ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – It was one of the Buffalo Bills’ newest players who best summed up the game alongside quarterback Josh Allen and the sheer magnitude of his scoring game that ultimately sealed the team’s 31-20 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs .

“The Josh Allen experience, with this magnitude, was phenomenal, man,” wide receiver Amari Cooper said. “… He’s a great player. The old saying: Great players make big plays in big situations, and that’s exactly what he did.”

The play was improbable at best. On fourth-and-2 from the Chiefs’ 26-yard line in a two-point play with less than three minutes left, the Bills’ offense stayed on the field. Allen opted to keep the ball after stepping back and feigning a pass to running back Ty Johnson, weaving past a variety of defenders into the end zone — somehow not being brought down again and again — for what ultimately the game-winning touchdown.

Allen made that choice in part because the play wasn’t actually necessary due to the defensive look the Chiefs found themselves in.

“Really a play for man (coverage),” Allen said. “I could have checked out, but they had a pretty good man look. They fell into the zone again, (I was) just trying to keep the play alive. There was a crease and just relying on the feet.”

After the score, the defense took the game on the next possession with an interception by middle linebacker Terrel Bernard. The Bills handed Kansas City its first loss of the season and improved to 9–2, the team’s best start since 1992. As of 2020, Allen and the Bills are 4–1 in the regular season against the Chiefs, and 0– 3 in the competition. postseason.

The rush was the second-longest touchdown play of Allen’s career, and according to NFL Next Gen Stats, the game shot at 1.2% when Allen stopped the ball to run.

His teammates saw it a little differently.

“As soon as I saw him cross the line of scrimmage, I basically knew he scored,” Dawson Knox said. “And even though there’s a linebacker, two DBs right in front of him, I’ve seen it a hundred times from him in the most important situations. He seems to do that all the time and it’s incredible to watch.”

“They brought four, I was in a 3-for-2 situation with (center) Connor (McGovern) and have an internal clock in your head where you start watching as soon as everything is a bit safe and when he left, it was it like, holy s—,” left guard David Edwards said. “And that makes him the best in the world. So it was crazy to see that. That’s why he’s the best.”

Cornerback Rasul Douglas has a rule of staying put when the offense is on the field in fourth-down situations, as if it has already been converted. However, as Allen’s piece progressed, he began to take off “like an airplane”, and near the end he stood up.

“When I see him running and I see him say ‘hu hu,’ he got the ball out like Shady McCoy,” Douglas said. “I’m like, ‘Okay, stop it a little bit,’ and then he scored. So that’s Josh, man, he’s the best quarterback in the league right now.”

The decision to go for it in fourth place was a no-brainer. If the Bills hadn’t picked up the yards, the Chiefs would have had the ball back with plenty of time to get downfield and would have only needed a field goal to win. Going for it, however, was a decision the Bills felt strongly about.

“I just felt like we mapped it out during the week and felt strongly that that was the right decision,” coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t want to produce a result, if you will, but I would have stayed with it if it hadn’t worked out. It just felt like, as you guys know, there have been too many games where Andy (Reid) and Patrick (Mahomes) have been come back and you kick a field goal and they’re going to score a touchdown or it’s overtime just in different games they’ve been in and they get the ball first and the game so they’re just way too good not to go for that there. “

Allen finished the game completing 27 of 40 passes for 262 yards, one passing touchdown and one interception. He led the team with 12 carries for 55 yards and the score. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Allen is the first player in NFL history to throw a TD to eleven different players in eleven games in two different seasons (2020, 2024). This was also his 30th career game in which he led his team in both passing and rushing yards, fourth most in NFL history.

The Bills won the game despite not having three offensive starters in tight end Dalton Kincaid, wide receiver Keon Coleman and right tackle Spencer Brown. The offense still put up 30-plus points — the first team to do so in the regular season against the Chiefs since Week 4 in 2022 — for a fifth straight game (tied with 2021 for the second-longest streak in franchise history ).

“The league has stars and (Allen’s) one of them, you know what I mean,” Cooper said. “He’s just a huge talent, a very skilled guy. Some guys are just made to play with the ball and the position they play in, and he’s definitely one of those guys. So yeah, it was a lot of fun to watch I’ve had a lot of fun since I’ve been here. We’ve won every game, so it’s been cool.”

The win keeps the Bills in position to compete for the No. 1 seed in the AFC, as Buffalo is now just a half-game behind Kansas City with the team’s bye week next with six games to go.

There is recognition that while this was a big game – as defensive end Von Miller said despite a speech McDermott gave the team in which he said the opposite: “This is a big game. This is why we’re here … when the bright lights come on, take the opportunity” — it’s only Week 11, too. As Mahomes was heard telling Allen after the game, “We’ll do it again, baby.”

“Given our history, we tend to meet in the playoffs, so again, we’re not there yet,” Allen said after the game. “That’s what we’ll focus on when we get there.”