KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There will come a point when we’ll look back on this Kansas City Chiefs dynasty and realize it was about more than a generational quarterback and a Hall of Fame coach. It was about what we saw in this year’s AFC Championship Game, when a team that already has claimed three Super Bowl wins in the past five years positioned itself to make history. This league has its share of great signal-callers and savvy coaches. What the Chiefs proved once again is that their best trait is delivering winning plays exactly when they’re needed the most.
There are many ways to look at what happened in Kansas City’s 32-29 victory over Buffalo on Sunday night. The simplest view is to understand the only thing that separated these two teams was a handful of plays. These squads were so evenly matched that Buffalo produced six more total yards (374 to 368), one fewer turnover (the Chiefs had the lone giveaway on a fumble by quarterback Patrick Mahomes) and 34 more seconds of possession time. The problem for Buffalo was Kansas City produced a few more plays that spun the game in a critical fashion.
Kansas City is heading into a matchup with Philadelphia in Super Bowl LIX because it was the team that came up with three crucial stops of Bills quarterback Josh Allen on short-yardage runs. It was Bills tight end Dalton Kincaid who couldn’t come down with a fourth-down throw by Allen with just under two minutes left in the game, after the Chiefs pressured Allen with a well-timed blitz. You can talk about other factors in the game if you want — and the Bills did take a huge hit when their top cornerback Christian Benford was lost to a concussion in the first quarter — but Buffalo still had its chances to win this game. It just came down to the Chiefs meeting the moment more consistently than the Bills could.
That is the lesson Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals learned in this game two years ago. It’s the same lesson Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens learned last season, when the Chiefs won the conference championship on the road. The Bills now get to spend an entire offseason pondering how they could be so close to realizing a dream, only to watch the Kansas City players partying and prancing around as the Chiefs hoisted the Lamar Hunt Trophy for the fifth time in seven years. You have to capitalize on the opportunities that come against the Chiefs because God knows that’s exactly what they’re going to do.
Think about the Kansas City defense. It gave up 147 rushing yards but rarely wilted in those short-yardage situations. Its most vital stop came at the Kansas City 41-yard line with 13:01 left in the game. Allen took the snap and squirmed behind his offensive line on a play that often leads to success. This time he ran into linebacker Nick Bolton and a mass of Chiefs defenders who refused to give him the yard he desperately needed in that situation.
“This game came down to an inch,” said Chiefs head coach Andy Reid after the game. “That’s what that stop was.”
