“Still Going Through it”: Bills GM Brandon Beane Reveals Pain of Season Ending Loss Against The Chiefs

Brandon Beane said he hasn’t been able to watch the full tape of the Buffalo Bills’ 42-36 overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, outside of the final plays. It’s just too soon, according to the Bills’ general manager.

“It’s painful and still going through it,” Beane said during his 71-minute end-of-season news conference Wednesday. “I’m not in a good spot. But I will review it and we’ll learn from it, I promise you that. There’s a lot of pain in this city and there’s a lot of pain in that building over there, and we’re gonna do everything in our power to not let that happen again.”

The divisional-round loss marked a second straight year in which the Bills’ season ended against the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium; last year it was in the AFC Championship Game.

Making it even more painful this time around is that Buffalo — after allowing Kansas City to drive down in the final 13 seconds of regulation and kick a game-tying field goal — didn’t get a chance to get the ball in overtime.

“At the end of the day, we lost the game the other night. But of course we would’ve loved to, I think the TV audience would’ve loved to have seen Josh (Allen) and our offense get it back,” Beane said. “I would definitely love to see it brought back to the table.

“I’m not saying I have the exact idea, but I think there’s some ways to do it. Without getting into detail, I think there’s a way you can do it in the regular season that handles that, but let’s do something in the postseason when it’s all on the line.”

“So maybe there ends up being more ties in the regular season, but let’s make sure we give both offenses a chance when the season’s on the line,” Beane said.

“I’m sure even though it benefited (the Chiefs) the other night, I’m sure they would be in favor. If you’ve got Pat Mahomes, you’re always going to want to make sure he gets the ball, and we feel the same about Josh.”

With the game as close as it was and the teams seemingly more evenly matched than last year, Beane thinks the Bills are right there with the Chiefs, whom they beat in Kansas City during the regular season.

“I truly believe if we played them 10 times, it’s probably 5-5. And that’s my heart of hearts,” Beane said. “They may think different, that’s how I see it. If we had just finished that game the way we know how, we’re not sitting here right now, we’re preparing for another one. I think we took some steps in the right direction.”

Beane and McDermott often talk about game management, and they’ll need to learn from Sunday’s ending, specifically Kansas City’s game-tying drive with just 13 seconds left in regulation. Beane said he would “fix it” if he could, having thought about the ending “a million times,” but instead will focus on what they can take from it for the future.

“I’ve learned the most in my life and the most in the five years I’ve been the GM about the things I did wrong,” Beane said. “And so we have to learn from not only this game, we got to learn from some of the games we lost in the year. Because as I said, I want to play every playoff game (at home). And you always ask yourself, ‘What if Kansas City would have had to come here? What would that have been like?’ The advantage to playing at home in January, coming up here in the cold, the elements, whatever it is.

“We’re definitely going to look at everything that went right this year, but we’re going to look hard at everything that went wrong, including the last 13 seconds.”