Less than half an hour after his team beat the Chiefs here at Arrowhead Stadium, Von Miller walked behind the podium in the tiny room reserved for the Bills’ press conference. He started with an opening statement of sorts.
“Hello,” he said, grinning. “I’ve been to this stadium many times and stand on the same podium, but I don’t have a smile on my face. So it’s good to come here and smile.”
For years, the Denver Broncos failed to beat Patrick Mahomes’ Chiefs When Von Miller at this stadium, but Bills wouldn’t have won on Sunday without it he. Marriage helped form a team purposefully and blatantly built to beat the Chiefs.The implications for the future are terrible.
But there is a payoff. The Chiefs no longer he’s the best team in the NFL. The home defeat didn’t make that statement, but rather cemented it. That title now belongs to the Bills, and don’t look at the fact that they won as proof. how they won.
Josh Allen was glued to the game-winning two-minute drill, soaking up the kind of inevitability Patrick Mahomes has often inflicted on others. , Allen was nailed down. What is the difference this time? Their defense got a stoppage they failed to reach here in January.
This is what Miller did, and why the Bills were comfortable paying the 33-year-old Edge Rusher his guaranteed $45 million this summer, even if it meant that the 37-year-old still had a cap. Even if that means eating up space.
The final impact play is read as a Mahomes interception into the arm of Bills cornerback Taron Johnson, but Miller presses inside the edge of right tackle Andrew Wylie to destroy the play and knock Mahomes out of what he planned. I was driven into a throwing window that wasn’t there. One drive earlier, Miller sacked Mahomes and ended a drive the Chiefs also wanted to do.
He’s the one who makes the difference for teams who spent the offseason knowing they were 13 seconds shy of beating the Chiefs in January. .
That’s how it works now.
The Chiefs are glued to that mix and the title of the best team of the next decade will change course, but in the era of Patrick Mahomes there will always be a general manager somewhere and a man to take him on. Create a blueprint for the roster, even if it means sacrificing some of his future to do it.
Bills is this year’s version, maybe next year’s version, maybe the next few years’ version.
But there will be others during Mahomes’ 10-year deal. This is the new norm, the new reality facing the Chiefs that is more complementary than it seems. The Bills don’t care if Miller’s contract, which at 35 makes him $22 million, will drive them to cap hell in his two years.or to win just The game they won on Sunday.
And it worked.
But barely.
It’s a strange spin to put a moral victory on Mahomes’ defeat.The Chiefs aren’t some sort of lovable underdog, even if they were underdogs on this field on Sunday for the first time in Mahomes’ career. , not all losses are created equal. Three weeks ago in Indianapolis, the Chiefs looked like they could lose to just about anyone.
The team, which had all its resources on deck and had its sights set on two offseasons on Sunday, needed a lot to thrive in the fourth quarter. This felt like a coin toss game, but less literally than last time, and even after implementing a reverse offseason strategy and extending his championship window at the expense of short-term hits, the Chiefs Certainly not far away.
The gap between the Bills and Chiefs looks a lot thinner than I expected. Also, if you don’t think they’ll get their next chance, we’ll be interested to see which team thinks they’ll give the Bills a chance in the postseason. .
“I think you just want to win just because you know you are a competitor and you are playing the best of the best. I feel great.”You want to win those games.
“At the end of the day, that’s what I have to say repeatedly to people in the locker room: One game in the regular season, you wanted to win, you thought you could win, and you didn’t. How are you going to answer?”
More broadly, if the Chiefs feel they can win the Super Bowl before Sunday and count me on that list, what second half interception will do something to change that? why?
The repercussions of the result were not that the Chiefs could no longer complete all of their preseason goal lists, but rather that for the first time since Mahomes became a franchise quarterback, he would have to travel to achieve them. The Bills have the upper hand in the home battle.
But otherwise, no need to be reminded that the Chiefs lost this same game. This arrived at a similar time on the schedule exactly one year ago. In a much worse way to start. And they won the rematch.
A lot can happen between now and the start of the playoffs, and three months can resemble the life of football, so no rematch is guaranteed. No other team has played on the same field as any of the teams in
However, if they do reunite, there is an important difference. The difference may become more conventional and less unusual.
they will be weak.