With Buffalo losing on Sunday, the entire AFC East has been eliminated from playoff contention.
The phrase “wide right” are ingrained in Buffalo Bills history since an infamous field goal kick in the final seconds of Super Bowl XXV. On Sunday, the team and its fans had to revisit those two words while suffering even more playoff heartbreak.
Down 27-24 to the visiting Kansas City Chiefs, the Bills were in do-or-die mode late in their divisional playoff game. Quarterback Josh Allen did manage to drive the team all the way to the Kansas City 26-yard line, but a pair of incompletions forced the club into a 4th-and-9 and to settle for a game-tying field goal.
From 44 yards out, the attempt was not a chip shot, particularly in a stadium like Buffalo’s. However, fourth-year kicker Tyler Bass had made 86.4 percent of his kicks inside that distance on the year.
This one, however, he did not make. Wide right, again.
And thus, another Bills season ends in disappointment. While the team did manage to go 11-6 to win its fourth straight AFC East title, its playoff exploits once again fell short of expectation. For a third year in a row, Buffalo failed to advance past the divisional round.
In total, the team has now dropped to 5-6 in the postseason under head coach Sean McDermott. The furthest the McDermott-led Bills have advanced in the tournament was the 2020 AFC Championship Game.
That game saw Buffalo lose to the Chiefs; something that also happened in the 2021 and 2023 divisional playoffs. But while those first games both took place in Kansas City, this one saw the Bills play at home.
It still did not matter.
“I’m extremely disappointed,” McDermott said after the game. “To come out and to not perform the way I’d hoped we would have, it’s extremely disappointing and frustrating. And it’s the type of situation in our business where you got to spend the whole offseason thinking about it.”
With Buffalo eliminated from the playoffs, and the Miami Dolphins already dropped on wild card weekend, the AFC East does no longer have a horse in the race for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The last time the division conquered the league was in 2018, when the New England Patriots earned their sixth and most recent championship.
The title games in the AFC and NFC, meanwhile, will see the Baltimore Ravens host the Chiefs, and the San Francisco 49ers host the Detroit Lions.
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