Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills erased any doubt of who now rules the AFC East.
Allen set a team playoff record with five touchdown passes, including two to Dawson Knox, and Devin Singletary ran for two scores in the first half of a 47-17 throttling of the division rival New England Patriots in a wild-card playoff game Saturday night.
Allen finished 21 of 25 for 308 yards in a game Buffalo scored on each of its seven possessions that didn’t end with a kneeldown.
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The Bills beat New England for a second time in three weeks and rebounded from an embarrassing 14-10 loss at home on Dec. 6 in which the Patriots attempted just three passes while finishing with 222 yards rushing to counter the blustery conditions.
“We had guys coming out here, we were ready to play,” Allen said. “Good week of practice. Lot of preparation went into this one.”
The margin of defeat was the largest for New England in coach Bill Belichick’s tenure, which began in 2000.
Though the winds were relatively calm Saturday, the Bills were hot in frigid conditions, with a game-time temperature of 7 degrees.
The third-seeded Bills advanced to the divisional round to host either the Cincinnati Bengals, who beat the Raiders earlier in the day, or travel to Kansas City, depending on the outcome of the Chiefs game against Pittsburgh on Sunday. A trip to Kansas City would feature a rematch of last year’s AFC championship game, which the Chiefs won 38-24.
Buffalo gained 300 yards of total offence, had 19 first downs and built a 27-3 lead at halftime. The 30-point margin of victory and 47 points scored were the second most by the Bills in a playoff game behind a 51-3 win over the Los Angeles Raiders in the AFC championship game on Jan. 20, 1991.
“I think we feel good,” Allen said. “There’s some things that we can clean up and work on. But at the end of the day, we moved on, we’re on to the next one and it doesn’t matter what we did today. It’s what we do next week. We’ve got to put our foot forward and be ready for the next one.”
The Bills rolled into the postseason by winning their final four games to clinch their second consecutive division title. After losing 35 of 40 meetings to New England from 2000 to 2019, Buffalo has now defeated the Patriots in four of the past five meetings, coinciding with Tom Brady’s departure to Tampa Bay.
The Patriots limped into the playoffs by losing three of their last four, and were effectively outclassed in rookie Mac Jones’ postseason debut.
New England’s previous worst playoff loss under Belichick was a 33-14 defeat to Baltimore also in the wild-card round on Jan. 10, 2010.
Jones struggled in finishing 24 of 38 for 232 yards with two touchdowns to Kendrick Bourne, including a 4-yarder in the final two minutes. Jones was also intercepted twice in closing his season with a combined seven touchdowns passing and seven interceptions in his final five outings.
The Bills put the Patriots on their heels from the opening drive, with Allen patiently waiting in the pocket before scrambling to his right and avoiding a sack. Before stepping out of bounds, Allen lobbed an 8-yard pass to a wide-open Knox in the back right corner of the end zone.
Buffalo’s defence then snuffed out the Patriots’ opening drive with Micah Hyde having the speed and angle to make a leaping interception in snatching the ball away just before Nelson Agholor was about to catch it in the end zone. Jones was also intercepted on New England’s opening drive of the second half, when his pass intended for Hunter Henry was deflected by linebacker Matt Milano and picked off by Levi Wallace.
“Guys made some unbelievable plays — offence, defence, special teams,” Allen said. “We started off really fast with the touchdown. Micah with the unbelievable play there in the end zone. We just kept the momentum rolling all day today.
“We were happy to get this one.”
No series was more indicative of New England’s flat-footed performance than allowing Singletary to score on a 16-yard run to cap a four-play, 89-yard scoring drive to put Buffalo up 27-0 with 1:53 left in the first half. Allen placed a perfect 45-yard pass to Stefon Diggs, who had a step on New England’s top defensive back J.C. Jackson, a Pro Bowl selection, up the right sideline. Two plays later, Singletary eluded the entire Patriots defence in reaching the end zone.
Bengals 26, Raiders 19
The playoff frustration for the Raiders just won’t end.
A season of tumult for Las Vegas could have been salved with the first playoff win in 19 years, but the Raiders couldn’t catch up with the Cincinnati Bengals, who ended an even longer playoff drought of their own.
That most recent postseason win for the Raiders came in a conference championship game before they lost to Tampa Bay in the 2003 Super Bowl. Prior to Saturday, the organisation had managed just one playoff appearance, a one-and-done wild-card game after the 2016 season.
Saturday’s loss was tough to swallow.
Las Vegas cut the Bengals’ lead to 26-19 late with a Daniel Carlson field goal and then got the ball back with under two minutes left in the game. Quarterback Derek Carr drove them to the Bengals 9 before he was intercepted by Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt on fourth down.
“It sucks that it came down to that,” Carr said.
Las Vegas also was on the wrong end of a questionable officiating call.
Late in the first half, Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow threw a pass just before stepping out of bounds and the official at the sideline appeared to blow his whistle before Tyler Boyd caught the touchdown pass in the back of the end zone. Players on the field for the Raiders protested a bit to no avail.
The Raiders (10-8) had to overcame several troubling off-the-field issues this season to even get to the playoffs at all.
Coach Jon Gruden resigned after racist, anti-gay and misogynistic comments in emails were leaked. Receiver Henry Ruggs III was cut after being charged with a DUI resulting in a death. Defensive back Damon Arnette was released after a social-media video appeared to show the 2020 first-round pick threatening someone’s life while brandishing multiple guns.
Under interim head coach Rich Bisaccia, the Raiders won their last four regular-season games — each decided by four points or fewer — and beat the Los Angeles Chargers in overtime in the final week to win a wild-card spot.
Another postseason win will have to wait at least another season, with or without Bisaccia, who said he believes the team is moving in the right direction. Getting to the playoffs, he said, is proof.
“They put the culture on the right track — a winning mentality,” Bisaccia said. “They were responsible for it.”
Cincinnati and the Bengals organisation had felt the same frustration. The team got its first postseason win since the 1990 season.
The Raiders will keep trying to get over the hump. Tight end Darren Waller, who had seven catches for 76 yards on Saturday, said they’ll look to build on the good they took from this season.
“Like a team could go to the Super Bowl and be like ‘we’re gonna be back,’ but then the next year it’s tough for them, because it’s the NFL,” Waller said. “So we gotta be able to take that into next year, but also not with any kind of entitlement. We gotta be able to start from square one and know that we had what it takes to weather any kind of storm and to take that into next year.”
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