The NFL script writers couldn’t forge a worse ending for the Buffalo Bills’ 2025 season. Well, maybe they could, but Bills Mafia is having a hard enough time believing this is how the postseason is really going to unfold.
The New England Patriots are heading to the AFC Championship in Denver, where they’ll face a Jarrett Stidham-led Broncos team after Bo Nix finished the Bills off with a fractured ankle. Any Bills fans brave enough to watch the AFC Championship next Sunday would be torturing themselves for four hours, hoping the inevitable doesn't happen.
Naturally, the Patriots will be heavy favorites with Nix out of the picture for Denver. Anything in the NFL can happen, and Denver’s defense forcing four turnovers from Josh Allen on Saturday proved it well. Another outing like that, and maybe Bills fans can see this nightmare end.
Otherwise, all Bills Mafia can do is think for the next week that New England just caught the biggest of breaks to get back to the Super Bowl just seven years post-Tom Brady.
Buffalo left to pick up the pieces as Patriots inherit favorable path to the Super Bowl
As we head into Conference Championship week, the Patriots are written in pencil as the representative of the AFC in Super Bowl LX. Meanwhile, Buffalo is left to pick up the pieces and figure out how they let a perfect window in the AFC East pass them by without letting that distract them from figuring out how to stop the Patriots once again.
At the same time, Buffalo carries the annoyance that the last time they were on the field with New England, they got them back good for the Week 5 upset-turned-awakening their first meeting was. Patriots supporters were even worried about a potential third matchup before Josh Allen threw three touchdowns and James Cook scored another two in the Bills’ Week 15 victory.
On top of even that, the Patriots survived the Houston Texans in a manner of speaking. Drake Maye fumbled four times, but lost just one, and threw a pick. On the other side, C.J. Stroud threw four first-half interceptions and Woody Marks fumbled in the second half in the red zone. The Texans did something of the same thing the Bills did on Saturday: they lost the turnover battle considerably while watching the ball bounce the other team’s way.
It’s not for nothing that the Bills struck the NFL timeline lottery to draft Josh Allen just before the Brady era ended in New England. With that said, if the Patriots are Super Bowl-bound, at least the Bills have the right guy under center to combat any thoughts of a Dynasty 2.0 down by the harbor.
Still, there’s no end to the frustration for Bills Mafia ahead of next Sunday’s AFC Championship Game. The Patriots are where the Bills wanted to be. And they’re poised to be right where the Bills belonged, and where they’ve belonged for the past few years, to be frank. Kudos to them for the quick turnaround, but nothing about the past 24 hours has been easy to swallow for the fans in Buffalo.