Chiefs 32, Bills 29

In the Superbowl era (post 1967), the Buffalo Bills have played in the AFC Championship Game seven times and, thanks to four consecutive wins from 1991 through 1994, they still maintain a winning record of four wins and three losses. The first of those three losses came in January, 1989 in Cincinnati after posting a 12-4 1988 break-out season which began their great run under Marv Levy and Jim Kelly. The Bills were clearly punching above their weight that year after beating the Houston Oilers at home in the Divisional round. The Bengals won the game 21-10 and went on to lose the Superbowl to the 49ers. After the four consecutive wins, the next AFC title game for Buffalo was four years ago – in the COVID season of 2020. After narrowly beating the Colts in the Wildcard round, then the Ravens in the Divisional round, the Bills, again probably punching well above their weight, took a 9-0 lead against the Chiefs in Kansas City before falling 38-24. That loss set their record in conference title games back to 4-2.

Entering last night’s contest at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills were two-point underdogs but a plurality of pundits whose prognostications I came across thought that their time had finally come and that the Chiefs drive for an unprecedented third straight Superbowl title would fall short and the Bills would go to their first Superbowl in 31 years. It was not to be as we know on this sobering Monday morning. A 32-29 loss has broken the hearts of Bills Mafia and will cause me to perform my annual ritual of putting away my Bills hats, shirts, jackets and pins until late July when training camp begins. The difference this time, compared to the two other title game losses, is that I really did feel that they would win the game last night. I was feeling pretty good all day long – a magnificent cross-country ski in powdery fluffy snow under blue Muskoka skies followed by a relaxing and rejuvenating sauna, a few dunks in the lake, a couple of beers, lasagna, coleslaw and a cheery pie for dinner. But they lost.

Over the past week, after the Bills beat the Ravens, my thoughts naturally turned to the possibility of the Bills making it to the Superbowl in New Orleans. Had they been successful last night, as a season ticket holder, I presumably would have been offered the option to enter a lottery of sorts for a shot at a pair of the block of tickets which the NFL allocates to each participating team. How many tickets would Bills fans be allocated? How would the lottery work? Would it be based on subscription seniority or on the quality of currently held season tickets or would it just simply be a “luck-of-the-draw” lottery? What would our chances be? When would we learn any of these details? These questions swirled in my mind over the past week as I looked with mild amusement and some trepidation at the possibility of camping on Lake Pontchartrain. Thankfully, there’s no reason now to fret about accommodations in Louisiana or the answers to any of these other questions. I still know none of them except that my friend Steve whose seats are next to mine in section 111 managed to get to three of the four Superbowls 30 years ago by way of the lottery. He only missed the first one against the Giants. His dad has been a season ticket holder since the 1960s and he was pretty sure that their very high level of seniority helped them in the lotteries. As for finding accommodations in Minneapolis, Pasadena and Atlanta 30 years ago, they booked hotels in places which were a couple of hours drive from the Superbowl venues, rented vehicles and drove in the to host cities for the games. I do obviously hope to learn the answers to the lottery questions one day. Maybe I’ll know a year from now.

The countdown to the opening of the new Highmark Stadium is now well underway. Only one season remains to be played at what I will now call by its original name, Rich Stadium, the brutalist concrete slab built in 1973 about 20 miles south of Buffalo in the sleepy town of Orchard Park. Its staggering 80,000 seats almost doubled the capacity of the Bills previous home, War Memorial Stadium which opened in 1937. Its nickname was “the Rockpile” so perhaps we should use “the Slab” to describe Rich Stadium as it now enters its final year as an NFL venue. I didn’t attend my first game there until 1988 – a 9-6 Bills win over the Jets which featured a blocked field goal attempt by Fred Smerlas and fans running onto the field and tearing down the goalposts to celebrate a division win. I have many other fond memories of great games and great wins there and some not-so-fond memories of ridiculously boorish fan behaviour and epic traffic jams. The boorish fan behaviour has moderated considerably as the league’s efforts to make the stadium experience more family-friendly have paid off and the “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere thankfully is no more. As for the traffic exiting the parking lots, it’s as bad as ever and I really do hope that it is improved at the new stadium. I also really wish that Dalton Kincaid had caught that fourth down pass. If he had, I’d probably be packing up my tent for some Louisiana camping.