The Bills’ Dream Season Came to an End Because of One Man

The emotion of this Bills’ season seemed to set up a dream ending. On Sunday, another Super Bowl contender had other plans.

The script, it seemed, had been crafted. This was late-January playoff football in Buffalo. This was snow swirling, traffic jamming, and Bills Mafia out drinking and chanting and jumping through tables. Typical. And, ultimately, not typical at all.

This was at the end of a brutal year, even by the local standards, after the blizzard to end all blizzards and the racist mass shooting at a grocery store and Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest. This was the backdrop of this game, which mattered a whole lot less than life-and-death but was relevant, tethered, tied: A franchise with history and Hall of Famers and four-straight Super Bowl appearances but still no NFL championship could end the misery. Maybe. Please?

At Store716 early Sunday morning, co-founder David Gram tried to summarize this recent stretch. His spot sells what he calls “original Buffalo fan gear.” He himself is an original Buffalo sports fan, born and bred and never left. In truth, he never even thought of leaving. Not this place. He described a city that rallied around Hamlin, and each other, because that’s what happens here, what drives a fanbase and its football team and sustains them both. “We get kicked in the balls over and over again,” he says. “And we always just rise up and do something, keep going. There’s no doubt in my mind. I know we’re going to win.”

All they needed was the ending, and that couldn’t be written Sunday, because the ideal finale could only be winning the season’s final game in three weeks. First, they had to beat the Bengals; then, they would have to beat the Chiefs; then, triumph in Super Bowl LVII. None of that was certain. But it was all there, all possible, and for a fanbase starved for a Super Bowl, an odd but appropriate notion bubbled to the surface. To win the one game the Bills have never won, in this stretch, of all stretches? Nothing would be more Buffalo, more perfect.

So here it was. The moment when the game seemed destined to turn in the direction everyone in Bills Mafia expected, after a start disastrous failed to fully capture. The Bengals had taken a red pencil to the narrative, after the Bills won the coin toss and deferred. This gave Cincinnati the ball, and they held it for most of the first half. (The Bengals, for the skip-ahead types, triumphed, 27–10. They will play the Chiefs next Sunday in Kansas City, in a bid to return to the Super Bowl this season.)

Here's how Buffalo’s moment evaporated into the snowy night: The Bengals scored a touchdown on their first possession. The Bills went three-and-out. The Bengals scored a touchdown on their second possession. The Bills went three-and-out. Throughout, Joe Burrow looked like Joe Montana: calm, cool, efficient and dangerous, the best player on the field. He threw for 186 yards in the first half alone, connecting with wideout Ja’Marr Chase and tight end Hayden Hurst, respectively, for those early scores.

The crew that cleans the yard lines with snowblowers during stoppages saw as much of the field as the Bills offense early on. At one point, Cincinnati had run 16 plays to three for Buffalo; the total yardage was 146–6. In fact, the first truly impressive Bills play didn’t happen until there were 49 seconds left in the first quarter, when Matt Milano wrestled Burrow to the snow-blanketed turf for a third-down sack.

The build to the moment started right after that, when Josh Allen found his favorite target, Stefon Diggs, for a completion that also signaled a momentum shift. A positive sign on an afternoon absent positive signs. Maybe. Allen nearly scored on a QB sneak near the goal-line to finish that drive, dragging what seemed like half of the Bengals’ defensive line with him. Buffalo dialed up another plunge on the next play. This time, Allen dove right in.

Would it change? Maybe! The Bengals again moved the ball down field. They would finish the first two quarters with 275 yards. They would average 6.7 yards per play. They would convert 60% of their third downs.

But Hamlin was in the stadium, making his first public appearance since the last time these teams played. On that Monday night, Jan. 2, when he made a tackle and got up and collapsed, trainers and paramedics saved his life. That game, held in Cincinnati, was canceled. Hamlin went to a local hospital. He would soon transfer to a Buffalo-area medical facility. He would be released from there, and he would make regular visits to the Bills’ facility, meeting with the teammates he continued to inspire, while working out what’s next.

At the two-minute warning of the first half on Sunday, the big screens at Highmark Stadium flashed to a suite. With the snow and the glare from the lights, it was difficult to see anything on the screen, let alone anyone. But suddenly, the picture became clearer. There was Hamlin, holding up both hands, through which he formed a heart. To say the stands erupted doesn’t do the moment justice. All of Buffalo stood and turned away from the field. They fashioned their hands into hearts, too, while screaming and saluting and jumping up and down.

This was the moment, right? Maybe. The teams jogged back on the field. The Bills forced an incompletion. The crowd assisted the defense, as its louder, inspired roar helped push the Bengals into a false start. Even when Burrow ostensibly threw his third touchdown pass of the first half, an official review overturned the call—Chase had not completed the catch in-bounds. Cincinnati settled for a field goal and a 17–7 lead. The comeback seemed imminent, the ending in reach. Right?

Well, no. The Bengals showed Sunday that they remain a legitimate Super Bowl threat, a team capable of hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in three weeks, despite injuries to the offensive line. The gripes from running back Joe Mixon about the oddsmakers who made the Bills 5.5-point favorites and about the league officials who began selling tickets to a neutral site game next weekend, should the Bills have advanced to play the Chiefs, were legitimate. Disrespectful, Mixon told reporters.

“I never feel like the underdog,” Burrow said.

Nor did he play like one on Sunday. Burrow expanded Cincinnati’s lead with another long drive in the third quarter that ended when Mixon wiggled into the end zone. By that point, the score (24–10) matched the lopsided nature of the game itself. For Bills fans dreaming of the perfect ending, it only got worse from there.

Still, some members of Buffalo’s rabid fanbase, having been “kicked in the balls” again, surely understood that this season had become about survival over the past few weeks. They’ll be back and again in the hunt for the Lombardi Trophy. Surely? Possibly? Maybe. It has to happen at some point. Right?