No Mahomes, no problems? Bills have a new (but familiar) adversary standing in way of title

You know the feeling. You've been sitting in traffic for what feels like an eternity, plodding along, always in the wrong lane. But then, miraculously, the traffic breaks up, and you have a free and clear open road ahead of you. What else is there to do but floor it?

You, in this scenario, are Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills, and the open road is this year's postseason. No Lamar Jackson. No Joe Burrow. And, most significantly, no Patrick Mahomes waiting to wreck yet another Bills season.

As the AP noted earlier this week, outside of Aaron Rodgers' 11 playoff wins, no AFC quarterback has anywhere close to Allen's seven postseason victories. CJ Stroud has two, Trevor Lawrence has one, and no one else in the conference even has one. Quarterback wins aren't the most reliable metric - Rodgers does not exactly have the best odds to win the AFC - but they attest to a quarterback's ability to survive and thrive under postseason pressure.

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So yes, the road would seem to be clear for Buffalo ... were it not for that retooled, reworked road rocket in an all-too-familiar red-white-and-blue paint scheme streaking up on the outside.

Six years after Tom Brady and Bill Belichick relinquished their hold on the AFC East, five years after Buffalo began stacking division titles once again, and in the same year that the hated Chiefs finally played themselves out of the postseason ... here come those damn New England Patriots again. There aren't enough tables in Buffalo to cushion Bills fans' agony.

Buffalo surrendered the AFC East title to Mike Vrabel, Drake Maye and the resurgent Patriots in 2025 after holding it the past five seasons. This isn't an inconsequential shift; losing their annual home-field advantage means Buffalo can't freeze out visitors for at least one postseason game. The Bills' Super Bowl window has been closing for years, but now here come the Patriots, trying to pound that window shut with both hands.

Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills split their series with the New England Patriots this season. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)Sarah Stier via Getty Images

But if the Bills are looking for hope, first off, they don't need to look any farther than Week 15. In their crucial road rematch with New England, down 21-0 midway through the second quarter and 24-7 at halftime, the Bills rallied with three straight touchdowns and then traded punches en route to a 35-31 victory. It wasn't enough to reclaim the division, but it was enough to make a serious statement.

Allen believed that the message coming out of that game was, We're not out of it. We're going to continue to fight, one play at a time. No matter what the score is, if it's in the third quarter, it's in the fourth quarter," he said after the victory. Whatever it is, if we've got a chance and we've got the ball, we feel like we like our chances. That's that."

He's right; the Bills have made a habit of posting second-half comebacks to win. They set the tone back in the very first game of the season, rallying from 15 points down to Baltimore in the final four minutes of the game to win. In Week 14, Buffalo posted another flurry of fourth-quarter touchdowns - three in under five minutes - to flip a 10-point deficit to Cincinnati into a victory. And now that Foxborough win looms large in both teams' minds.

Plus, there's the theory of battle testing. Allen and the Bills have been here before - many times before, but let's not belabor that point - while this is the first playoff journey for Vrabel, Maye and the rest of the Patriots as a unit.

And if you believe in the validity of regular-season tuneups, Buffalo had to face the they-were-good-at-the-time Ravens and Chiefs, while the Patriots drew the Raiders, Browns and Giants. (Both teams fattened up on the lower half of their division and the mostly easy pickings of the NFC South.)

A potential Bills-Patriots postseason matchup wouldn't happen until the AFC title game; Buffalo would face Denver next round if both teams win. But if the cards fell that way, it would be one hell of a game.

Both offensively and defensively, the Bills and Patriots finished the season with near-identical top-of-the-league numbers. New England averaged 379.4 yards of offense and 28.8 points per game; Buffalo averaged 376.3 yards and 28.3 points. On defense, Buffalo allowed 293.1 yards and 21.2 points, while New England allowed more yards, 295.2, but fewer points at 18.8.

Last season, after yet another playoff loss to the Chiefs - an AFC championship that was tied with less than four minutes remaining - Allen meditated on what went wrong once again. You got to not just knock," he said. You got to kick the door down, and we didn't do that."

Belichick and Brady are gone, but Vrabel and Maye will be around for a long time to come. The time is now for Buffalo to kick the door down, regardless of who's standing on the other side.