KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes had stood inside the tight quarters of a room inside Highmark Stadium, recapping the Chiefs’ first loss of the year in generic, big-picture terms.
After a few minutes, I inquired about a specific play.
Can you walk us through the interception?
“Uh, the first one or the second one?” he responded.
Right. There were two last Sunday.
The Bills officially put the Chiefs away when linebacker Terrel Bernard picked off Mahomes with about a minute left. That came shortly after quarterback Josh Allen put the Chiefs in desperation mode with his fourth-down scramble for a 30-21 lead, the eventual final.
The end of the game stole the headlines — that includes one from me on that Allen dash. It was, after all, statistically the most impactful play of the outcome.
But another trailed pretty closely behind, even if perhaps lost in the shuffle of the 121 snaps that would follow.
Which interception?
“The first one,” I replied.
Just two plays into the loss in Buffalo, Mahomes stepped through a crowded pocket and lofted a pass toward tight end Noah Gray, but Bills defensive lineman DaQuan Jones grabbed Mahomes as he threw. The pass sailed. Bills safety Taylor Rapp won’t find an easier interception all year.
The Bills flipped the turnover into six points, the lone first-quarter score for either team.
A bad start.
Yet another one.
If there’s a lesson in the Chiefs’ first loss in 11 months, it ought to be this: The second snap of a football game can impact the outcome just as meaningfully as the 123rd. That interception — ahem, the first one — ranked as the Bills’ second most favorable play of the day, per Ben Baldwin’s analytics-based website rbsdm.com. (The Allen run, unsurprisingly, was No. 1.)
