‘13 seconds’ loss to Chiefs still torments Bills’ Josh Allen

“13 seconds.”

The two words are quite familiar to any fan of the Chiefs and Buffalo Bills, of course referring to Kansas City’s stunning comeback win in last year’s Divisional Round.

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce and kicker Harrison Butker found a way with just 13 seconds left to get down the field and force overtime. Mahomes and company then scored a touchdown in overtime’s initial drive to send Buffalo home as Kansas City played in its fourth straight AFC title game.

Given what happened in that next game for the Chiefs against the Cincinnati Bengals, the phrase, “13 seconds,” in a way, has become bittersweet. But it remains simply bitter for the Bills and their quarterback, even today.

Allen recently talked about the overtime coin toss he lost.

“Up to that point I think I was 9-0 throughout the season. In our production meeting, it was jinxed, and I was 0-for-2 in that game,” he said over the weekend, via Pro Football Talk and Bussin’ With The Boys. “They brought up that stat, you’re 9-0. . . . I go 0-2 on coin tosses that game. I switched it up, I went heads first and then I went tails at the end, and it was obviously flip-flopped.”

The Bills QB added that as many fans tell him just how much they enjoyed being a part of that game, it still stings.

“People still come up to me and talk about it. That’s the game people talk about,” he said. “To be a part of it is great, but to be on the losing end of it is not so great. It doesn’t make me feel any better when someone comes up and says, ‘That was the greatest game I’ve ever seen.’ It’s like, we lost.”

Last week, our own Jared Sapp counted down the Chiefs’ top revenge opportunities of the 2022 season. For the Chiefs, the premier game in that sense is a Week 13 meeting with the Bengals in Cincinnati.

The Bills and Allen, however, will have one game circled bolder than all the rest: Week 6, October 16, at 3:25 p.m. at Arrowhead Stadium.

The league changed playoff rules this offseason to allow both teams to possess the ball in overtime. For the regular season, in Week 6, those rules remain the same, so Allen will have to make sure there is no coin-toss jinx this time around.