The Buffalo Bills have a long history of painful playoff losses beginning with the ‘Wide Right’ in the 1991 Super Bowl which triggered a losing spree of four straight big games. After Sunday’s loss against the Kansas City Chiefs, they can add Josh Allen’s QB sneak, which was ruled short on fourth down, to the list of pain. Bills Mafia has been fuming online over the controversial call since then. But Colin Cowherd believes the AFC Championship game loss was brought about by other, more pressing factors.
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Many believe Allen got the first down. Cowherd concurred too. But he also contended that the Bills had enough time — 13 minutes on the clock — to make a comeback.
“I did think the Bills got a first down,” he stated on The Colin Cowherd Podcast. “But there were 13 minutes left and I don’t care.”
Colin went on to describe how fans go after the refs, tending to miss the larger picture that their side’s performance was questionable too.
“When people used to complain about Jordan getting all the calls, or the Warriors, I would always say this, ‘How many turnovers did you have and how many free throws did you miss?’ If the answer combined is 20, I don’t care about that ‘Go either way’ call in the fourth quarter. Like, you had 11 turnovers and missed nine free throws- I’m not going to listen to you,” added Cowherd.
Essentially, Cowherd was outlining that Buffalo had other opportunities to win the game and that the Bills should look inward rather than keep complaining about one controversial call. The analyst went on to describe how Buffalo fumbled the ball quite a few times in the game. They did, however, recover them. Had the Chiefs’ defense recovered one of those fumbles, the game would have been over much earlier.
“I thought Buffalo was incredibly lucky. They fumbled four times and recovered all of them, I’ve never heard of that in a playoff game in my life,” asserted Cowherd.
Colin’s co-host, Nick Wright, added the detail that there were five fumbles in the game. One from Patrick Mahomes too, who fumbled a handoff. The Bills recovered all their four fumbles in the first half. Wright added that as far back as he remembers, Buffalo was the first team to manage that and then go on to lose.
Turnovers often end up being the decider in playoff games. But the Bills managed to recover the ball all four times they put it on the turf. Allen also got away with back-to-back dropped interceptions on his first drive of the game.
The loss was a result of an overall sloppy performance by the Bills.
Andy Reid on the controversy
Kansas City head coach Andy Reid addressed the media about the controversial call after the game. Interestingly, he gave ‘luck’ a lot of credit, as it was a close affair. He believes that if things had changed by just “inches,” the Bills would be going to the Super Bowl instead.
“Literally a game of inches. We were lucky to be on that side of it, where we had the most inches. This came right down to an inch, literally. That’s what the stop was. It was back and forth. It was going to be back and forth… Whoever had the ball last was probably going to come out in the lead and [with] the win. But I’m proud of our guys battling,” said Reid.
This all but proves Cowherd’s point that even without the controversial call, if the Bills had figured out a way to get the ball back in the closing moments, they could’ve won. After all, it was only a three-point game, and the two sides have seen their fair share of crazy finishes against each other in the playoffs.
Mahomes and Reid are so good at capitalizing on mistakes. And the Bills made the mistake of turning the ball over on downs twice in the fourth quarter against the three-time defending champs.
As Allen said after the game, to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. You can’t leave calls up to the refs. You have to leave no doubt to trounce Goliath.
The Bills had two opportunities to stop the Chiefs on their final drive that ended the game. They failed both times. While the QB sneak may be the most talked-about call from the game, other aspects, like the one just mentioned, haven’t been discussed as much.
This shows, like Cowherd insisted, that there’s more to unpack from this game than just the bad calls.
