The chance for the Buffalo Bills to advance to the AFC Championship Game sailed wide right off the foot of kicker Tyler Bass. Bass missed a game-tying 44-yard field goal with 1:43 left in regulation and the Kansas City Chiefs ran out the clock to deliver a heartbreaking 27-24 divisional-round loss to the Bills. Bills […]
The chance for the Buffalo Bills to advance to the AFC Championship Game sailed wide right off the foot of kicker Tyler Bass.
Bass missed a game-tying 44-yard field goal with 1:43 left in regulation and the Kansas City Chiefs ran out the clock to deliver a heartbreaking 27-24 divisional-round loss to the Bills.
Bills signal-caller Josh Allen, who executed a 16-play, 56-yard drive to get Buffalo into field-goal range with under two minutes left, was clearly stunned by the outcome as he sat dejected at his postgame press conference.
It would have been easy for Allen to place blame on Bass for Buffalo’s loss, but the star quarterback didn’t.
“I wish it wouldn’t have been put in that situation,” Allen told reporters, per CBS Sports. “You win as a team, you lose as a team. One play doesn’t define a game, it doesn’t define a season. I know people are going to be out there saying that. We got to be there for him because again, we execute a couple plays prior, we’re probably singing a different tune right now.”
Allen also made sure to find Bass before he left the Highmark Stadium turf. He found Bass outside the players’ tunnel and gave the veteran kicker a quick embrace.
While Bass surely botched a makeable field goal, Allen was correct that he and the Bills offense could have put their kicker in a better position to succeed.
Allen threw back-to-back incompletions — one of was throwaway and the other had no chance of being caught — coming out of the two-minute warning.
But much of that will be bypassed and forgotten about as Bass will certainly be the focal point of another demoralizing defeat for the Bills.
