Billl

If you read the article, this isn’t a prediction. It’s one random version of a simulation they ran. Usually they run 10,000 and aggregate it.

Titans made the divisional round? Impressive

What would you have given for him in January?

The past two times the Bills and Chiefs have met in the playoffs, there have been a total of 9 fumbles. Buffalo got possession all 9 times.

For the most part, judging GMs by their misses is a poor method of evaluation. They should be judged by their hits. Beane missed on Elam but hit on Benford. If it had been the other way around, nobody would even care.

Yeah, that Jaguars defense was great a couple of years ago, much better than the Eagles. Obviously that must be why they scored 27 against Jacksonville but 38 against Philadelphia. But to your point, what is “playoff Josh Allen”? Postseason Josh Allen is the exact same as regular season Josh Allen. Players and teams simply don’t elevate their play based on situation. I know that because you’ve told me so repeatedly in this very conversation. The confirmation bias is you starting from the conclusion that the Chiefs score more against the Bills in the postseason not because the Chiefs do something to influence that outcome, but because the Bills just play poorly and then working your way backwards from there.

It’s more than just pace of play, though. It’s the willingness to take risks pushing the ball downfield, going for it on 4th down, letting Mahomes run, and using your “special occasion” plays. The Ravens couldn’t move the ball against the Chiefs in the AFCCG 2 years ago, so Reid was happy to sit on the lead and lean on his defense right up to the point when he needed a drive to ice the game. He wasn’t going to take risks on the offensive side of the ball and give Baltimore a short field. That’s not an option when playing Buffalo. The Chiefs played an entirely different brand of offensive football in last year’s AFCCG because they had to. They went for it in the second quarter on 4th down from their own 39. Mahomes had 11 carries. They knew they were going to have to score a ton of points, so they gambled a little more than they would have had the circumstances been different. This shouldn’t even be controversial except to those who abjectly refuse to give credit to the winning team and instead reduce year after year after year of the same ending to “your team only won because of (insert reason that doesn’t involve Mahomes being a historically great QB)”. It’s like watching Scooby Doo for 7 season and always being shocked that the ghost is a guy in a rubber mask. Yet time and time again, when the team needs it most, there’s a WR in the end zone all alone for a TD on 3rd and goal from the 1. Why was that guy so open? It’s because they spent an entire season putting something on film so that they could break tendency in the biggest moment of the season. Why was Josh so surprised that the Chiefs brought a strong side blitz on 4th down? It’s because they spent the entire game (and the game in the regular season) blitzing from the weak side. It’s what they do.

Just a massive coincidence that their lowest scoring games of each postseason nearly perfectly correlate to the games where they allowed the fewest amount of points and that their highest scoring games also correlate to the games where they allowed the most points. What are the odds? It’s certainly not by design that the Chiefs scored TDs on the first two possessions against Baltimore and then ran the ball 32 times when the Ravens offense couldn’t score for 8 straight possessions. What made it even weirder is that when Baltimore kicked a FG to make it a 7 point game, the Chiefs were seemingly miraculously able to put together a 6 play, 50 yard drive before kneeling down deep in Ravens territory. By God, Kansas City scored 17 points in that game, so if the Ravens had scored 18 the Chiefs would have looked like fools as they knelt down on the ball for an 18-17 defeat.

The Bills scored 500 points that year for crying out loud. Of course the Chiefs had to plan on lighting up the scoreboard. I laid out 15 postseason games for you, and you picked out one 14 point win from the 2020 season in order to reject the idea that the Chiefs are generally able to score more points if that’s what they need to do to win. I don’t know how many times you have to witness it before you stop thinking it’s “patently ridiculous”. It must be that a coach who had 1 playoff win in the previous 10 seasons miraculously became the best postseason coach on the planet the day Mahomes stepped on the field.

It’s 100% true. The Chiefs scored 30 or more points twice all season/postseason. They won 30-27 and 32-29 in those 2 games. The only other game (week 18 excluded) in which they gave up more than 25 points was in the loss to Buffalo during the regular season. It’s been a consistent theme with Kansas City, particularly since they traded away Tyreek. They don’t go to the whip unless they need to. So many seem to think that means they don’t have a whip only to be left wondering where all those welts came from every January.

It’s not an Andy vs McDermott issue, though. The Chiefs score more against the Bills than they do against other teams in the postseason because they have to in order to win. If the Bills scored fewer points, so would the Chiefs. Since Mahomes has been the QB, this is what has happened in his postseason wins: 2019: Chiefs give up 20 and score 31 Chiefs give up 24 and score 35 Chiefs give up 31 and score 51 2020: Chiefs give up 17 and score 22 Chiefs give up 24 and score 38 2021: Chiefs give 21 and score 42 Chiefs give up 36 and score 42 2022: Chiefs give up 20 and score 23 Chiefs give up 20 and score 27 Chiefs give up 35 and score 38 2023: Chiefs give up 7 and score 26 Chiefs give up 10 and score 17 Chiefs give up 24 and score 27 2024: Chiefs give up 14 and score 23 Chiefs give up 29 and score 32 There number of points the Chiefs score in the postseason is incredibly correlated to how many points they need to score. When the Chiefs beat the Ravens 17-10 2 years ago, it wasn’t that the Ravens shut the Chiefs down. The Chiefs started out the game TD, TD, and then went into a shell because Baltimore couldn’t score. They can’t play that way against Josh and the Bills because they can put up so many points. Andy and Mahomes have to hit the throttle in those games. If Allen were to get injured prior to a playoff game against Kansas City this year, the Chiefs aren’t going to gameplan to put up 40 points. They’re going to try to get on top early and win a 24-13 type game while not giving Buffalo a short field due to turnovers.

Since Allen has been in the league, the Bills have averaged allowing 19 PPG in the 9 postseason games when they aren’t playing the Chiefs. They have averaged allowing 33 PPG in the 4 games when they are. Is it just a giant coincidence that the Bills only forget how to play defense against the Chiefs, or could it possibly be that Mahomes and company are just on another level when the season is on the line?

So when the Bills scored 29 points, it was because of great play by Allen, and when the Chiefs scored 32 points, it was because of poor play by the Bills defense. Kind of a “heads I win, tails you lose” sort of standard.

The Chiefs defense carried them to the Superbowl with a 32-29 win in the AFCCG?

He’s past the “prove it deal” part of his career and well into the “sign with whatever team is desperate enough to give you a one-year deal” phase. There are worse places to be 30 years old and wealthy than Miami.