Buffalo Bills fans were desperate to frame last Sunday's big win over the Kansas City Chiefs as an inflection point, a sign that this might finally be their team's year. Not that we blame them: After so many heartbreaks at the hands of Patrick Mahomes and Co., it's only understandable to look for any glimmer of optimism you can get your hands on.
But beating Kansas City in early November has never been the problem; in fact, Buffalo has now won each of the last five regular-season meetings between these two AFC heavyweights. The problem has been doing it in January: three times in the last four years the Bills bested the Chiefs in the regular season only to lose the rematch come playoff time.
Buffalo had every reason not to let their Week 9 win go to their heads, is what we're saying. And yet, just days later, they did exactly that, torching just about all of that hard-won good will in the process.
Bills' bellyflop in Miami throws win over Chiefs in a whole new light
It's hard to overstate just how bad things were for the Bills on Sunday in Miami. Facing a Dolphins team that had already more or less packed it in for the 2025 season — staring down the barrel of moving on from not just their head coach but also their franchise quarterback — Buffalo got shredded, allowing over seven yards per play to Tua Tagovailoa and De'Von Achane. The offense was similarly ugly, failing to score a single point in the first three quarters against a Miami defense that's been among the league's worst this year.
And when Josh Allen finally did try to kick it into gear with a couple of scoring drives in the fourth, his defense got gashed, giving up two huge touchdown runs to Achane to salt things away. Final score? Miami 30, Buffalo 13, and a whole lot of renewed questions — about Sean McDermott's defense in particular.
But the Bills have more than just schematics to worry about. Their rivalry with the Chiefs is more than a half-decade old at this point; if anyone should know that this is a 12-round fight whose final bell won't come until January, it's Buffalo. And yet, this disaster against the Dolphins had "letdown" written all over it, a listless effort from a team that needed to start fast and give a down-and-out team no reason for belief.
From here, it sure feels like the Bills once again poured all of their energy into a big regular-season game against Kansas City. We still have a long way to go until these teams might meet again in the postseason, but that's a depressingly familiar script for Buffalo fans hoping their team had learned a thing or two. This has been among the Chiefs' foremost superpowers during their dynastic run: No matter how many obstacles they might encounter during the fall, they never get too high or too low, knowing full well that the only thing that matters is how they're playing once the winter comes along.
Despite an up-close view for years now, that's a lesson the Bills have still yet to learn.