How Bills QB Josh Allen Addressed Controversial AFC Title Game Call
The Buffalo Bills met a déjà vu ending to their season Sunday night, and with the heartbreak came a dash of controversy.
Buffalo faced Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game. It marked the fourth Bills-Chiefs playoff clash in the past five years and granted quarterback Josh Allen a redemption shot after swinging and missing three times in three attempts versus Mahomes. And the fourth time didn’t do the trick either.
In the fourth quarter, Allen and the Bills boldly decided to try to convert on fourth-and-inches. With over 13 minutes left in the quarter, Buffalo went with the quarterback sneak, and even though the Bills tried to push Allen’s 6-foot-5 frame across for the first down, the play call failed.
The referees marked Allen short of a first-down conversion, which gave Kansas City the ball on its way to a 32-29 win over Buffalo.
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The Bills struggled throughout the game executing quarterback sneaks, something Allen gave credit to the Chiefs for snuffing out.
“They played it well,” Allen told reporters, per CBS Sports. “Put their big guys inside and the linebackers were coming in pretty hard and yeah. They played it well.”
It’s not easy to tell when looking at replays of Allen’s fourth-quarter quarterback sneak attempt, even in slow motion, if he made the line to gain, making it a controversial ruling from the league officials. Allen was stumped three times by the Chiefs on quarterback sneak tries, marking the most run stuffs by a defense against the sneak in the Next Gen Stats era, per the NFL.
The Bills have been due for a Super Bowl appearance for the past few years, but their collision with the Mahomes and the Chiefs dynasty halted those plans. Allen finished the night 22-of-34, throwing for 237 yards with two touchdowns and zero interceptions, and fought until the very end. But still, it wasn’t enough.
“It’s not fun,” Allen said. “But to beat the champs, you gotta be the champs and we didn’t do it tonight.”
Allen and the rest of Buffalo’s locker room will head into the offseason with their heads hanging in disappointment again, wrapping up another elite regular season (13-4) that wasn’t backed up when it mattered most.
Kanas City now advances to take on Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles for the second time in three years. Mahomes and the Chiefs are hunting to make history as the NFL’s first team to three-peat in the Super Bowl era (1966-present) as both teams will have two weeks to prepare before their Feb. 9 showdown in New Orleans.