“It’s not fun. But to be the champs, you’ve got to beat the champs, and we didn’t do it tonight.” That’s what Josh Allen said after losing another playoff game to the Chiefs. That’s the fourth time they didn’t beat the champs in the playoffs and that’s heartbreaking for Allen. Sure, those couple of fourth-down failures cost them their Super Bowl spot. But let’s not sugarcoat it. There were plenty of opportunities that the Bills missed. Take those missed Tush-Push, for instance.

Talk about the Tush-Push in the NFL, and one team instantly comes to mind—the Philadelphia Eagles. But here’s the thing: the Bills aren’t the Eagles, and the AFC Championship made that pretty clear. The reason? Well, Josh Allen and his squad were 0-4 on Tush-Push against the Chiefs. Translation: they couldn’t cash in on a short-yardage play—at the worst possible time.

But let’s be real: the Bills had a pretty good success on Tush-Push in the regular season. It’s just they couldn’t pull off against the Chiefs. But why? Well, the Chiefs were fully prepared for their game plans, and their safety Nazeeh Johnson explained it pretty well, stating that Allen had a tell on his QB sneaks. “I mean, from our defensive side, he always QB sneaks to our right,” Johnson said on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio. “So every time we see him in QB sneak formation, we know he’s coming to the right side every time. It’s a hundred percent, 10 for 10, he’s going to that side.”

See, the Bills‘ QB went for the Tush-Push to the left every chance he got. But Johnson thinks that if he had switched it up, the Chiefs wouldn’t have seen it coming. “If he would’ve done something different, then we wouldn’t have been prepared because we’re selling he was coming to that right side every time,” Johnson said. “And if they would’ve, you know, I think self-scouted a little bit, then they would’ve went to the opposite side and they probably would’ve had a little more chance. But, no, we sell the farm on what they like to do on film.”

Now, hear this out. Watching the Bills on tush-push was like watching a broken record play on a loop. Third and inches? Tush-Push to the left. Fourth and inches? Tush-Push to the left. Again and again, the same call, the same push, and the same result—nothing. Besides, they had to fight Chris Jones, who was a beast standing at 6’6” and weighing 310 lbs.

And the Bills? Well, they had the running back Ray Davis, who weighs only 220 lbs. That means, if Sean McDermott and the Bills actually want to consider tush-push in the future, they may need to add some extra push in 2025.

Sean McDermott gives a final verdict on questionable calls

When the Bills kick off next season, one thing will still be haunting them—how the heck do they get past the Chiefs in the playoffs? And this season’s 29-39 defeat is gonna haunt them for a long time. And why wouldn’t it be? I mean, the Chiefs came prepared for all their questions and thrashed them outta the park. Once Again! Sure, some questionable calls were part of the game, but at the end of the day, the Buffalo team had to suffer yet another heartbreak.

Speaking of which, head coach Sean McDermott had his say on those questionable calls. When asked if the officiating played a role in the loss, he shut it down—no blaming the refs on this one. “We went into the game and one of my messages to the team… is ‘you’re not gonna get calls. We’re not gonna get calls.’ And I think when you prepare a team, you prepare them ahead of time mentally for, ‘this is the way it’s going down.’ And you live with that. That’s not the reason why we lost,” McDermott said on the Refs’ Bias for Patrick Mahomes’ chiefs.

He further added, “You start looking at that, you lose sight of all the adjustments you can make as a team… to improve who we are and how we do things. There is going to be some of that, and you have to be above that and play above that. At the end of the day, the game was decided on the field, and we didn’t perform well enough to get the job done” 

Well, if we are not wrong, then the head coach had another opinion on that fourth-down call when Josh Allen was ruled short in the early fourth quarter. See, with 13:01 remaining on the clock, the Bills handed the pigskin to Allen, and it looked like Allen just powered through for a first down. Alas, the referees ruled him short, which sparked the controversy for their decision.

“I thought he had it,” that’s what the head coach said via Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk on the refs’ decision. But at the end of the day, he made one thing clear—that’s not why they lost.