ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — It began well before the regular season started.
Las Vegas anointed Buffalo as the favorite to win the Super Bowl.
Not the defending champion Rams, not the Bengals, who came within a field goal of claiming the Lombardi Trophy, not the Chiefs, who have contended to be the NFL’s top team since they drafted Patrick Mahomes … the Bills.
After the Rams were manhandled by Buffalo in the opener, LA tumbled to 5-12 and never came close to the playoffs. But Kansas City, 14-3, the AFC’s No. 1 seed, and Cincinnati, 12-4, seeded third in the conference, are right there, as is Buffalo, 13-3, and seeded No. 2.
The chase for a berth in Super Bowl LVII, Feb. 12, in Glendale, Ariz. begins this afternoon with the first of this weekend’s – plus Monday night – wild card playoff games.
The Chiefs drew a bye as did the NFC’s Eagles.
BUFFALO will be playing at home Sunday afternoon against the seventh-seeded Dolphins, 9-8, a team down to its third-string quarterback, and facing the longest odds – a 13½-point underdog – of any team in the playoffs.
The Dolphins are led by first-year coach Mike McDaniel who has engineered a remarkable turnaround in Miami.
But he’s also never been a head coach in the postseason.
As Bills sixth-year boss Sean McDermott, who has made the playoffs five times, recalled of his introduction to that scenario, a 10-3 loss at Jacksonville after the 2017 season, “The first playoff game you think you’re ready but I look at what I know now and what I knew then and that’s what makes it look a little fascinating.
“You’re always growing, always trying to improve yourself and you think you’re at a certain spot but you never really arrive.”
He admitted, “Experience is a great teacher. You talk about the Andy Reids and Bill Belichicks and Pete Carrolls and Coach (John) Harbaugh who have been through so many games through so many seasons and how slow the game must be to them.
“There was a stat I saw, the number of times Baltimore played Pittsburgh and the amount Harbaugh has faced Mike Tomlin and it was up in the 30s … that fascinated me, two coaches who have been at it for so long … the wisdom that they have and how the game has slowed down for them.”
What about the target put on the Bills’ backs by the oddsmakers last spring?
“Step one is getting to the postseason,” he said, “no matter what our expectations are, and my hat’s off to the guys because they’ve battled through some things (injuries, especially on defense, particularly the secondary) and gotten here.
“Now, for the entire league, everyone’s on a one-game season at a time. You win, you move on, you lose, you go home and that’s the reality of our situation.”
McDermott added, “There are some differences that happen every year which you have to adjust to. The biggest thing is making sure that our young players who have never played in a playoff game are ready to go and understand it’s going to move faster and be more physical. Things get magnified and preparation is the key.”
THIS IS Buffalo’s eighth playoff game under McDermott, and the Bills are 3-0 at home, 0-4 on the road, which is why the Bills so desperately wanted to earn the AFC’s top seed and every postseason game in Orchard Park until the Super Bowl.
They came close, losing three games by a total of eight points, one of those a totally bizarre defeat by the Vikings at Highmark in overtime.
However, the cancellation of the Bills’ game at Cincinnati after the life-threatening cardiac event suffered by safety Damar Hamlin, forced the NFL to make a change. Should Buffalo and Kansas City make it to the conference championship game, it will be contested at a neutral site (Atlanta) as each team would have a different number of regular season games played.
Still, that’s weeks away.
“It’s a one-week season from here on out … win or go home,” Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen said. “Come Sunday, the only thing that matters is scoring more points than the other team.
“We don’t have any feelings from the outside (fans expectations). The goals we want to accomplish are still in front of us to do what we set out to at the beginning of the year. But it all starts this week. We understand the implications of the playoffs … getting in gives us a chance to win the Super Bowl. That’s our main goal, but right now it’s Sunday at 1 o’clock.”
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
