By CHUCK POLLOCK, Sun Senior Sports Columnist
It was New Year’s Eve 2017 and Sean McDermott was winding up his first season as Bills’ coach with a 22-16 win over the Dolphins in Miami Gardens, a game that ensured a 9-7 record and was highlighted by a 1-yard touchdown run by defensive tackle Harrison Phillips.
Still, Buffalo was enroute to a 17th straight season sans a playoff berth unless the Bengals could pull off a miracle in Baltimore and beat the Ravens to propel the Bills into the post-season.
Sure enough, with 44 seconds left, Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton threw a 49-yard dart to Tyler Boyd in the end zone to beat the Bengals and end Buffalo’s 17 years of post-season futility.
The “Red Rifle’s” heroics sent the Bills into a playoff matchup against the Jaguars in Jacksonville and earned thousands of dollars for Dalton’s charities from grateful Buffalo fans.
The post-season game was a super drag, a matchup between two pedestrian quarterbacks, Tyrod Taylor and Blake Bortles, in which the Jaguars prevailed 10-3.
Little did we realize that McDermott would take Buffalo to the playoffs in even of the next eight seasons but with dubious success, reaching the AFC Championship only twice, losing both.
NOW THEY have another shot, starting Sunday afternoon (1 o’clock, CBS-TV, Bills Radio Network) back in Jacksonville.
Oddly, the Bills (12-5) are 1 1/2-point favorites over the Jaguars (13-4) winners of the AFC South and eight straight games.
Ever since quarterback Josh Allen took the job there’s been an ongoing argument about how long Buffalo’s Super Bowl window would be open.
Clearly the Bills best shot was the 2021 season when they lost the divisional playoffs, 42-36 in the overtime to the Chiefs in Kansas City.
This year’s Buffalo squad didn’t seem anything special but a funny thing happened as the season evolved. Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson three of the AFC’s top QBs fell victim to injury. It’s easy to project Allen as the conference’s elite quarterback — after all he is defending MVP though nursing a sore ankle — and maybe that Super Bowl window is still wide open.
And for those with a taste for history, this is the first time since 1998 that Tom Brady, Peyton Manning or Mahomes haven’t been part of the AFC playoff field.
AS ALLEN noted, “We’re not focused on what’s happened in the past. We’re a completely different team than we were last year and the year before that and so on. … Our job is to play the Jacksonville Jaguars at 1 o’clock on Sunday, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
To which Pro Bowl offensive tackle Dion Dawkins added, “Aren’t we the sixth seed? Nobody is talking about the Buffalo Bills. All the stress is not on our shoulders. The mindset is to win, no matter what. We play to be in the dance. We’re dancing, now we just need to be prom king and queen at the end.
“Everybody’s record is 0-0. I like our team against anybody. The pressure has not been, or more so I would say the anxiety, is not through the roof. We respect every team that’s in the tournament. It’s just, live to that next day, man. The guys are cool. The guys are calm. … I like where the Buffalo Bills are.
And McDermott pointed out, “We’re really focused on this game, quite honestly, Improving where we need to improve, making sure we’ve got the right game plan, getting the first chance for the players to come out and execute and see where we go from there.
“This is going to sound like coach speak. It’s not. It’s process,” McDermott added. “You won’t get the result you want if you don’t hone in on what’s right in front of you.” The Bills can beat anybody in the playoffs. They also can lose to anybody.
“We’ve been forced into a lot of different scenarios this year and found ourselves out of most of them,” Allen said. “There are some that, obviously, we’ve learned from and taken that knowledge that we’ve gained throughout the season into the playoffs. “Having guys that have been around the playoffs regularly on a team, it does pay dividends. … Whatever we can do to make one more play and score one more point than our opponent, that’s our goal.”
INJURIES
Middle linebacker Terrell Bernard (calf); cornerback Maxwell Hairston (ankle); safety Damar Hamlin (pectoral) all out; running back Ty Johnson (ankle); wide receiver Jesse Palmer (ankle); kicker Matt Prater (quad); linebacker Shaq Thompson (neck) all questionable.
POLLOCK’S PICK: Bills 23, Jaguars 20
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
