ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — No matter the setting — Arrowhead Stadium or Orchard Park — Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs keep finding ways to beat Josh Allen and Buffalo Bills in the playoffs.
Mahomes threw two touchdown passes to Travis Kelce and the defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs advanced to their sixth straight AFC championship game with a 27-24 win over the Bills on Sunday night.
The Chiefs move on to Baltimore to face Lamar Jackson and the conference’s top-seeded Ravens, who beat Houston 34-10 on Saturday.
Kansas City is 0-1 in the playoffs against the Ravens, following a 30-7 loss in the 2010 wild-card round.
Baltimore defeated Kansas City 36-35 in their most recent regular-season matchup in Week 2 of the 2021 season.
Coming into the Divisional Round, most of the talk was centered around perhaps the game’s two best signal-callers.
With the Mahomes-Allen storyline, many expected fireworks directly out of the gate.
While both teams had a pretty easy time moving the ball in the first quarter on Sunday, it didn’t lead to many points.
Neither side managed to put up more than a field goal in the game’s opening frame.
Buffalo downright dominated the time of possession battle, holding it for over 11 minutes of game time to Kansas City’s 3:33.
The Chiefs had the ball just once in the first quarter, seeing their drive end early following a drop.
With the Bills running a staggering 21 plays in the first quarter and then breaking through with a touchdown to start the second quarter, it was an uneventful contest early on.
If there was a single Achilles heel for Steve Spagnuolo’s defense this season, it’d be its run defense.
The Chiefs ranked 28th in EPA per play allowed versus the run, putting them in the bottom five in the entire league.
For the most part, though, opposing teams either didn’t have the personnel to commit to it, didn’t want to commit to it or ran well but couldn’t cap off heavy-run drives with touchdowns.
The Bills didn’t subscribe to those theories on Sunday.
