The Bills Are Cursed: That’s the Only Explanation for Wide Right, the Sequel

This was Buffalo’s best chance to erase a horrible past against the Chiefs. Instead, here we are, again, talking about Scott Norwood.

This is when we really start using words such as “cursed.” This is when we dig up land-surveying results and ensure that the stadium is not built atop some ancient order of ghouls whose sole purpose is torturing its frozen occupants. This is when we search for explanations to losses not born of our world. This is when we bring in the priest, bust out the sage, mount the flamethrower … anything.

Wide right. Again. And before that, a missed touchdown pass. Josh Allen, who can throw a ball across Lake Erie, short-armed one to Khalil Shakir, while also leaving a wide-open Stefon Diggs jogging into the play’s abyss. Not 15 minutes beforehand, Allen had thrown a touchdown to Shakir in such an impossibly tight window, while fading to his left and chucking the ball across his body. Not six minutes beforehand, Bills rookie tight end, Dalton Kincaid, slapped an Allen fumble out of the hands of a Chiefs defender—primed to scoop and score—to save possession. Not five minutes beforehand, offensive coordinator Joe Brady dialed up this beautiful take on an orbit motion, identifying man coverage for Shakir and sprinting him out into the open for a fourth-down conversion meant to set Buffalo up for the win. The flow of the game, the direction of the breaks, it all felt like fate was finally kind to the Bills. Here was a group dialed in. Playing smart. Playing to win.

Bass's missed field goal gave the Chiefs their sixth consecutive trip to the AFC championship game :: Jamie Germano/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / USA TODAY NETWORK

This was Buffalo’s best chance to erase a horrible past with this Chiefs team. Say what you will about head coach Sean McDermott, and his own penchant to melt down when the game gets tight, but this was not exclusively on him. This can’t 100% be put on a defense that held Patrick Mahomes to manageable numbers, and punched a fumble touchback through the back of the end zone to keep the game tight, especially given how completely drained they were from an injury perspective. This was not to be blamed on any singular decision. Even the much-discussed fake punt, which was snapped to Damar Hamlin at the beginning of the fourth quarter, was done against only 10 Chiefs on special teams in which Buffalo had a clear numbers advantage.

And Allen looked strong for most of the game, in typical punch-drunk pugilist postseason form. He was chucking laterals in the divisional round like it was flag football night at the Ale House. Buffalo was hanging on to the ball, with scoring drives of 10 plays or more on three of its first four possessions, knowingly relieving their depleted defense and keeping Mahomes off the field. The Bills were not afraid, playing a hit list of Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriends while the Chiefs were getting settled. Everyone shoveled out their seats for a nice view at a brighter future.

And here we are, again, talking about Scott Norwood.

Someone had to stop the Chiefs from reaching a sixth consecutive conference title game, and this was the year to do it. Travis Kelce has never been easier—said relatively, of course—to cover. The Chiefs’ receiving corps has never been less dependent. Mahomes, in his Tom Brady–esque quest to simply will the ball down the field, picking up every convenient flag along the way, has not been this out of answers consistently when scrambling around in the backfield since the Chiefs lost to Tampa Bay in the pandemic Super Bowl.

With the NFL, in particular, we often look foolish when speaking definitively. We write in terms of permanence—best, worst, all, nothing, forever, never—and teams just keep hammering back. Buffalo spent the latter half of this season in complete defiance of our expectations, winning six straight after falling to .500 before the bye week. Many of those games were against heavy hitters. One was even against the Chiefs.

But, now, it’s impossible to believe that Kansas City has not learned its lesson over the course of a painful slog through 2023, and that they won’t reload at the wide receiver position (especially if Kelce wanders off to the Christmas Tree Farm and retires).

Now, it’s impossible to believe that the Bills don’t undergo some wholesale changes themselves. Their best receiver is 30 years old and hasn’t posted a 100-yard game since mid-October. Their 2024 free-agent list includes some heavy hitters, as well as a majority of their assembled role players brought in to buttress a championship run. At some point, Buffalo will have to go through the same transition in talent around Allen that Mahomes is enduring now.

We could be wrong, but how do we not see the Chiefs trending in one direction and Buffalo starting to fade in another?

That’s why Sunday was supposed to be special. That’s why everything was setting up for one cosmic moment where the world was righted and the frozen masses would travel home with warm hearts. That’s why a curse is the only explanation for why the ball sliced hard to the right, shooting off toward the black New York sky, as if carried by the ghouls themselves.