the AFC Championship
After Sunday’s thrilling overtime game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, many NFL fans were wishing that a game so good had been the Super Bowl. While that couldn’t have been the case, it could’ve at least been the AFC Championship if a Week 18 game had gone differently.
With so few games in its regular season compared to other professional sports, every NFL game carries a lot of weight, and you could look at a lot of specific games and see how a win or a loss for each team has ripple effects for how the rest of the season plays out. So it’s important to note that this is a Week 18 matchup we’ll be looking at— we’re not looking at a random midseason game, switching it from a win to a loss and seeing how things will play out. By Week 18, NFL fans are deeply looking at playoff scenarios with how different games impact both who’ll make the playoffs and playoff seeding.
Entering Week 18, the Bills were the No. 4 seed, with a couple of different places they could end up. Most importantly for the Bills at this point was that they wanted to win the division over the New England Patriots. For that to happen they needed to either beat the Jets or have the Patriots lose on the road to the Miami Dolphins. Not resting starters makes sense for Buffalo here, as they’re trying to sure up at least one home playoff game.
The Miami game doesn’t go well for the Patriots from the start though. By the early second quarter the Pats are down three scores and when we enter the fourth quarter, they’re trailing 27-10. They ultimately make it somewhat closer late, but lose the game, a game in which they never led, 33-24.
The Bills game goes differently. While Buffalo is definitely the better team, the Jets battle and entering the fourth quarter the Bills only lead by three. The Bills score touchdowns on their first two drives of the quarter though, and the game ends with a lopsided score of 27-10. But if Buffalo had somehow lost this game, maybe if they had seen Miami cruising against the Pats and decided to pull some of their starters early, there’s a good chance they’d still be in the playoffs today.
If the Bills had lost, they would’ve finished with the No. 4 seed and played the Las Vegas Raiders Wild Card Weekend. Then, assuming a win (and they would’ve won against the Raiders), they’d have had a chance to avenge a 34-31 Week 6 loss to the Tennessee Titans. We’ll never know how that theoretical Divisional Round game would’ve gone, but I don’t see Derrick Henry running for three touchdowns against Buffalo again. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the Josh Allen we saw Sunday losing to a Ryan Tannehill-led Titans squad.
If you want to look at the opposite situation of Buffalo’s, look no further than the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals were the No. 3 seed entering Week 18. They’d already clinched the division (unlike the Bills), but could still climb to No. 2 if the Chiefs lost, or fall to No. 4. They opted to rest starters, including quarterback, Joe Burrow, and, as could be predicted, they lost to the Browns Week 18. Since the Bills won, the Bengals fell to No. 4. From here, the rest is history.
So, when you really delve into it, after it became clear the Patriots would probably lose to the Dolphins in their Week 18 game, what seemed like just a not super important, feel-good win for the Bills over the Jets had significant implications for the entire playoffs.
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Another culprit for the Bills loss that I want to touch on briefly is how their lack of success in close games really came back to haunt them. The Bills closest win this year was a 15-point victory over Miami. They won their games by an average of around 22 points. Meanwhile, five of their six loses came by less than a touchdown.
So how do you let the Chiefs drive down the field for a game tying field goal in only 13 seconds? You have coaches that stink in close games, that’s how. Or you could just somehow pull off a loss to the Jets and not even find yourself in that situation.