DENVER — The depth of the defeat, the raw sorrow felt inside the visitors’ locker room wasn’t like other season-ending moments around the Buffalo Bills.
Saturday night felt heavier. Josh Allen cried at his postgame news conference and apologized to his teammates. Left tackle Dion Dawkins broke down in tears at the mere mention of Allen’s selfless remorse. Wide receiver Brandin Cooks sat facing into his locker stall and wept. Sean McDermott all but slammed his fist on the lectern and implored the NFL to do better for the men who gave so much over nearly four hours of decimation.
This Bills’ roster was increasingly worn out, eroded and maimed. And during Saturday’s playoff game against the Denver Broncos, the Bills were flawed, shorthanded and outgunned. Mistakes were self-inflicted, yet many more were beyond their control.
Buffalo still almost won.
The last time I walked into a locker room so devastated and disarmed was when the 2005-06 Buffalo Sabres — their elite roster hammered to bits by an absurd run of injuries — succumbed to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Buffalo, with four minor-league defensemen in the lineup, somehow led entering the third period in Raleigh.
Right then, the Sabres seemed like a team of destiny — impervious and invincible despite all logic. But they wobbled. Their defense eventually collapsed, and reality returned. At their stalls afterward, most sat for a long time in their uniforms, as if awaiting another period to play.
There’s a reason the Sabres honored the 20th anniversary of that squad Thursday night at KeyBank Center.
They had star power. More than that, they had stones.
Buffalo saw that again Saturday. After committing an almost unimaginable number of errors, the bruised Bills silenced the Empower Field at Mile High crowd with what looked like another implausible comeback victory. There’d been so many rallies, but Allen had played his messiest. He threw two interceptions and lost two fumbles. NFL rushing king James Cook lost a fumble, too.
Road teams with a turnover ratio of minus-3 or worse were 1-96 in NFL postseason history, 1-85 in the Super Bowl era.
And, lord above, Buffalo led for most of the fourth quarter. Down 13 points well into the third, Allen connected with tight end Dalton Kincaid to put the Bills ahead with 13:24 to play. A 31-yard Matt Prater field goal extended the lead to four points with 4:11 remaining.
The game was there. History was there. Another playoff victory was RIGHT THERE.
But the Broncos were too healthy and sharp. Their body blows kept landing, as did the occasional haymaker. The Broncos retook the lead with 55 seconds to go. Bo Nix picked on backup cornerback Dane Jackson for the one play he substituted for briefly injured Tre’Davious White, arcing a 26-yard TD pass to Marvin Mims Jr.
Bip, bap, boom: Eight plays later, Prater kicked a 50-yard field goal to force overtime. The Bills, sagging into the ropes, would not go down.
Not until some questionable officiating decisions beat Buffalo into the ground. There were dubious pass interference flags against nickelback Taron Johnson and White, while Broncos cornerback Riley Moss got away with grabbing Cooks’ arm on a deep incompletion late in the fourth quarter.
The backbreaking call was a wild catch made by both Cooks and Denver cornerback Ja’Quan McMillan, who was awarded an interception at Denver’s 20-yard line with 7:55 left.
McDermott was irate at his postgame news conference. And he got even more worked up before the Bills’ plane took off for home. McDermott, a member of the NFL’s competition committee, was so upset about the call and the league’s replay overseers sustaining it almost instantaneously that he called Buffalo’s media in the Empower Field at Mile High press box to vent.
“That play is not even close,” McDermott said. “That’s a catch all the way. I sat in my locker, and I looked at it probably 20 times, and nobody can convince me that that ball is not caught and in possession of Buffalo. I just have no idea how the NFL handled it, in particular, the way that they did. I think the players and the fans deserve an explanation, you know?”
In a pool report, referee Carl Cheffers explained Cooks “lost possession of the ball when he hit the ground. The defender gained possession of it at that point. The defender is the one that completed the process of the catch.”
McDermott read Cheffers’ comments after speaking with reporters at his news conference.
“I’m speaking up,” McDermott said, “because I feel strongly that that was a catch and that possession should have been ‘Ball belongs to Buffalo.’ I can’t agree with their assessment of a change of possession or whatever the statement was. I can’t agree with that.
“We’re not just going to sit here and take it, is what I’m saying. We’re not just going to sit here and take it. I’m pissed off about it.”
The catastrophe ended Buffalo’s first overtime possession, meaning all Denver needed to do was kick a field goal. Then came the defensive pass interference penalties to seal the Bills’ fate. Wil Lutz made a point-blank field goal for the victory.
Brandin Cooks said after the game that Josh Allen needs more help. (Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)
Right tackle Spencer Brown tried some diplomacy when asked about the officiating. He admitted to getting away with some penalties himself, but that’s because all day, the officials were letting the players decide the game.
One, then, could fairly deduce that Brown believed the DPI flags should have remained unthrown, as was the case with Moss on Cooks.
“You can’t blame the officials,” Brown began. “That’s not what I try to do, but when you’re letting guys play all game long … I was holding the piss out of some people today, and they didn’t call it. Third down, right before the field goal, I was holding (linebacker Jonathon) Cooper hard. So they were letting the boys play.
“Those (deep Nix) passes were not really technically thrown to be caught. I think they were thrown to go out there and make us make a mistake and get a little help from the zebras. But I thought they called a good game.”
Allen’s remorse is admirable, but my season-preview story about the Bills’ campaign was about him not having a quality supporting cast. Cook led the NFL in rushing, but the lack of wideouts and depth punished the offense overall.
Allen won last season’s MVP in large part because he didn’t have much A-list help. He was viewed as a monolith. The 2024 Bills finished second in scoring and sixth in yards per play, won a fifth straight AFC East title and reached the AFC Championship Game. Mack Hollins led them with five touchdown receptions.
Buffalo’s front office seemed content to let Allen try to yoke the load again this season.
“The sad part,” Carmen Policy told me for that preview story, “is that if you’re an organization that’s really, really, really trying to put together a run to the Super Bowl — and maybe more than one Super Bowl — you don’t want your guy winning the MVP because he’s doing it all on his own and carrying it all. He needs some help!”
Policy added: “Although it highlights the unique fire inside this athlete and his unique talents and unbelievable sense of drive and discipline, what it does is it wears you down mentally and physically.”
Like an albatross, Bills general manager Brandon Beane will probably wear the cocksure comments he made to WGR 550-AM morning co-hosts Jeremy White and Joe DiBiase until the Bills reach a Super Bowl. It will be part of Beane’s legacy — like former Sabres GM Kevyn Adams’ infamous palm trees news conference — for many moons.
At the time, I wrote that Beane’s indignation was an unforced error that not only heaped added pressure on the entire receiver group, but also individually on Keon Coleman (already called out for needing to mature), Joshua Palmer (a so-so free-agent signing that suddenly became a crucial offensive centerpiece), Curtis Samuel (unproductive, injured and with a $9.1 million cap hit) and Elijah Moore (treated like the 360-degree spin when signed the day after Beane’s radio dunk).
Injuries limited Palmer to eight starts. All the others were healthy scratches at some point. Samuel also struggled mightily to get healthy. Coleman was benched for tardiness — again. Moore was cut to make room for the 32-year-old Cooks in November.
Even if/when Beane procures a game-changing wideout, his condescension over how he handled the position this year will be remembered as wasting another season of Allen’s prime.
Beane, who also mocked White for wanting the Bills to draft quarterback Josh Rosen in 2018 in that WGR interview, cannot play the “I drafted Josh Allen” card anymore. That card is eight years old. It’s dog-eared and creased.
Several times down the homestretch, McDermott spoke about opponents seemingly with roster envy. Of the Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive line, he said, “That front four is legit, as you just saw. There’s a reason why they won the Super Bowl last year.”
He visibly seethed every time he was asked about the Darius Slay affair, how the Bills released defensive back Ja’Marcus Ingram to claim Slay on waivers, how Slay refused to report to the Bills and left them shorthanded at a critical position. The Bills usually keep four boundary cornerbacks on their 53-man roster, but the fallout left them with three.
McDermott bemoaned being forced to play Tre’Davious White, who turned 31 Friday and has recovered from two major injuries, and Maxwell Hairston the entire meaningless Week 18 exhibition against the New York Jets — until Hairston suffered an ankle injury that sidelined him for the playoffs. The Bills could have used him in Denver.
Twice before the playoff game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, McDermott made a point to laud their acquisition of receiver Jakobi Meyers at the November trade deadline. While Beane was unable to swing a deal, the Jaguars snagged Meyers from the Las Vegas Raiders for fourth- and sixth-round draft choices.
McDermott, in fact, mentioned Meyers before anyone else, including quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
“I thought one of the moves that’s made a difference for them offensively,” said McDermott, “is adding Jakobi Meyers, good pickup for them — probably a guy that’s, quite honestly, been undervalued in his career. But going against him in New England, a ton of respect for his game.”
Meyers arrived less than two weeks before Jacksonville began its eight-game win streak and over that stretch caught 39 passes for 442 yards and three touchdowns. Last month, the Jaguars signed him to a three-year, $60 million extension. (Coleman, by the way, caught 38 passes for 404 yards and four touchdowns all season.)
Later during Jaguars week, McDermott reiterated his admiration not only for the Meyers addition, but also the trade Jacksonville made in October for cornerback Greg Newsome.
Before Cooks broke down in tears Saturday at his locker, he was asked whether Allen was being too hard on himself for accepting all the blame. Allen, after all, also completed 25 of his 39 passes for 283 yards and three touchdowns and ran 12 times for 66 yards.
The Bills also probably don’t make the playoffs without Allen.
“Somebody needs to step up and alleviate some of that from him,” Cooks said of Allen’s load. “When you’re great and you feel like you have to do so much, you have the opportunity to be able to force some of those things, and I think that’s why he’s the greatest quarterback in this league.
“Everybody else around him got to come up and be able to make plays so he doesn’t always have to be the one to feel like, ‘Hey, I got to win this game.’”
Cooks said he thought he caught the ball that was ruled an interception, but he didn’t use it as an excuse.
He seemed to feel genuinely awful that he didn’t make a cleaner, idiot-proof play the officials couldn’t botch.
“I think we all feel that way,” Cooks said. “You work so hard. Personally, I’m just so thankful to be a part of this. I look back on it, ‘Man, what could I have done to be able to alleviate some of that pressure from him?’
“You just love this game so much, and when you come up short like this, it’s going to sting for a long time. There’s no next week.”
Cooks then broke down. Reporters left him alone. He bowed his head and rubbed his eyes. Then he sat down and bawled so hard his body quaked.