Colts 41, Bills 15

I had a feeling that the Canadian government would announce the lifting of the costly PCR test requirement for Canadians returning from short trips to the United States within a few days of my electing to return all of my remaining Buffalo Bills tickets, including any option on home playoff games for this season, to the club for resale. The remaining home schedule - Patriots, Panthers, Falcons and Jets - doesn't hold great appeal anyway and the chances of a home playoff game, while still well within reach for the Bills, look much less likely than they did even a week ago. Unless I decide to buy tickets on the secondary market for one of those games or a playoff game, I will have missed two entire seasons of live NFL football. I'll survive.

Last night on the NBC's Football Night in America, Tony Dungee said that the Bills will need to be able to run the ball effectively in their remaining late season home games at least - and not with designed runs for Josh Allen every time. Drew Brees said that the team had no discernable identity at this point of the season. On CBS's NFL Today, Boomer Esiason was sticking with his prediction of the Bills earning a Superbowl birth but Bill Cowher now favours the Patriots and their surging defence to win the AFC East, thereby restoring normalcy to the division after last year's anomaly of the Bills winning it for the first time since 1995. 

Yesterday in Orchard Park, fans witnessed the phenomenon of Jonathan Taylor. The Colts second round pick last year from the Wisconsin Badgers shredded the Bills run defence and found the end zone no less than five times while racking up 185 yards on 32 carries. He is the best running back in the league at the moment - at least the best one who isn't on injured reserve (referring to Derrick Henry). While the run defence looked soft, the offence was inconsistent and uninspired with Josh Allen not looking much at all like an MVP candidate any more. Even Tyler Bass missed a couple of kicks. It was a mess all around.

Missing from the game yesterday were defensive lineman and run stuffer Star Lotulelei and perhaps the team's best offensive lineman in rookie Spencer Brown. Both were on the COVID reserve list. If Brown is unvaccinated, he will also miss this week's game four days from now under the league's rules. Talk is increasing in Buffalo media circles (and Jerry Sullivan has been leading the charge on this) that the Bills are one of the least vaccinated teams in the NFL with somewhere between five and ten players opting not to take the COVID vaccine. Secrecy around the actual number and around the specific reasons why individual players are placed on the COVID list prevents us from knowing the real story but with a relatively large cohort of unvaccinated players compared to other teams, this may be costly to the team in the last crucial weeks of the season. But we still don't know enough about the long term effects of these vaccines, do we?

How about some Canadian University football to cleanse the pallet? Well, my Western Mustangs won the 113th Yates Cup 29-0 over Queens on Saturday before a decent gathering in Kingston. They now move on to one of the two national semi-final games - the Mitchell Bowl - at home in London against the St. Francis Xavier X-Men next Saturday. The Uteck Bowl features the Saskatchewan Huskies and the Montreal Carrabins with the Vanier Cup set for Dec 4th in Quebec City. I caught some of the Mustangs game on Saturday and while the game had plenty of intensity, neither quarterback had a strong arm and the passing game was less than dynamic. But I like football enough that I'll watch pretty much any game anywhere. After all, I've had season tickets for my local high school team, the Lawrence Park Panthers, since the early nineties. Go Panthers!

For the second time in three years, the Bills will play on American Thanksgiving Day this Thursday night in New Orleans. Maybe a short week is what they need to move past yesterday's stinker. Josh Allen usually rises to the occasion for prime time national games as he showed two years ago in Dallas on Thanksgiving. After that, the team has a long break before another prime time game as the Patriots come to Orchard Park for a critical Monday Night match-up December 6th.   

Bills 45, Jets 17

Last Thursday afternoon on WGR 550,  Chris "The Bulldog" Parker made what sounded like a reasonable prediction about week 10 of the NFL season which was set to begin that evening in Miami. He declared that the phenomenon of one or two-win teams upsetting various contenders was going to come to an end and that it would begin that night with the Baltimore Ravens playing the Dolphins in south Florida. "The Ravens are a far superior team", he observed "and they will show that tonight. The cream will start to rise to the top in the NFL." Seemed logical to me and probably to other Bills fans as the hometown team was three days away from playing the lowly Jets and their flash-in-the-pan rookie quarterback who threw for over 400 yards in a Jets win over the Bengals a couple of weeks ago. A few hours later, the Bulldog's prediction would not come true as the Ravens fell to the Dolphins 22-10. Made me wonder if the Bills could fall victim, for the second week in a row, to a team they should beat easily or would Sean McDermott find a way to re-focus his team and not only get back in the win column but recover their status as a contender in the AFC. We got the answer yesterday and, for Bills fans, it was the one they were waiting for.

Despite a bit of a lull in the second quarter yesterday in the Meadowlands of New Jersey, the Bills dominated the game against the Jets and made Jets quarterback Mike White look every bit like the overwhelmed 5th round draft choice appearing in his third NFL game. Scoring 21 points in the third quarter, they extended their lead to 38-3 and allowed me to start closing up the cottage and prepare for snowy drive south. When the lead was pushed to 31-3, I reached into my bag of Van Miller quotes and declared that "the rout is on". 

Stefon Diggs has had a good season so far in 2021 but his performance yesterday was spectacular. He had eight catches for 132 yards and a touchdown on the second consecutive fade pass from Josh Allen, after making the catch on the first one but with his second foot not quite connecting in bounds. And the running game also returned. The Bills appear to have three viable options with Devin Singletary, Zack Moss and now Matt Brieda all contrbuting yesterday. Breida, inactive since week 2, had two touchdowns - one running and another on a pass from Allen on the first drive of the game. Even without Trumaine Edmonds, the defence was disruptive and Mike White and the Jets never really had a chance.

On Friday night, I watched soccer. I usually end up seeing the World Cup Final and I saw a bit of the European Championship Final this past summer because England made it that far. Canada was playing our arch-rival Costa Rica at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton as part of an eight-team World Cup qualifying tournament. The game started slowly with a decided lack of urgency on both sides which, in my view, characterizes soccer far too often. But the Canadian side turned it on in the second half and were finally rewarded with a rare "goal" and cruised to lopsided one-nil win. Fan support in Edmonton was impressive with more than 48,000 taking in the game. What made very little sense to me was the state of the playing surface. Football and baseball have long been played on artificial turf and most non-grass playing surfaces in North America now feature "field turf" which is much softer than the concrete-like astroturf from the 1970s and 80s. Commonwealth Stadium appears not to have installed new turf since Warren Moon came to town in 1978. And we could see the same partially erased yard-line markers as Moon must have played on when the stadium opened for the 1978 Commonwealth Games (which I attended). Soccer, I think its fair to say, needs to be played on grass. Did anyone consider BMO Field for this game or was it time to not be Toronto-centric and give the game to another city? I can't say and I'm happy that Canada won the game and now has a legitimate shot at making the World Cup Final for the first time since 1986. But the field looked terrible.

The Indianapolis Colts come to Orchard Park next Sunday as the Bills return to playing teams which have playoff aspirations. With the Canadian requirement for a negative (and costly) PCR test for travellers (including returning day travellers) still in place, I have accepted the Bills offer to take back the remainder of my tickets for this season. Looks like I won't see a live game until September of 2022.  

Jaguars 9, Bills 6

The last 9-6 game I can remember was played 33 years ago at Rich Stadium. I was one of more than 78,000 in attendance that day as Fred Smerlas blocked a field goal in the final seconds of regulation time to send the game to overtime where the Bills would win the game and clinch the AFC East division title. Delirious fans stormed the field, tore the goal posts down and gave birth to Van Miller's "fandemonium" catch-phrase. The rain-soaked game became a classic in Bills history and marked the beginning of the team's mini-dynasty which included four consecutive Superbowls. 

Yesterday's game in north Florida was one of the worst NFL games in recent memory - and not just because the Bills lost. The officiating crew, led by referee Land Clark, will probably not be at the top of the list for playoff game assignments after yesterday's highly questionable performance which included, ironically, far too many flags and some key missed calls. Josh Allen looked more like the Josh Allen from his 2018 rookie season with multiple turnovers and his offensive line had its worst game of the season. Much was made of the fact that the Jaguars have a defensive player also named Josh Allen who was the best player on the field for either team. If their names were Cornelius Bennett or Billy-Joe Hobart then it might have been more noteworthy. I wonder how many Josh Allens there are in the United States? 

The Aaron Rodgers story dominated the off-field NFL news last week as he contracted COVID and had to miss yesterday's game in Kansas City. Boomer Esiason made an excellent point on the NFL Today broadcast when he compared Rodgers' approach on the question of vaccination to that of Colts quarterback Carson Wentz. Wentz made no attempt to conceal the fact that he and his family have decided to forego the vaccine and he has, by all accounts, followed all of the NFL's protocols for unvaccinated players. It remains unclear if Rodgers has done this himself. Wentz's main reason for refusing the vaccine is that he thinks that there isn't "enough" known about its long-term effects. I would go a step further and point out to him (and to others who use this excuse) that the vaccines were developed within the last year and there is literally no data on their long-term effects. Taking into account the fact that side effects from vaccines are almost always evident in the very short term (usually days or weeks at most after vaccination), the decision is a matter of balancing risks and, in my view, its an easy choice. But Wentz has the right to his opinion and I do respect him for being transparent about it and accepting the conditions imposed by the league. The same can be said about Bills slot receiver Cole Beasley who has been outspoken on the issue but not misleading.

The problem for Rodgers is one of credibility as he clearly set out to mislead the public about his vaccination status. He used the word "immunized" to describe his status and we now know that means he has subscribed to some sort of homeopathic "immunization" regime rather than taking one of the approved vaccines. He decided to "do his own research" and says that he submitted some 500 pages of this research to the league or to his team or maybe to FOX News. Now that the US has reached a 70% vaccination rate among adults, it seems clear that he is on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue. It has already cost him as Wisconsin-based Prevea Health terminated a sponsorship deal with Rodgers which has been in place since 2012. State Farm Insurance also cut back on television spots featuring Rodgers during yesterday's NFL broadcasts from an average of about 25% of its spots over the course of the season to date to 1.5% yesterday. The insurer would not comment on what plans it has for future spots with Rodgers but it seems likely that the saturation of the "Rodgers Rate" spots which NFL viewers have seen in the past few seasons will not continue. Executives at GEICO, Liberty Mutual and Progressive are undoubtedly pleased. Jake from State Farm could not be reached for comment.

Josh Allen said after yesterday's game that his team "played like shit" and that they will be better for it in the long run. That may be true but the team has mailed in two clunkers so far after the bye week and really needs to get on the right track against the Jets on Sunday. The Jaguars probably played as well as they could yesterday and certainly played with a measure of intensity which the Bills did not match. These three games - against the Dolphins, Jags and Jets - looked like classic trap games to me and the team has fallen into the trap with the first two. I'm expecting things to turn around next week and the Jets will see it first-hand. The score will not be 9-6. 

       

Bills 26, Dolphins 11

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. "Off-year" elections aren't usually big new stories nationally with this year's main exception being the Virginia gubernatorial race between Democrat and former Governor Terry McAuliffe and Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin. Won by ten points by President Biden a year ago, if the Dems manage to lose Virginia tomorrow, shockwaves will rattle through Washington as the mid-term elections in a year's time could be disastrous for the party which currently holds the House, the Senate (just barely) and the White House.  

Citizens in several major American cities will elect mayors tomorrow and the race I'll be watching is for the mayoralty of the 90th largest city in the United States: Buffalo, New York. If we could see an election ballot in the Buffalo mayoralty race, it would carry the name of only one candidate: India Walton. The Republicans have not held the top job in Buffalo since Chester Kowal left office at the end of 1965 and the GOP did not even bother to nominate a candidate this time around. Incumbent mayor Byron Brown, seeking a fifth term since he was first elected in 2005, managed to lose the Democratic Primary to Ms. Walter and then failed in a court challenge to create his own party (the Buffalo Party) which would have allowed his name to appear on the ballot. He is now seeking re-election on a "write in" basis, using the campaign slogan "Write Down Byron Brown". 

Turnout at the Primary in June was very low and the result was close but Walton won it fair and square and the Buffalo mayoralty race has now taken on a national flavour as she has earned the endorsements of Democratic Party heavyweights like New York Senator Chuck Schumer and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Brown, the city's first black mayor, has marshalled the support of the Buffalo business community (including many Republicans) and has branded Walton as a socialist who would defund the police and bring chaos to what remains one of America's most segregated cities. Recent polling gives Brown a 17 point lead over Walton but he will need his supporters to first turn out tomorrow and then remember to "write in" his name on their ballots. To my knowledge, throughout the campaign, India Walton has not proclaimed her support for the Buffalo Bills and I hope this does not cost her. Her story, the subject of a recent long-form piece in the New Yorker, is quite compelling and, if I were a voter in tomorrow's Buffalo election, I would find it hard not to cast my vote her way. Plus, with hers as the only name on the ballot, I'd be more inclined to write in the name Josh Allen than I would Byron Brown. If his name were on the ballot, Allen would win in a landslide.

I guess I wasn't surprised to see that Terry and Kim Pegula did not invite India Walton to join them in the owner's box yesterday at Highmark Stadium. Could be that they knew she would have difficulty getting to Orchard Park on public transit. What she missed was hardly an NFL classic but her hometown team managed to make the plays they needed to make in the second half to pull away from the Dolphins who, at 1-7, are clearly in the hunt for the first overall pick in the 2022 NFL draft. The Bills defence looked fearsome in the second half as Tua Tagovailoa was overwhelmed at times and hardly looks like the franchise quarterback the Dolphins thought he was when they drafted him while leaving Justin Herbert on the board. Cole Beasley returned to form yesterday with 10 receptions for 110 yards.

Yesterday marked the first of three consecutive games against the league's lesser-lights with two road games coming up: at Jacksonville then at the Meadowlands against the Jets who earned their second win yesterday. The Bills, if they are still legitimate Superbowl contenders (and I think they are), will be heavily favoured in all three of these games. Favoured by a spread of 14 points yesterday, they struggled in the first half but won by 15. They are early 10.5 point favourites against the Jaguars in north Florida next Sunday. They can not afford to stumble in any of these games as they chase the Titans, who won again yesterday, for the coveted home-field advantage in the playoffs and a first round bye.

 

Titans 34, Bills 31

For the second consecutive year, the Buffalo Bills enter their bye week after a tough last-second loss in game they could have won - and probably should have won. Last year, Kyler Murray's Hail Mary in Phoenix before the break gave the team enough motivation to run the table for the rest of the regular season. The bye week came much later last season but last night's aggressive decision to go for a first down, followed  by a very conservative play call which failed, will loom large over the next two weeks for Sean McDermott and Josh Allen. The sneak attempt fell short due in large part to the push that the right side of the Titans defensive line made and in small part because Allen's foot slipped as he tried to gain the last few inches needed for a first down in the game's dying seconds. 

The decision to try to win the game rather than play for overtime will probably not be one which Bills Nation will question for long. A more creative play call at that moment would have been better in retrospect but with only inches needed, Allen is probably able to gain those inches 95% of the time or more. The decision to go for it rather than kicking an easy field goal then going to overtime is easy to question on this Tuesday morning but, based on their performance in the second half, Sean McDermott couldn't have been all that confident in his defence as overtime loomed. Problem for the Bills is that, with last night's loss, the Tennessee Titans are now tied with them at 4-2 and now hold the tie-breaker in the AFC playoff seedings.

After the break, the Bills welcome the Dolphins to Orchard Park on October 31st. This will be last home game before the US-Canada land border crossings are set to open on November 8th. The first opportunity for Canadian fans to cheer on the Bills in person will be November 21st against the Colts. If the Canadian government continues to require a negative PCR COVID test for re-entry to Canada, we can tack another $200 on to the cost of the trip. The Bills are now only half-way through their 2021 prime time schedule with remaining games at New Orleans on Thanksgiving night and another Monday night game in New England on December 6th.  

In other NFL news, after 10 months of work, including interviews with dozens of witnesses and the review of some 650,000 emails, the NFL's investigation into the "workplace conditions" around the Washington Football Team (WFT) has produced one scapegoat far. And, last week we learned that his name is Jon Gruden, the now former coach of the Las Vegas Raiders whose racist and sexist emails, written to then WFT general manager Bruce Allen, from several years ago were "leaked" to the media. They were discovered, the league claims, as part of the WFT investigation and were deemed, six weeks into the NFL regular season, to be important enough to be brought to the attention of Raiders ownership and management and then made public. They of course led to Gruden's resignation early last week which a cynical observation would conclude is a classic bait and switch engineered by the NFL to protect WFT owner Daniel Snyder, at whose feet the problems with the WFT's workplace culture lie. Ironically, the Raiders, under their late founding owner Al Davis, were the first NFL team to hire a black head coach (Art Shell), the first to hire a Latino head coach (Tom Flores) and the first team to name a female as CEO (Amy Trask).  

Snyder became the youngest CEO of a NYSE traded company at age 32 and completed a leveraged purchase of the WFT from the estate of Jack Kent Cooke in 1999. The workplace culture of the team has been described as pervasively mysogynistic and toxic to female employees and, after an avalanche of allegations and legal action by a group of 40 former female employees of the WFT, the NFL struck its investigation. After the Gruden emails were released, calls for further release of emails reviewed as part of the investigation have been met with refusal by the league on the grounds of confidentiality. Seems like that's all we're going to get. Jon Gruden goes down and Daniel Snyder is protected. The NFL looks after its owners; always has and always will. And in the long run, this latest apparent public relations disaster won't put even a minor dent in the league's juggernaut of popularity. Nothing ever does. Whether it's repeated incidents of spousal abuse by star players, concern about player health in the form of concussions and CTE, limited upward mobility for black managers and coaches, the extortion of public funding for new stadiums - whatever seemingly bad news there is, it never really tarnishes "the shield" as Roger Goodell refers to it. The appeal of NFL football endures.   

  

  

Bills 38, Chiefs 20

As the second quarter ended last night, I got up, went outside and wandered around a bit in order to help digest the excellent Thanksgiving dinner enjoyed by a group of nine at our cottage earlier in the evening. I must have missed the first mention of a lightening-related delay in Kansas City because when I re-assumed my prone position, Mike Tirico, Tony Dungee and Drew Brees were going over highlights from the day's action in the NFL - but in a level of detail that seemed far too much for the tail-end of a 15 minute break. The studio team and the rest of the NBC broadcast crew did a pretty good job of filling an additional hour before the third quarter finally kicked off. I watched right to the end because I wanted to see the mid-field hand-shake between Andy Reid and Sean McDermott. It's the latest I've been awake in a long time. 

If an NFL coach enjoys a long tenure in what Bill Parcells described as "the most competitive business there is", he will unwittingly build his own "coaching tree". Those who have coached on his staff and have gone on to their own measures of success are the branches of the tree. Some of the branches grow strong enough to become trees themselves while others never really rise the level of the tree from which they originated.

While Bill Belichick is a good example of a coach whose tree branches have generally fallen short of the expectations associated with their originating tree, Andy Reid is probably the best example of one whose descendants have flourished. The list of successful NFL head coaches whose careers started or were jump-started under the tutelage of Reid is extensive and impressive. Topping the list would probably be John Harbaugh, now in his 14th season as Baltimore Ravens head coach and with one head-coaching Superbowl championship under his belt, who served as an assistant under Reid in Philadelphia for nine seasons. Next might be Doug Pederson who also won a title as Philadelphia Eagles head coach in 2017 after five seasons as an Eagles assistant under Reid. Current Washington head coach Ron Rivera, former Vikings head coach Brad Childress, current Bears head coach Matt Nagy and former head coaches now serving as assistants Todd Bowles, Pat Shurmur, Steve Spagnuolo and current Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier are all members of the prestigious Andy Reid coaching tree.

That takes us to Sean McDermott, the 19th head coach in Buffalo Bills history, who served under Reid in Philadelphia for 10 seasons before moving to Carolina under fellow Reid coaching tree member Ron Rivera for five seasons as defensive coordinator. Now in his fifth season as Bills head coach, McDermott has guided the Bills to the playoffs in three of his first four seasons after the team went without a post-season appearance for 17 consecutive years before his hiring. If Brian Daboll lands a head-coaching job next year, McDermott will have germinated his own coaching sapling.

In comparison, Bill Belichik, arguably the most successful coach in NFL history, has seen many an assistant coach achieve a head-coaching position only to fall flat and revert to assistant or coordinator jobs. This list includes Josh McDaniels, Matt Patricia, Eric Mangini, Romeo Crennel, Bill O'Brien and Todd Bowles. 

Entering last night's game at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills under McDermott were 1-2 against the Chiefs under Reid, including last season's AFC championship game. For the Bills, although they were up a game on the Chiefs in the AFC standings, a loss would not only have closed that gap but it would have given the Chiefs the tie-breaker over the Bills just as they enjoyed last year. That dragon is now slayed. After signing his massive contract extension a couple of months ago, Bills fans were looking to Allen for a signature road win and last night they got it. His first touchdown pass to Emmanuel Sanders was as perfect a pass as I've seen a quarterback throw this season. 

If the league office wants more penalties called, they would have been very pleased with last night's flag-fest. Most of the calls were valid I suppose but there were two in succession on the Bills last touchdown drive which were both phantom calls - and critically important ones. Josh Allen's scramble for a first down to the right sideline was negated by a holding call on centre Mitch Morse which was undetectable to me on replay. Then the Chiefs were flagged for a highly questionable roughing the passer call on a play where they intercepted Allen around mid-field. The two calls cancelled each other out I guess but neither should have been made.

Next up for the Bills is another prime time match-up with a team they lost to last season as they travel to Nashville next Monday night. I'll probably still be eating left-over turkey and then trying to stay awake. Let's hope for clear weather.    

Bills 40, Texans 0

Now in their 20th NFL season, the Houston Texans are the youngest team in the NFL. When the Oilers left town for Memphis TN after the 1996 season, Bob McNair, who had become an energy industry titan (founding Cogen Technologies in 1984 which he sold to Enron in 1999), was determined to bring NFL football back to his home town and, at a cost of $1 billion, was awarded the rights to an expansion team which began play in 2002. The team has enjoyed some success over the past two decades winning six AFC South division titles starting since 2011 but the franchise remains the only one of the league's 32 teams never to have played in a conference championship game. 

McNair died in November, 2018, leaving his wife Janice as majority owner. Son Cal McNair is the team's general manager. After the 2019 regular season, the Bills played their second playoff game of the Sean McDermott era in Houston and lost by a field goal in overtime. The Texans went on to lose to the eventual Superbowl champion Chiefs in the next round. Since then, the team has sunk to the lowest competitive level in the NFL. Bill O'Brien served, mostly successfully, as head coach of the Texans from 2014 to 2020 but was disliked by players. The title of general manager was added to his responsibilities in early 2020 and his first move was to trade Pro Bowl receiver DeAndre Hopkins away for a running back, some draft picks and bag of footballs. This was a move from which he would never recover and he was fired from the team early in the 2020 season. 

This past off-season, Deshaun Watson, the team's star quarterback, officially requested a trade from the Texans (which he never got) and refused to report to any of the team's spring workouts. Before training camp began this summer, Watson was accused by several women in the Houston area (and the number is now approaching 20) of sexual misconduct. The disgraced former 12th overall pick has not dressed for the Texans this season and may never take another NFL snap. 

NFL team fortunes can change quickly as rosters turn over year-to-year more than in any other sport and for some players, one calendar year can make the difference between being a serviceable player and finding themselves out of the league. The Texans fall from the top tier of teams to the bottom has been as fast as any I can remember. The formula was simple: take an unpopular coach, make him general manager, have him trade away a top player, fire him, appoint your son as general manager and have your star quarterback's personal life derail his career. The Texans entered the game with a deceptive 1-2 record but their win came in week one against their division cousins and fellow basement dwellers, the Jacksonville Jaguars who are now playing better each week. I predict that will turn out to be the only win they register and that the Texans will finish the season 1-16. All of which is why yesterday's contest in Orchard Park looked more like a football practice for the Bills than an actual game.  

The box score is as lopsided as any I can recall. The Bills posted 26 first downs to the Texans 6. Buffalo racked up 450 yards of offence to the Texans 109. 109 yards of total offence. Add 4 interceptions, a lost fumble and pelting rain to the mix and you have a laugher. I felt sorry for Texans quarterback Davis Mills (whose name sounds like he should be Commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club) who was drafted in the third round this year to serve as a third stringer behind Watson and Tyrod Taylor who Bills fans will remember well. Mills looked overwhelmed and, at times, terrified and rightly so. On offence, both Singletary and Moss ran well for the Bills who had no need to dig very deeply into their playbook.

They will probably need everything they've got in the playbook this week as the Kansas City Chiefs are up next at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday Night Football. The Bills lost twice last season to the Chiefs - once in October at home and then in the AFC Championship Game. Defensively, they are much better this year but will it prove to be enough to slow down Patrick Mahomes? That's why they play the games.