The refs didn’t steal a Super Bowl trip from the Bills. The Chiefs’ excellence did

From 1967 through 1975, the Oakland Raiders were the most successful team in professional football … in the regular season. They compiled a record of 95-24-7, and that winning percentage of .798 was a full 70 percentage points higher than the second-best team, the Dallas Cowboys. Those Raiders were packed with future Hall of Famers, and they had John Madden, one of the NFL’s best coaches, for most of that span.

And throughout that time, they were stopped from winning the big one by several different dynasties. They lost Super Bowl II to the Green Bay Packers, and were crossed off in successive seasons in the playoffs by the Miami Dolphins and the Pittsburgh Steelers – two more all-time teams. Oakland’s 7-8 postseason record tended to render everything else irrelevant. It wasn’t until 1976, when the Raiders went 13-1 in the regular season and poleaxed the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl XI, that they finally got that albatross off their backs.

For the Buffalo Bills of the Josh Allen era, there is still that same albatross, though there’s only one dynasty that has stood in their way. That, of course, would be the Kansas City Chiefs, who worked past the Bills once again in a hard-fought 32-29 win on Sunday night. The Bills had their chances in this one, as they have in most of their postseason games against Patrick Mahomes and his crew, but things tend to turn out the way they turn out.

Since 2018, the Bills have 77 regular-season wins, third-most in the NFL behind the Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens. But the 7-6 postseason record, and all those losses to the Chiefs, will continue to sting. Their 84 wins in that time are the most by any team in a seven-year span never to make the Super Bowl.

“It was not the result we wanted,” Bills head coach Sean McDermott said postgame, when asked what he told his players. “I told them that they had nothing to be ashamed of; they gave it all they had, and I love them.”

McDermott said nothing about the officials, and as much as people want to believe that the refs have it in the bag for the Chiefs, said officials should never have been in the position they were in this game’s pivotal moment. With 13:01 left in the fourth quarter, Josh Allen tried to convert fourth-and-one from the Kansas City 41-yard line. The Bills were up 22-21 at this point, so a drive-extending conversion would have been huge. It was a close call either way, and two officials on referee Clete Blakeman’s crew made different initial calls on the play – one ruled for a successful conversion, and one didn’t – and in the end, it was ruled that Allen didn’t make it.

First of all, the Chiefs’ defense had this on lock throughout the game. Second of all, many coaches and executives around the league have pleaded their cases to the NFL’s Competition Committee how ridiculous it is that conversions are ruled upon with no technical assistance as opposed to a couple of zebras and another official holding a first-down marker.

Al Davis, who ran those old-school Raiders brilliantly, loved to say that the refs had it out for his teams because he had a fractious relationship with then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle. The Bills were classier about the whole thing, most likely because they knew that it was really – and as usual – about the opportunities the Chiefs had and exploited, ones that the Bills could not.

There were several turning points in this game, and even when the Bills were able to answer, the Chiefs just had – as they have all season long.

That failed fourth-down conversion in the fourth quarter led to Mahomes’ touchdown run, and gave the Chiefs the lead again. Mahomes was able to convert his two-point attempt when Allen wasn’t on Buffalo’s touchdown drive, and that was yet another little death for the Bills.

The Bills had an advantage with their run game that showed up in Week 11 of the regular season, when they beat the Chiefs, 30-21 and scored three rushing touchdowns. But it wasn’t until the middle of the third quarter that Buffalo finally led with it. Down 21-16 with 10:01 left in the third quarter, the Bills went on a brilliant 12-play, 80-yard drive with just one pass play, and James Cook’s one-yard touchdown that put the Bills up, 22-21.

We can dice up all the reasons the Bills can’t get past the Chiefs, but in the end, it’s not too dissimilar from the questions those Raiders were asking themselves when they went up against Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, and Chuck Noll.

Sometimes, your dynastic opponents just have more on the ball when it counts than you do. That’s why they’re dynasties.