Just over two months ago, as CBS cameras swept in behind quarterback Josh Allen following the Buffalo Bills’ midseason win over the Kansas City Chiefs, Allen’s nemesis Patrick Mahomes — who is really more of a frenemy — appeared over his right shoulder.
Mahomes and the Chiefs had just lost to Allen and the Bills for the fourth time in five regular-season games, leaving Allen some distinctly gerrymandered bragging rights. As they approached each other for an embrace near midfield on that November night, Mahomes smiled knowingly. He might have been leaving another regular-season game against Allen with a defeat, but he also still had the edge where it counted most: 3-0 in the playoffs; three Super Bowl rings and counting to Allen’s zero. So it makes sense that when Mahomes saw Allen, he put a pin into the November defeat by uttering the words so many football fans — and arguably every single NFL executive — wanted to hear.
“We’ll do it again, baby,” Mahomes said, leaning into Allen’s ear.
It wasn’t a prediction. It was a promise.
This is the foundation of what fuels the Chiefs versus the Bills in Sunday’s AFC championship game — a Mahomes versus Allen subplot that has a chance to grow into a prolonged battle of story-tale significance in the league’s 104-year chronology. It’s maybe even to the point of being this era’s Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning, a defining quarterback rivalry that will live forever in the NFL’s ever-expanding fusion of history and mythology.
Of course, Mahomes versus Allen isn’t quite on the level of Brady and Manning. Not quite yet. To have that kind of interwoven fabric between two careers, there has to be a consequential breakthrough that changes the landscape. At some point, both quarterbacks have to lose something meaningful at the hands of the other. Thus far, Allen and the Bills have lived up to only the lesser part of the equation — taking from Mahomes and the Chiefs repeatedly in the regular season but giving it all back when the two collide in the playoffs.
For Allen and the Bills, the postseason losses have always been particularly crushing. First in a 2020 AFC championship game that didn’t even seem as close as the 38-24 outcome. Then in the infamous “13 seconds” game in the 2021 divisional round, which saw the Chiefs mount a seemingly impossible late comeback before prevailing 42-36 in overtime. And finally, in the 2023 divisional round, which featured a consequential missed fourth-quarter field goal by Buffalo and a squandered home-field advantage in a 27-24 loss. That final defeat spawned Allen’s famously dejected “It sucks” postgame speech, marking a new low point in Buffalo’s battle to get past the Chiefs.
This is how it can go in these kinds of rivalries. For Manning — who will forever be considered one of the greatest pocket-passing quarterbacks in league history — the mounting pressure to finally beat Brady reached a boiling point after an 0-6 start. That included two brutal playoff losses, one of which saw Manning throw four interceptions in a 24-14 defeat in the 2003 AFC championship. In fact, it wasn’t until Manning’s eighth season in the NFL in 2005 that he finally dealt a loss to the quarterback who had become his archenemy. By then, Brady had two Super Bowl wins and was on track for his third later that season.
