This past weekend's AFC Divisional Round featured a matchup everybody wanted to see during these playoffs. As the Buffalo Bills prepared to take on the Baltimore Ravens on their home field, perfect football weather happened to arise.
It was a cold-weather, snowy, winter wonderland as quarterback Josh Allen prepared to take on fellow MVP candidate Lamar Jackson. The stage was set for what some might refer to as an instant classic.
The tension built as the fourth quarter raged on and, as it turned out, the game came down to the final offensive play for Baltimore.
With the Bills escaping and moving on to the AFC Championship Game against the Kansas City Chiefs, attention turns to a matchup in which Buffalo is awfully familiar with.
However, as Allen was quick to point out after the win over Baltimore, this postseason matchup should be free of any regular season comparisons.
Josh Allen believes his regular season wins over the Chiefs don't matter at all
“The regular season is what the regular season is. It doesn’t matter how well you perform when you get to the playoffs, it doesn’t really matter," Allen said in his postgame comments.
"We lost 35-10 [to Ravens in the regular season]. It’s hard to beat a team twice. We understand that. We know that. It’s a team that we beat early in the season, but it’s not the same team.”
Of course, the narrative which Bills fans will use to help fuel their hopes for beating Kansas City is the fact that Allen is a career 4-1 against Patrick Mahomes in the regular season.
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However, as Allen knows good and well, he and the Bills are 0-3 against those same Chiefs in the playoffs.
If any stat should be used to build a narrative, it's that one. The monkey on Allen's back is not being able to beat Mahomes in the postseason. These two teams are certainly different than when the Bills beat them back in November by a score of 30-21.
Buffalo has gotten back linebackers Matt Milano and Terrel Bernard along with cornerback Taron Johnson, and those three made quite the impact in the win over Baltimore on Sunday. Bernard and Johnson played against Kansas City earlier this year, but Milano did not.
Milano's presence was felt against the Ravens, and hopefully he's able to provide the same type of lift against the Chiefs next Sunday. This game is shaping up to be the biggest game of Josh Allen's career and one that could flip the narrative entirely.
While Lamar Jackson has still struggled to get to the Super Bowl, Allen could make it happen and finally send Mahomes packing in the playoffs.