Bills learn to love the simple kick

Buffalo avoids mistakes and Baltimore can't, setting up Bills-Chiefs once again.

Matt Milano (58)

Coaches have said it since scoreboard clocks had second hands, since the goalpost was on the goal line instead of the end line. End every possession with a kick. You will sleep much better afterward.

Either punt it, or kick a field goal, or kick an extra point. The foot is more trustworthy than the hands. Don’t leave the ball lying around, and don’t throw it to the enemy. Don’t try hero plays. If you win the Super Bowl, no one will call you boring. Most important, if the opponent insists on beating himself, by all means let him.

This has been a difficult concept for the Buffalo Bills since they took Josh Allen in the first round of the 2018 draft. Allen was like a .210-hitting slugger in those days. Few other quarterbacks in any area could defy the restrictions of the human body as Allen could, especially when he threw on the run. Since Allen could also leave tacklers lying on the field like bread crumbs, Bills’ fans loved him. Fantasy league players did, too. But his gifts didn’t add up to playoff dominance, although Allen played as well as he could in 2021 when Kansas City tied the Bills in the final 13 seconds of regulation and then beat them in overtime.

On Sunday the Bills played Baltimore, which had spanked them 35-10 on Sept. 29. The Ravens were the road team, yet they were favored. Baltimore had scored at least 31 points in each of its past four games. Its five losses had come by a total of 22 points. Maybe that should have been an alarm. Close games are often won by the team who kicks. But Lamar Jackson had thrown 41 touchdown passes with four interceptions, and he seemed the only Most Valuable Player rival to Allen. And since he had Derrick Henry by his side, the Ravens would surely make Allen exert himself, maybe to his own detriment, to get this particular win.

Instead Allen stayed in the slow lane, and Buffalo took a 27-25 victory that will match them against Kansas City for the fifth time in the past six playoff cycles. This time it’s in the AFC Championship.

The snapshot play came at the end, when Jackson hurried the Ravens down the snowy field at Buffalo’s Highmark Stadium and threw a TD pass to Isaiah Likely. Because the Ravens had gone for two after an earlier touchdown and failed, they were obligated to do it when they trailed by two here. When Jackson has the ball in his hands he represents more possibilities than anyone else in the game. Here, he rolled out and put a soft pass near the belt buckle of Mark Andrews, his most collective receiver.

Andrews and Jackson arrived in Baltimore together, and Andrews has caught 436 passes in that span, most in Ravens’ history. He also has 51 touchdowns, a gamer who recovered from a broken fibula in nine months. He happened to be on the Southwest flight with an insulin kit one day and used it to save a woman in distress. He’s a brilliant player, but this time he slid down to make the delicate catch that would save the game….and he didn’t. The ball and the season bounced away, on the highest-percentage play that coach John Harbaugh could draw.

But Andrews wasn’t having a great day before that. Terrel Bernard slapped a ball out of his hands and Buffalo recovered with 8;41 left, and Allen rushed the Bills downfeld eventually to a fourth-and-goal from the two. Buffalo coach Sean McDermott called upon Tyler Bass to kick the Bills into an 8-point lead with 3:31 left. Others might have gone for it and might have even made it, but Jackson also could have led Baltimore to a go-ahead touchdown. Make sure you end your drives with a kick.

Jackson was breathtaking for much of the day, and not just because it was 19 degrees. He was 18 for 23 for 254 yards, and he ran for 39 yards. But those were tolerable numbers for Buffalo, particularly when Jackson mixed in two more turnovers. One was an air-mailed pass that Buffalo’s Taylor Rapp intercepted. The other was a clumsy mishandle that Von Miller scooped and took 39 yards. Allen scored one of his two touchdowns after that. Buffalo won the turnover table by a 2-0 score and got 10 points that way, but then the Bills led the league in fewest fumbles, with two. Allen fumbled 18 times in 2023, only five times this season.

The Bills, or at least their Mafia, realize the hidden pain of the End-It-With-A-Kick mandate. It actually means End It With A Good Kick. Scott Norwood’s name will live as long as people watch “Buffalo 66,” but Bass went wide right from 44 yards in last year’s Divisional and the Bills lost, 27-24, at home to Kansas City. And Buffalo had no turnovers that night. Allen ran for two scores and passed for another, and he threw 39 times and got 182 yards out of it. Against Baltimore Sunday he threw 22 times for 137. Last year the Bills got to kick the ball every time except for a fake punt that fizzled in the fourth quarter, and they survived when the Chiefs fumbled the ball right back.

Buffalo’s underdog status is a hangover from that game until the beginning of the season, when they weren’t expected to win an AFC East that they wound up winning by five games. The outside world was slow to believe in an offense without Stefon Diggs and a defense without stalwart safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer. But James Cook came alive to rush for 16 touchdowns, and a young, quick defense got a major lift on Nov. 30 when linebacker Matt Milano returned from a torn bicep, which happened during a bag drill in training camp. Milano was part of an orchestral effort that held Derrick Henry to 89 yards on 16 carries, and 46 of those yards came on one drive.

Baltimore thus exits the playoffs even though it led the league in yards per rush and yards per play. And, in a time when quarterbacks are irrationally judged on how many Super Bowls they reach and win, Jackson will carry that weight.

Jackson said Sunday that he was “tired of this shit” and he acknowledged the lethal nature of the turnovers. He also lamented that the Ravens lost a game in which they never punted. Eventually he’ll see the value of the kick, as long as it doesn’t just send a can down the road.