Andy Reid learned the hard lessons. Can Sean McDermott?

Buffalo Bills fans looking for a little solace this week might want to consider the Super Bowl of 20 years ago.

The New England Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21. The losing coach was Andy Reid.

With a little less than six minutes left in the game and the Eagles down by 10, Reid's team took possession of the ball. Philadelphia then embarked on a 13-play drive that lasted almost four minutes. Although it ended with an Eagles touchdown, it used up an awful lot of time for a team that needed two scores. Philadelphia got the ball back with 46 seconds left, but Donovan McNabb's intercepted pass sealed the win for New England.

That game, and Reid's curious lack of urgency in the fourth quarter, would be something of a millstone for him during his time in Philadelphia. He spent 14 years there and had nine winning seasons, but his playoff record was 10-9. He was considered a head coach who couldn't quite get it done in the high-leverage moments of the postseason.

Sounds a lot like a certain coach with an office at 1 Bills Drive.

Sean McDermott has posted a winning record in seven of his eight seasons in Buffalo. But he is 7-7 in the playoffs. Four of those losses have come against the Kansas City Chiefs and Reid, who has been reborn as a playoff genius in his second head coaching job. Sure, a lot of that is due to the presence of Patrick Mahomes on his roster, but Reid no longer struggles to live up to the moment. What stood out from Kansas City's victory over Buffalo in the AFC championship Sunday night was the fact that Mahomes didn't have to make any spectacular late plays to win. Reid puts him in a position to execute, and he coolly does so.

Bills fans, meanwhile, find themselves doing a lot of second-guessing in January. The 13 Seconds game of three years ago is McDermott's albatross, but even Sunday, in a game without glaring Buffalo errors, there were reasons to wonder about his decisions. James Cook was by far the most dangerous Bills player that night; why didn't they use him at all on the final, unsuccessful drive?

Why did Buffalo repeatedly try the same short-yardage play, with Josh Allen diving into the pile to his left, after the Chiefs showed that they'd sniffed it out and could stop it? It's not a great sign when Tony Romo is explaining from the broadcast booth that the Chiefs know exactly what's coming.

And on the final play in which Allen, under heavy pressure, heaved an almost-miracle ball in the direction of Dalton Kincaid, why didn't Bills coaches have their quarterback ready to respond quickly to a blitz that the whole stadium knew was coming?

These are, obviously, also questions for offensive coordinator Joe Brady, since McDermott only calls the defense. And perhaps that's part of the problem. Some of the most successful head coaches in recent years - Reid, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan - are in their quarterbacks' ears at the most important points in the game. McDermott is not.

But it's also true that Reid benefits greatly from having Steve Spagnuolo as his defensive coordinator, a veteran coach with a knack for calling the right plays at the right moments. Maybe McDermott just needs his version of that guy running his offense.

To be clear, the Bills' playoff struggles are not McDermott's to wear alone. The team's top draft picks in 2023 and 2024, Kincaid and Keon Coleman, were bit players in a Buffalo offense that desperately needed a receiver who makes defenses nervous. The Bills' 2022 first-round pick, cornerback Kaiir Elam, has rarely played, but he was forced into an important role due to injury Sunday - and Reid immediately picked on him like a cat hunting a wounded mouse.

General manager Brandon Beane deserves credit for finding impact players like Khalil Shakir and Christian Benford in later rounds of the draft, but those first-round misses hurt. Even Allen, in his most impressive season overall, began the AFC championship with a tribute to his old self, sailing passes into dangerous spots and avoiding interceptions only by luck. He settled down, though, and over the course of the game, he made a few of the throws that have put him on the short list of the best players in the sport.

This is where the comparisons between McDermott and early-career Reid begin to fall apart. The Kansas City coach didn't transform into a stone-cold winner until he had the benefit of an all-world quarterback helming his offense. McDermott doesn't have Mahomes, but he has a close approximation. In a quarterback-driven league, he has one of the three or four very best at the position.

That means it's on him to get over the playoff hump. The question is, how many more tries will he get?

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.