Buffalo Rumblings
What is the key to the game in the AFC Championship Game?
Welcome back to our weekend chat, Buffalo Bills fans. Head to the comments to share your thoughts.
We made it to the AFC Championship Game to face a familiar foe; the Kansas City Chiefs.
What is the key to beating the Cheifs in the playoffs? They’ve made seven straight AFC Championship Games (kudos, by the way), so how can Buffalo finally overcome this team? I’ll leave some options here but I want to hear from you in the comments.
As a new wrinkle this week, we are going to embed some of your comments in a post on Sunday previewing the keys to the game, so put your best foot forward!
Allen has taken a back seat for a large chunk of the year, choosing to check down the ball or audible into running plays. That’s great. We need that. When it’s time to put on the cape, we need Super Josh. They chose not to unleash it in the Divisional Round against the Ravens, but I find it hard to believe the Bills win this game with Allen throwing for 127 yards.
The Bills aren’t great at sacking the quarterback, but that hasn’t really been their M.O. all year or really ever under Sean McDermott. They want to affect the quarterback. They want to keep Patrick Mahomes in the pocket so he can’t extend plays and create angles, so he can’t run for a backbreaking first down. They brought extra folks against their tendency when they played the Ravens, so we shall see what they do this week. It’s time for Ed Oliver, Von Miller, and greg Rousseau to pay off the big investments and A.J. Epensa played a helluva game against Baltimore.
I have always been tough on Sean McDermott in high-impact spots specifically for this game. If you make those mistakes in the regular season, you’re going to need to learn from them so you don’t repeat them in the highest-impact moments. I maintain that the 13 seconds situation cost the Bills a Super Bowl win and it’s at Sean’s feet on the kickoff and the subsequent defensive series. We have kept seeing bad late-game decisions from McDermott — except late against the Chiefs where he didn’t turtle. We need that guy. Just make the right calls, Sean.
This Chiefs team doesn’t make mistakes. That’s how they’ve been able to win so many close games this year. I know the Bills also don’t make mistakes, so that just means that neither team is going to lose the game, someone is going to have to go win the damn thing and pry it from their opponent. I know this is the sort of thing people roll their eyes at like “Score more points than the other team.”...
