The Buffalo Bills beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-17 on a snowy night at Highmark Stadium Monday in the Wild Card round to open their postseason campaign.
This after a 5-0 run of the table by the Bills, capped off by defeating the Miami Dolphins in South Florida to end the regular season and claim their fourth straight AFC East crown and the No. 2 AFC playoff seed.
Buffalo needed a victory to advance back to the Division round and host AFC rival and past playoff nemesis, the Kansas City Chiefs next Sunday.
And they did just that.
A year after an unceremonious loss to the Cincinnati Bengals at home in the Divisional round, HC Sean McDermott and his team find themselves back on their home field with a shot at redemption and a chance to return to the AFC Championship game.
“That’s a heck of an opponent,” McDermott said about facing Kansas City. “We’ll have to regroup tomorrow as a staff and I know some of our staff has already been working on the Chiefs, and that’s kind of what you do as a position coach, you’re able to look ahead a little bit.”
Buffalo lost their two previous postseason meetings with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in contests where the Bills’ offense gave them leads late in games, only for their defense and special teams to struggle to get stops.
Bills QB Josh Allen knows all too well that they’ll need to compete in all three phases for them to have a chance for victory.
“It’s gonna take a team effort,” Allen said postgame via CBS. “They’re playing really good football right now. We know the type of team that they are and obviously the type of quarterback that they have in Pat over there. We’re gonna need everybody in Bills Mafia to be here and support us, and I’m just thanking God that we get another chance to play another game.”
For the second game in a row, the Bills were riddled with injuries and will await word on the status of certain players ahead of the division-round matchup.
“I hate to see guys go down on either side of the ball really, it’s one of the things I pray for before every game is making sure that both sides are safe from serious injury,” Allen said during his media session.
With this past weekend’s scheduled Sunday afternoon game being moved to Monday night due to weather, it leaves one less day of recovery for the Bills before their next game.
“I mean you guys have heard we got the 24-hour rule, but when it’s a short week it’s got to be even quicker than that,” TE Dawson Knox said about the Bills’ turnaround time. “That 24-hour window to kind of enjoy the win, it’s got to be a little shorter so you know we’ll be getting in the training room even tonight taking care of our bodies, we got some players banged up that we’ll need, so we’ll be turning the page pretty quick.”
A man of few words known as stoic by his teammates, RB James Cook who led the ground game with 79 yards rushing on Monday perhaps said it best when asked about the matchup with Kansas City.
“Two good game teams ready to come and play. May the best team win.”
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