Josh Allen took the words right out of our mouths.
“It’s like a division game,” he told reporters earlier this week, referencing the familiar foe that awaits his Buffalo Bills in Sunday’s AFC Championship. “I feel like we’ve played them just as much as we’ve played the guys in our division, and with that comes familiarity.”
No pair of opponents drum up more excitement in the playoffs than the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs. Since 2020, none has more history, either — they’ve met eight times, including three playoff matchups. Each post-season encounter has brought a new chapter to the rivalry — an offensive onslaught for the Chiefs in the 2020 AFC Championship, 13 seconds of magic in the 2021 Divisional Round (and an overhaul of playoff overtime rules that followed), and a kick that skewed wide right at the end of last January’s Divisional bout. Unfortunately for the Bills, each chapter so far has ended in a loss for Buffalo.
Another win for the Chiefs, who are appearing in their seventh consecutive AFC Championship, keeps Kansas City’s three-peat dream alive. The back-to-back Super Bowl champs can do something no other NFL team has ever accomplished — they just have to get past the Bills first.
Buffalo, meanwhile, has a chance to finally overcome the biggest obstacle that’s stood between the Bills and the Super Bowl stage — and they know all too well the challenge ahead.
“New wrinkles, here and there, throughout the game,” Allen told reporters. “But they know who we are, we know who they are. And it literally just comes down to who executes well on Sunday.”
Despite a 4-1 record against Kansas City in the regular season, Allen and the Bills have yet to claim a playoff victory over the Chiefs. Will this year be different? As we look ahead to Sunday’s showdown with a Super Bowl berth on the line, here’s what we’re watching for between the Chiefs and the Bills… again.
Will Mahomes’ wide receivers show up? (Does it matter?)
After a relatively quiet regular season on the stat sheet, Travis Kelce reminded us last Saturday that he is, in fact, still one of the best in the game.
As if we needed reminding.
Kelce was, once again, Patrick Mahomes’ favourite and most reliable target in the Chiefs’ 23-14 Divisional Round victory over the Houston Texans, catching seven of eight targets for 117 yards and a touchdown — the 20th playoff TD of his career, just two scores shy of matching Jerry Rice’s all-time post-season tally.
Kelce did it all last Saturday, from run-blocking to catching short-gain passes to breaking the game wide open with a phenomenal run after the catch that saw a short toss up the middle converted into a 49-yard gain.
The rest of the Chiefs’ pass-catchers, meanwhile, did very little. Between Kelce and Noah Gray (three catches for 13 yards), tight ends accounted for 10 of Mahomes’ 16 completed passes on the day, with rookie Xavier Worthy the only wide receiver to catch a pass. (The rookie caught five of six targets for 45 yards.) Running back Kareem Hunt was the only other player to catch a pass from Mahomes on Saturday, leaving Hollywood Brown, DeAndre Hopkins, and JuJu Smith-Schuster without a single reception. (Brown was targeted twice; his WR teammates just once each.)
The state of Kansas City’s wide receiver room has been a major talking point all season long. Injuries hit early and often — Rashee Rice’s season ended in Week 4, off-season acquisition Hollywood Brown only made his Chiefs debut in December after spending most of the year on injured reserve, and Mecole Hardman’s been out since Week 12. And while trade deadline target DeAndre Hopkins made a big splash early in his Chiefs tenure, indicating that maybe the Chiefs had finally addressed the shortage, the veteran has caught just two TDs in nine games since and didn’t have a single catch against his old squad on Saturday.
Worthy’s rise has been promising — the rookie had his best games in December, and clearly, Mahomes trusted him enough last weekend to target him several times — but the lack of production from the rest of the WR group is cause for concern. While this Chiefs offence relies more heavily on its run game and less on big-gain explosive plays, Mahomes will need more output from more weapons if Kansas City is to keep its hopes of a three-peat alive.
Can Buffalo’s run game keep cashing in?
Buffalo just ousted the No. 1 running team in the league last Sunday, but truthfully there haven’t been many teams more successful on foot than the Bills — and Josh Allen is a big reason why.
Allen finished the regular season second, behind only Jalen Hurts, in rushing touchdowns among quarterbacks, with 12. That saw him tied for the fifth-highest total among all players, regardless of position. Allen’s ability to scamper and score has always been a big part of his game, but what makes his dual-threat game all the more threatening this year, of course, is the man sitting atop that rushing touchdown leaderboard — that’s running back James Cook, who finished the 2024 campaign tied with Detroit’s Jahmyr Gibbs and Baltimore’s Derrick Henry for most rushing touchdowns (16). No team ran in more scores than Buffalo this regular season — their 32 rushing TDs accounted for just over half of their 62 offensive scores (including three defensive TDs, the Bills tallied a total of 65 TDs — five shy of Detroit’s league-high total).
Offensive coordinator Joe Brady turned up the volume on the Bills’ rushing attack when he took over the job last season, and the increased reliance on the run has resulted in not only a much more dynamic attack overall but a cleaner one, too. Allen can do it all, as we know, but having a reliable ball-carrier in Cook means he doesn’t always need to. Instead, as we saw last Sunday against Baltimore, he’s picking his spots and cashing in, focusing on ball security and opting for the safer play over the high-risk one. Of course, he’s still as dynamic as ever — the Chiefs know that all too well. His 26-yard dash to the end zone with just over two minutes remaining in regulation against Kansas City during Week 11 remains one of the top highlights of 2024.
The Bills’ path to the AFC Championship took them through the NFL’s top two run defences in the Broncos and Ravens, and both games saw them run with success. Four of Buffalo’s six playoff touchdowns have been scored on the run — including two from Allen against the Ravens last week. Against the Chiefs, who allowed 149 rushing yards against Houston last Saturday, and against whom the possession battle will be crucial, the Bills are expected to implement the run game with regularity.
Matchup to watch: Bills’ receivers vs. Chiefs’ secondary
Hand-in-hand with the success of Buffalo’s run game is the strength of its passing attack — and there’s no shortage of intrigue when it comes to how Allen & Co. will navigate the elite secondary that is this Chiefs unit.
While the Chiefs’ pass rush shone against the Texans last weekend, exploiting Houston’s weak offensive line and getting to C.J. Stroud a whopping eight times, it’s not expected to have as much success this Sunday against Buffalo. The Bills’ offensive line has been excellent all season — Allen was the league’s least-sacked starter in the regular season and has been sacked three times so far in two playoff games — and should give Kansas City’s front four, led by Chris Jones, George Karlaftis, a challenge.
The Bills’ receiving corps, too, presents an interesting challenge for this Chiefs secondary, led by cornerback Trent McDuffie and safety Justin Reid. In reality, Buffalo’s passing attack has presented an interesting challenge for everyone — so diverse is this group of pass-catchers, which for much of the campaign didn’t boast a true No. 1 weapon, and so good is Allen at targeting up and down the depth chart, it’s a puzzle for every defence to figure out (to varying degrees of success).
Against the Denver Broncos on Wild Card Weekend, Curtis Samuel was the big-gain target. Against Baltimore last weekend, it was Khalil Shakir, the club’s regular-season yards leader. Cook, too, is often used in the passing attack, and Allen’s been known to target tight ends Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox in clutch situations. Who gets top billing this time around? That’s one of the top questions for defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo to consider as he puzzles out how to deploy his championship defence.
