Considering the Bills and Chiefs have had playoff encores of their regular-season meetings four of the last five seasons, no doubt the prospect seems inevitable again to many.
Certainly, the consoling notion surfaced quickly among the Chiefs after their 28-21 loss to Buffalo on Sunday at Highmark Stadium. Probably especially because they’ve won all four of those rematches, including the last three after losing in the regular season.
Heck, even rookie defensive back Nohl Williams was steeped enough in recent history to declare “we’re going to see them again” — a point veteran defensive lineman Chris Jones amplified by saying he was “quite sure” of it.
Just one pesky issue after this one, though:
“I mean,” Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said, “we’ve got to get there first.”
At the moment, in fact, the Chiefs are in the eighth position … for a seven-team bracket. Or as NFL.com’s official breakdown puts it, they’re among those “on the outside looking in if the season ended today.”
Now, with eight games left to go, that sounds more dire than it is. And at 5-4, the Chiefs have gotten there from this very spot before:
It’s the same record they had at this point in 2021, when they’d lost to the Bills a few weeks before. Presto, they still went on to win yet another AFC West crown and surge into the postseason to beat the Bills in the 13-second game before losing to the Bengals in the AFC Championship Game.
But every season is its own journey, and these Chiefs are facing some fundamentally different challenges on the path back to a playoff berth.
With the Broncos (7-2) two games ahead and the Chargers (6-3) a game up and having already beaten the Chiefs, it’s no foregone conclusion they’ll win their 10th straight AFC West title, the launchpad that’s served them so well.
Moreover, securing the AFC No. 1 seed and accompanying bye and home-field advantage will be a severe challenge.
But none of that matters as much as the most crucial points of all — just making the playoffs, sure, but finding a way to peak again then, too.
That’s been quite a habit for the Mahomes Era Chiefs, who through a variety of avenues have reached seven straight AFC Championship games, won five and gone on to win three Super Bowls.
For the last several weeks, the Chiefs appeared to have found themselves on both sides of the ball with top-10/top-5 caliber play all at once for the first time in years.
They’d won five of the last six, outscoring their opponents 89-24 in the last three games and seemed to have revived the mojo you could only doubt was still there after the Super Bowl drubbing and 0-2 start.
But then this:
With the Chiefs practically unable to bother Josh Allen at all, he completed 23 of 26 passes for 273 yards. No wonder Buffalo racked up 404 yards and more points in one game than the Chiefs had given up in the last three combined.
Meanwhile, beleaguered by the opposing rush for the first time in weeks, Mahomes completed just 15 of 34 passes — the first time in his career he connected on fewer than 50% of his passes.
While this one never was in their grasp, the Chiefs had the requisite moments to give themselves a chance late after trailing 28-13.
Consider Mahomes’ fourth-and-17 completion to Rashee Rice for 29 yards to set up the touchdown and two-point conversion that made it a one-score game early in the fourth quarter. We’ve seen enough Mahomes Magic over the years that it was easy to picture that being another indelible moment triggering an improbable comeback.
But then the Chiefs once again were victimized by something that had been their armor for so long, the sort of thing that had become part of their identity in many ways:
Since setting an NFL record with 17 straight victories in one-score games over the previous few seasons, the Chiefs now are 0-4 in such games this season.
Remember when their biggest issue seemed to be that they weren’t winning by enough?
Now makes for a good reminder of how significant that oh-so-slim winning edge is, what an advantage they had made it and how much they miss the intangible that makes it go.
So add it all up, and it means … what, exactly, heading into the bye week and beyond?
When I asked Mahomes afterward how he sees things overall to this point in the season, he put it thusly:
“We’ve had great moments, we’ve had bad moments. We’ve got to be more consistent as a team. I’ve got to be more consistent at quarterback. We’ve got to be able to battle. I mean, we’ve kind of been in a lot of these tight, close games in our history. But they’re not going our way now. So how can we deal with that adversity? How can we be better and learn from it?
“I mean, you only learn from so many losses.”
He went on, but that thought hovered.
Especially with the upcoming schedule, starting with the Broncos on the road and Colts (7-2) at home.
“It’s kind of like, ‘Got to do it now,’ ” he said. “There’s no easy game coming up, and there’s no more chances that we can really take losses.”
Out of the good, bad and ugly the Chiefs have flashed this season, we’ve seen both enough to know that they’re amply capable of special stuff and plenty vulnerable at less than their best — especially if they can’t win in the trenches.
We’re used to assuming they’ll find their stride in the next couple months. And used to seeing that mean they have a shot at yet another Super Bowl by going through the Bills, among others.
But they sure are going to need to make good on that trend ASAP and be braced to play what Mahomes called their “best football” after the bye week.
Lest they’re still going to remain on the outside looking in a few weeks from now and making the rematch everyone wants to see less and less likely.