The Buffalo Bills Are Facing the NFL’s Cosmic Glass Ceiling
Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
I started questioning my desire to continue watching the NFL after the AFC Championship Game.
One of the reasons I love the NFL is because of how much parity and variance each season offers. Franchises don’t need to play in a big market or have a star-studded roster to have a successful season, they just need to be good at something. The Washington Commanders are what I love about the league: The team with the second-worst record in 2023 can get to the NFC Championship Game in 2024. That kind of turnaround inspires hope for small/mid-market fans like me.
It feels like stories like the Commanders are drying up from where the league was at even a decade ago. I remember Super Bowl 50, which featured the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos. Just two completely random teams: the Panthers, who had never won a championship, and the Broncos, who hadn’t sniffed a Super Bowl appearance since John Elway was their quarterback. Maybe the feeling of nostalgia is fogging my memory, but I never felt like the league was trying to put their thumbs on the scales and playing favorites at the time.
We used to be a proper country. Two random ass teams could make a Super Bowl. No preplanned agendas were pushed, it was purely for the love of the game. pic.twitter.com/fP48Il4OSx
— 𝙩𝙮𝙡𝙚𝙧 (@TylerTalksBall) January 27, 2025
Fast forward to 2024, and the NFL feels so damn predictable. The Kansas City Chiefs will play the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 59, which is what I figured would happen before the playoffs even started. Not just because they were head-and-shoulders above the other teams (certainly once the Detroit Lions were eliminated by the Commanders), but because that matchup would be a ratings bonanza. The officiating from the AFC Championship Game reinforced that sinking feeling, and it led me to a football-centric existential crisis. And before you call me biased — I’m not even a Buffalo Bills fan. But it still feels like the Bills are stuck beneath the NFL’s glass ceiling.
Look, this is veering dangerously close to tin-foil hat territory. I’m not that guy, and I must admit that there were some areas where the Bills could’ve done a better job of taking their fate into their own hands. Buffalo’s offense went 5-for-14 on third-down conversions. They failed both of their two-point attempts. Once Christian Benford left the game with a concussion, cornerback Kaiir Elam constantly got cooked in coverage by Xavier Worthy and DeAndre Hopkins. That being said, none of those things completely determined the outcome of the game.
What had a much greater impact on the outcome were three controversial calls, all of which, would you look at that, went in the Chiefs’ favor. Late in the second quarter, there was the “catch” by Worthy where the receiver didn’t maintain possession of a ball that bounced off the turf. Sean McDermott challenged the play, but after review, the catch was upheld. One could even argue that the play should’ve been ruled an interception since Cole Bishop had possession of the ball first. The play should’ve been ruled an incompletion, but it’s at least somewhat understandable compared to the other two blown calls.
Even though this ball CLEARLY hit the ground and neither player had complete possession the refs rule that this was a catch by Xavier Worthy.
The Chiefs 🤝 The Refspic.twitter.com/hDMOoLq6xt
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) January 27, 2025
On 3rd-&-3, Josh Allen threw a swing pass to Dalton Kincaid, who extended the ball past the first down marker before his knee hit the ground. Yet, the refs spotted the ball a half-yard short of the line, ruling Kincaid’s knee was down beforehand, even though replays showed that wasn’t the case. Then on 4th-&-Inches, Allen’s forward progress should’ve been enough to move the chains, but the refs weren’t even able to get a good enough viewing angle of the scrum to spot the ball correctly.
Bills got robbed during loss to Chiefs pic.twitter.com/CawbbpSPZL
— Jomboy (@Jomboy_) January 28, 2025
Plays like these make me wonder why the NFL doesn’t adopt more advanced technology to track the ball. As it turns out, the NFL already uses RFID chips to track the precise location of the football, but they aren’t maximizing the value of this technology. It’s something that would be just as useful as booth reviews and much less intrusive to the game.
But instead, these things are left at the discretion of fallible referees, and it sucks to see it cost Buffalo a crack at the Super Bowl. And to see every break go the way that guarantees the NFL a Super Bowl that has 1) the chance of a historic three-peat and 2) a few extra million Swiftie eyeballs is convenient to the point of infuriating.
It’s fitting that the Chiefs had those things go right for them, and the Bills didn’t. The Bills might be Super Bowl contenders, but they’re not contenders for The Big Game. How much of the Super Bowl is about football anymore? Sure, there’s a game, a winner, and a trophy, but once the Championship Games are done, everything takes second place to the spectacle.
No one’s saying the Chiefs aren’t Super Bowl Contenders, as well — they went 15-2 with only minimal amounts of Acts of God. But stack them up against Buffalo in contending for The Big Game, and there’s no competition. The Big Game is attended nearly exclusively by Big-Named Celebs and Big Corporate Suits, with much of the TV audience more interested in the Big Brands airing their Big-Budget Commercials — and don’t forget the Big Halftime Performance, sponsored by Apple Music!
The spectacle of the Super Bowl is so massive that it’s plausible it’s developed a will of its own. Maybe we unleashed a primordial power that demands Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Taylor Swift to be at The Big Game, even if it means exercising veto power over replayable reality itself. I don’t want to believe this, and maybe I’ll be proven wrong next year. Still, I couldn’t watch the Bills’ loss without thinking that Buffalo was on the wrong side of fate and destiny, a cosmic glass ceiling that they couldn’t break through. What a shame.
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