Playoff rivalry renewed as Buffalo Bills host Kansas City Chiefs in Divisional Round

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. [WKBW] — On Sunday the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs will meet for the third time in the last four seasons in the playoffs. But this time around the home team is hoping the ending is different.

In their previous two playoff meetings the Sean McDermott led Bills have come up short. Four seasons ago their heroic run came to an end in the 2020 AFC Championship game as the Bills were one win away from a trip to the Super Bowl. The following year, the Bills once again fell to the Chiefs in the Divisional Round, letting a three-point lead slip away with 13 seconds left on the clock.

But this time the Bills will be playing in Orchard Park, a place where they have only lost once this season.

"I'm just excited that we have another game and I think everybody feels the same way," Bills quarterback Josh Allen said after practice on Wednesday. "We've got another opportunity to go out there and do more. Coach [Joe] Brady has been preaching throughout the year the reward for doing is the opportunity to do more and that's what we have in front of us."

Allen and the quarterback on the other sideline, Patrick Mahomes, will be the focus of much of the pregame buzz this week. Sunday will be the seventh time the two quarterbacks have faced off. In their previous six meetings each team has three wins.

"He's a fantastic player, his track record and resume speaks for itself at such a young age as one of the greatest quarterbacks to play this game and he's still growing and getting better," Allen said of his competition this weekend. "They've gotten the best of us in the playoffs these last few years and we finally got a home game, so we just need to go out there and put our best foot forward and play as hard as we can play."

"You have friends but when you compete against your friends you want to win even more because of it," Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. "Josh is a great dude. I respect the way he plays football and the guy that he is. But when two guys that are ultra competitive that are friends off the field go up against each other we obviously both want to win because we know we'll see each other in the off-season and we want to have just a little bit of those bragging rights."

So while both quarterbacks are competitive on the field, there's no denying there's plenty of respect between two of the top players in the league.

You can watch Allen's full comments at the top of the page, along with Sean McDermott's Wednesday press conference.