Buffalo Bills vs. Kansas City Chiefs: What makes this rivalry?
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (WHEC) – On Sunday, the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs will play a football game, with a trip to the AFC Championship Game on the line.
This will be their seventh meeting since Oct. 19, 2020. That’s the third-most times the Bills will have faced any single team this that point. Not even the Jets, an AFC foe Buffalo plays twice per year, have played them more.
“I think it’s a testament to, A, who they are as an organization and the success that they’ve been able to have and then sustain,” said Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott. Since making Mahomes the full time starter in 2018, the Chiefs have never had fewer than 11 losses in a regular season. This year, an 11-6 record, would be considered a ‘down year,’ by most NFL analysts. Kansas City might wear red, but they’re the gold standard of professional football.
While Kansas City’s two Super Bowl Championships speak volumes, perhaps no team in the NFL, and especially the AFC, has rivaled them better than the Buffalo Bills. The Bills and Chiefs are the only two teams in the league to have won at least 10 games in each of the last five seasons. The obvious reason? Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.
“He’s a fantastic player. His track record and his resume speaks for himself,” said Allen.
The feeling is mutual and carries over into the offseason, where Allen and Mahomes are known to golf with each other. Allen says they keep the conversations non-football related, but it must be tough, considering they are two faces of the NFL.
“It seems like they have a great amount of respect for each other on the field as well,” said McDermott.
It’s not a hot take to say that as long as Allen and Mahomes are playing for their respective teams, the Bills and Chiefs will continue to be Super Bowl contenders. But what really makes this rivalry keep on adding a page or two each year, is the way the franchises have built themselves.
“With where we’ve been able to get to, I think it’s starting to say a lot about who we are and what we’ve been able to achieve and then sustain,” said McDermott.
On Sunday, the Bills will look to achieve something they’ve yet to over in the Josh Allen era – beat Mahomes and the Chiefs in the playoffs.
For Mahomes, it’ll be his first ever road playoff game, which is crazy to think about considering this is his sixth consecutive trip to the postseason.
One of these quarterbacks will have a chance to write a pretty big chapter in this rivalry. But the good thing for Bills Mafia, Chiefs Kingdom, and NFL fans in general, is that this book is still in the prologue.