Another week, another controversial Kansas City Chiefs victory. Except this time, the play in question was a fourth-and-one stop involving Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
“I mean, the look we had in the stadium… I thought he had [the first down],” Bills head coach Sean McDermott told reporters after the AFC Championship game. “The line was — just short of the line was actually the first down, [or] what it looked like to me when it was sitting next to me with the marker.”
“Just inside that white stripe was the first down, and it looked like he got to it,” McDermott went on. Concluding: “That’s all I can say.”
Sound familiar?
There were multiple complaints from Houston Texans players following their Divisional Round loss to the Chiefs. Eventually, KC cornerback Jaylen Watson fired back at the Texans on X.
This time, after the AFC Championship game, it was Chiefs linebacker Drue Tranquill who sounded off on all the “ref talk” on social media.
“Shoutout to the @BuffaloBills.. heck of a battle,” Tranquill wrote on X. Adding: “The rest of y’all can take all that ‘ref’ talk & kick rocks. We stand on business‼️”
Similarly, superstar defensive lineman Chris Jones had wise words of his own when asked about the rising number of Chiefs haters.
“It comes with being successful,” Jones said during his postgame press conference. “You get less attractive… The more success you have, the more people want to see you fail.”
This has definitely become the case for the Chiefs in recent seasons.
Bills HC Sean McDermott Takes Heat for 4th Playoff Loss to Chiefs — ‘Not About Refs’
McDermott and the Bills have now lost four playoff matchups against Andy Reid and the Chiefs, and fans and media let the Buffalo HC have it on social media after this most recent failure.
“There’s only one person to blame for this: Sean McDermott,” FOX Sports radio host Aaron Torres noted on X. “Going for two in first half for no reason. Chasing points to start after that. Continually getting stuffed on 3rd/4th and short. He can’t come back. He can’t come back. Period.”
Sirius XM radio host Zach Gelb agreed, stating: “Sean McDermott has done a really good job in Buffalo and Sean McDermott has reached his apex with the Bills. Both can be true. If Buffalo ever wants to beat the Chiefs when it matters, they would beg Bill Belichick to coach them.”
“Any Bills fans blaming the refs for this loss need to wake the [expletive] up…” A popular fan post read. “This loss had nothing to do with the refs… this was a complete and utter coaching FAILURE by Sean McDermott, Joe Brady & Bobby Babich… the only reason the game was close at all was Josh Allen TD to Mack Hollins and Josh Allen TD to Curtis Samuel… he made this game look closer than it was… Andy Reid outcoached Bills by 100x maybe 200x.”
Several Bills fans also called for McDermott to be fired, including one who criticized the Bills for “wasting 4 years” of their ceiling with Allen at QB.
Finally, one fan joked that “Sean McDermott is perhaps the greatest co-conspirator in the Chiefs dynasty.”
Chiefs HC Andy Reid Says AFC Championship Win Over Bills Came Down to ‘Inches’
While speaking with reporters after the AFC Championship, Reid stressed that this was “literally a game of inches.” He added that the Chiefs were “lucky to be on that side of it where we had the most inches.”
When you think about the fourth-and-one stop on Allen — or the near-reception from tight end Dalton Kincaid to save the game — that was especially true.
Unfortunately for Buffalo, these deciding plays never seem to go their way in the postseason, and that was the case once again on January 26.
“This came right down to an inch, literally,” Reid reiterated. “And so, it was back and forth, it was going to be back and forth. Whoever had the ball last was probably going to come out in the lead.”
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