Opinion: Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills may have just played the best game in team history
51-3 annihilation of the Raiders that sent the Bills to Super Bowl 25.
That’s what Buffalo’s 47-17 steamrolling of Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots felt like to me, an utter domination that left the losing team battered and broken.
bitterly cold night, a raucous sellout crowd was so busy cheering it didn’t have time to think about the single-digit temperature. Without question, this was one of the most memorable Bills’ postseason victories in their history.
I think Kelly and Thurman Thomas, two of the architects of those playoff wins 30 years ago who led the charge before the opening kickoff and whipped the already juiced crowd into a frenzy, would probably agree.
his game up in Foxborough the day after Christmas was his best ever, this one beat that.
If you take it back to that game, chew on this unbelievable statistic. Eliminating the two end-of-half possessions at Gillette when the Bills weren’t trying to score, Allen and the Bills scored on 13 of their last 14 possessions against the Pats, including 11 touchdowns. Can you even fathom that? Against a Belichick defense which was one of the stingiest in the NFL this season?
no question in my mind that the Bills had the better team. Never mind that the regular-season series was split; we know that if the wind hadn’t blown the way it did in the game at Highmark Stadium, the Bills probably would have won that one, too.Joe Burrow leads Bengals past Raiders for Cincinnati’s first playoff win since 1990-91 season
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And then there’s McKenzie. He had his breakout game at Foxborough, 11 catches for 125 yards, and Saturday, he once again tormented the Patriots with three rushes for 29 yards and three catches for 45 yards.
Those numbers don’t look awe-inspiring, but here’s why they’re so important: He gives Allen yet another weapon, another dynamic player that defenses have to account for, and that opens things up for Stefon Diggs, Cole Beasley, Gabriel Davis, Emmanuel Sanders and Knox.
“I think we feel good,” Allen said after the game. “There’s some things that we can clean up and work on. But at the end of the day, we moved on, we’re on to the next one and it doesn’t matter what we did today. It’s what we do next week. We’ve got to put our foot forward and be ready for the next one.”
If the Chiefs advance Sunday night, Buffalo at Kansas City is going to be one fun game.
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.