Chiefs-Bills is a vibe check until a bigger January matchup arrives

The Buffalo Bills will welcome the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday for a "Game of the Year" candidate that's, weirdly, also not that big of a deal.

It's a measuring-stick game, but one that measures something that's already known.

It's a chance for Josh Allen to prove himself against Patrick Mahomes, except Mahomes is in the middle of his worst statistical year, and the Chiefs are undefeated anyway.

From the Bills' perspective, the game is likely to simply be a vibes-setter. Win, and Buffalo suddenly looks like an AFC favorite. Lose, and the Bills go back to being the team they've looked like for much of the season: quite good but flawed.

And if there's an upside to that latter outcome for Bills fans, it's that maybe they won't get their hopes up this time. We know how that goes.

It wasn't that long ago that the arrival of the Chiefs seemed like the neighborhood bully showing up to rub the Bills' faces in the sand. Even as Buffalo went 13-3 in Allen's breakout third season, the Chiefs walloped the Bills on a Monday night and then dismissed them easily in the playoffs.

But Buffalo has since beaten Kansas City in the regular season in three straight years, each time in Arrowhead. This isn't like the two-decade hold that Tom Brady and the New England Patriots had over the Bills; they know that they can trade punches with the Chiefs.

What they haven't been able to do is come out on top in the playoffs: the big loss to end the 2021 season, the 13-seconds heartbreaker the following year, and then last season's 27-24 divisional round loss on the Bills' home field. In the latter matchup, the Bills outgained the Chiefs, dominated the time of possession, converted half of their third downs (and a pair of fourth downs), and didn't turn the ball over. And still lost.

So, yes, the Bills could win by three touchdowns on Sunday and only their most optimistic, and possibly drunk, fans would be convinced that this would have any bearing on a potential January rematch. They could convince themselves of the importance of playoff games in Buffalo, but that didn't work last year. Whatever happens, Kansas City will still be looming, dream-killers in waiting.

Part of that trepidation comes naturally from the fact the Chiefs have become Patriots-esque in their ability to pull out wins even when not at their best. Seven of their nine wins in 2024 have been by seven points or fewer, including last week, when they escaped with a two-point win over the Denver Broncos by blocking a game-winning field-goal attempt on the final play of the contest. Mahomes, missing several of his preferred offensive weapons and playing on a sore leg, has still managed to hobble around and do just enough to win. Will he throw a game-winning pass with his left hand before this streak is over? Quite possibly.

The Bills, meanwhile, are the Bills, the franchise that lost four straight Super Bowls three decades ago, was victimized by the Music City Miracle, and then spent two decades occasionally being good enough to play a meaningful game only to lose in embarrassing fashion. Even in the Allen and Sean McDermott era, undeniably the best stretch since the Marv Levy-Jim Kelly teams of the early '90s, the franchise has managed to remain haunted. How different would Chiefs-Bills feel Sunday if, in that 2022 playoff matchup in which Allen threw for 329 yards and four touchdowns, Buffalo had managed to protect a lead for 13 whole seconds?

But the Bills didn't, and so they remain a team still trying to get back to a Super Bowl, still trying to avoid stubbing their toe at precisely the wrong time.

The curious thing about this edition of the Bills is that it hasn't been as complete of a team as others that featured peak Allen. The defense has been beset by injuries, and Allen has clearly missed having a star wideout after Stefon Diggs grumbled his way out of town in the offseason. But he also seems to have embraced the challenge, throwing underneath more, taking fewer risky shots downfield, and, perhaps most importantly, limiting the number of times he takes off like a train that's jumped the tracks, putting himself (and the ball) in danger.

That is to say, the Bills have become less dominant than in recent seasons but better at eking out wins - kind of like a certain team that wears red and yellow.

And so while the race for home-field advantage in the playoffs is far from decided, both teams will know that the advantage isn't insurmountable. Buffalo has a five-game lead in its division, while Kansas City is three games ahead of the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC West. The outcome of the game won't have a huge impact on either of their fates.

But the vibes count for something. And in Buffalo, where a sense of gnawing dread is as common as tables getting smashed at the pregame tailgate, an injection of confidence sure couldn't hurt.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.