Buffalo Bills’ 2019 season laid building blocks for AFC greatness

The Buffalo Bills are about to wrap up an offseason that marks the beginning of its 2024-25 mission, and end of an era. Over the 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons, the franchise morphed from playoff afterthought to Super Bowl contender; Josh Allen ascended from a household name in Firebaugh, CA to a household name in the United States; Western New York became a destination not just for rowdy fans and wing connoisseurs, but for superstar players and network execs.

Yet while this four-year stretch, like another one we all know about, didn’t yield a Super Bowl trophy, it was an unforgettable watch.

The seeds for those division-winning years were sowed in 2019, which, like the seasons that followed it, featured some soaring highs and plunging lows. There were unexpected twists, unlikely antagonists, and endings leaving most wanting more. This was a young team with relatively low expectations, and Allen hadn’t yet become the player who could win a game completely on his own. (Though the opposite may have been true.)

One thing’s for sure: this season’s Bills team — the opening act as we know them today — feels like it’s from another time. And with the composition of this year’s roster perhaps giving 2019 vibes, it feels like a good time to look back on that season.

Buffalo Bills’ best wins from 2019

No. 3: Week 1, at New York Jets, 17-16
All of this happened in the first three quarters:

• Allen loses a fumble less than three minutes in.
• Allen throws a pick-six (ball deflected off Cole Beasley’s hands to C.J. Mosley) less than five minutes in.
• The Bills lose a fumble on 4^th & 1 (Mosley recovers).
• A deflected Allen throw is intercepted just before halftime.
• The Jets score a safety just after halftime.
• The Jets score to go up 14-0, and a retreating Sam Darnold lofts a ball from the 19-yard line that the Bills’ badly misplay and is caught for two points.
• The Bills score their first points of a game, a field goal, with 3:48 to play in the third quarter, after linebacker C.J. Mosley should have again picked off Allen

It was the Same Old Bills. And then, it was the Same Old Jets.
Or was it the Brand New Bills?

Watching highlights of this game, Allen still looked like a scrawny kid, and he didn’t use his legs as a weapon very much. But you could see the zip and fearlessness of his throws. Combined with a steady defense, you could see the embryo of the modern-day Buffalo Bills.

After an Allen rushing touchdown trimmed the deficit to six, the Bills faced 2nd & 17 with 3:13 to play. Cutting the ask to 3rd & 4, Allen’s year-long connection with wide receiver John Brown was fortified after a 38-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown. Buffalo’s defense secured the unlikely victory with ample pressure up front and multiple batted balls.

Both fan bases left this game shocked, but only one was happy about it.

No. 2: Week 15, at Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-10
The last time the Bills clinched a playoff berth, two years earlier, they had completed their regular-season schedule with a fate yet undetermined. Then Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton completed a miraculous fourth-down pass to wide receiver Tyler Boyd, leading to greater celebration in Buffalo — whose 17-year postseason drought was about to end — than it did in Cincinnati.

This time, on Sunday Night Football for the first time in 12 years and facing a blue-blood franchise, the Bills took care of playoff-clinching business themselves, with two games still to play. The performance — only their second-ever win in Pittsburgh — also marked the Buffalo Bills’ first 10-win season since 1999.

The Bills’ final output read 17, and much like Week 1 against the Jets, No. 17 wasn’t exactly prolific: he finished 13-of-25 for just 139 yards, along with a pick. But like Week 1, Allen ran for a pivotal touchdown and saved his best football for last: a fourth-quarter toss to tight end Tyler Kroft was the eventual game-winning, playoff-sealing score.

Four interceptions of temporary cult hero Duck Hodges helped, too. (Three years later, also on the road, Buffalo would do something similar against another flavor of the week, quarterback Mike White.) Two of those picks came in the end zone; the other two came from third-year cornerback Tre’Davious White.

“This is the happiest time of my life besides the birth of my two kids,” White said.

No. 1: Week 13, at Dallas Cowboys, 26-15 The Drought was bad enough. But perhaps the most embarrassing part of the Bills’ 17-year walkabout was their uncanny ability to fall flat, often spectacularly so, in nationally televised games.

There weren’t many spotlight opportunities for this moribund franchise, of course. But on the occasions Buffalo received such treatment, they rarely failed to not disappoint. There was the 56-10 obliteration in Orchard Park, NY by the Patriots on a Sunday night in 2007. Two years later, this time kicking off Monday Night Football in Foxborough, MA, there was the curse-inducing (or, just cursed) Leodis McKelvin fumble. Sandwiched in between, a 29-27 home loss to the Cleveland Browns that ended with a Cleveland 56-yard field goal make — and a Buffalo 47-yard field goal miss — in the final two minutes.

But none of those nighttime flops compared to the Monday Night Meltdown at The Ralph against the Cowboys in 2007, when the Bills somehow surrendered nine points in the final 20 seconds, allowing Tony Romo — despite throwing five interceptions and losing a fumble — to improbably claim victory.

All of which made Buffalo’s triumph in Dallas on Thanksgiving, 12 years later, even sweeter for long-suffering fans. It didn’t matter that the Cowboys were 6-5 and the Bills 8-3; the records were irrelevant on this stage.

Even sweeter than revenge, though, was the validation that this version of the Buffalo Bills had truly arrived — and weren’t surprised by their success.

“It’s just another win, another step in the right direction,” said Beasley, the former Cowboy who finished with 110 yards and a score.

After an early touchdown to tight end Jason Witten for Dallas, Buffalo faced 3rd & 10 from their own two-yard line. There was no panic, though, or possession concession with a safe run. Rather, Allen stepped back into the end zone, let his lineman expand his pocket, then stepped forward and fired a dart to Beasley for 28 yards and breathing room. The drive didn’t amount to points, but it built confidence, which Bills Mafia could detect while digesting their turkey from Texas to Tonawanda.

The Cowboys sensed it, too, as was evident in their (successful) decision to go for it on 4th & 1 from their own 19.5-yard line to open the second quarter.

It was a different 4th & 1, however, that would become the lasting image of this game — and the announcement of Josh Allen to a worldwide audience. With 2:18 to play in the first half, Allen bobbled the snap (more about that later), but incredibly recovered his drop amongst a scattering of bodies, returned to upright position, and forced his way through the mass of humanity — and past the first-down marker.

Then he got upright again, and celebrated as if he’d scored a touchdown.

“Oh my goodn…honestly, this is why his teammates love him,” said Romo, now seeing the Bills from the CBS broadcast booth. “He is a football player through and through.”

Buffalo celebrations would continue — along with touchdowns. Immediately following the conversion, Brown took an end-around toss and threw a touchdown to running back Devin Singletary. In the third quarter, Allen ran wild again, this time for a 15-yard touchdown. The Cowboys then failed to convert a 4th & Goal from the six. In all, the Bills scored 26 straight points to put the game out of reach by the middle of the fourth quarter.

But it was a comment by Romo early in the third quarter that summed up this performance, and the evolution of the Bills from the hapless team he’d watched up close before.

“Right now,” Romo said, “the difference is the Bills aren’t beating themselves.”

Once the Bills figured that part out, they were good enough to start beating other teams — now, and for years to come.

Buffalo Bills’ worst losses from 2019

No. 3: Week 8, vs. Philadelphia Eagles, 31-13
The Bills are 28-10 at home since the 2019 season began. And in an all-too-common occurrence, one of those losses fell on my annual pilgrimage to Orchard Park, NY.

It was a rainy, windy day, but the crowd was primed for a 5-1 squad facing a team less than two years removed from winning the Super Bowl. Buffalo’s start was fine if underwhelming, considering the conditions, and the defense made the plays it needed to make.

Then, with the Bills leading 7-3 and less than two minutes from halftime, Allen lost a fumble at Buffalo’s 24-yard-line. A minute and change later — touchdown and two-point conversion, Philadelphia.

Giving up a score just before half is crushing, but giving up one just after halftime might be worse. Buffalo did both on this day, as running back Miles Sanders ran for a 65-yard score just 58 seconds into the third quarter. Philadelphia would rack up 218 total rushing yards on the dreary afternoon.

The Bills would cut Philly’s lead to 17-13 on the next drive, but even then, Stephen Hauschka’s extra point was blocked. The Eagles would run for two more touchdowns in a game that saw Allen go 16-of-34 for 169 yards.

No. 2: Week 4, vs. New England Patriots, 16-10
It’s the game Allen has described as a wake-up call: barely into his second year with the Bills, the signal-caller felt he could never play this haphazard again.

“I was trying to do too much,” a reflective Allen told reporters later in the season. “I was trying to take too many things on my shoulders, instead of trusting the guys around me, and trusting the game plan we put in.

“That was a game that helped me realize that I didn’t need to make every single play by myself.”

That’s the silver lining to this loss. But in the moment, it was only pain.

The 3-0 Bills held Tom Brady to a pedestrian 150 yards passing, and the Patriots to 74 yards rushing. New England mustered just three points over the final three quarters. But as was almost always the case against the Pats, it wasn’t enough. New England exited New York unscathed, improving to 4-0 on the year and a headshaking 17-2 on the Buffalo Bills’ home turf since the start of the 2000 season.

Turnovers and special teams miscues are two ways a team can win with such lousy offensive output, and the sloppy Bills supplied the Patriots all the lifelines they needed. After a first-quarter Allen pick, New England blocked a Corey Bojorquez punt — and returned the ball for a touchdown — to take an early 13-0 lead.

Then, another Allen interception, courtesy of cornerback J.C. Jackson, on a late first-quarter deep ball.

Still, the Bills remained within two scores of the Patriots when safety Micah Hyde intercepted Brady in the end zone in on 3rd & Goal. They got within one score after an Allen leap into the end zone on 4th & Goal from the one.

Then, a third Allen interception.

And then, it got worse. On an Allen scramble, the 23-year-old was knocked out of the game after taking a helmet-to-helmet hit from cornerback Jonathan Jones.

Quarterback Matt Barkley was commendable in defeat, nearly matching Allen’s passing yardage (127 to 153), but the Bills were unable to score a touchdown from 3rd & Goal from the two, nor on the subsequent fourth down, nor anytime thereafter.

Between Allen’s injury and a fantastic defensive effort that went for naught, it was a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in Buffalo.

No. 1: Wild Card Round, at Houston Texans, 22-19 (OT)
Each of the Bills’ four recent playoff defeats have unfolded in distinct fashion. In 2021 (AFC Championship at Kansas City Chiefs), they were competitive but always a few steps behind. In 2022 (Divisional Round at Chiefs), they suddenly and stunningly collapsed. In 2023 (Divisional Round vs. Cincinnati Bengals), they were seemingly doomed from the start.

But as painful as those losses were, and despite this game being a Wild Card matchup, a case can be made that this one was as frustrating as any of them.

The game could not possibly have started better: Buffalo Bills receive the ball, and Allen, oh, you know:

• Threw twice for 11 yards
• Ran once for 42 yards
• Caught a 16-yard touchdown

At the Connecticut bar where I was watching, in the stands replete with Bills Mafia, and across upstate New York, it was pandemonium.

The Bills were a slight road underdog, but they were playing like the superior team. The defense was keeping Deshaun Watson and his array of weapons in check, forcing four straight punts to start the game. On Houston’s next possession, Buffalo recovered a DeAndre Hopkins fumble. Allen didn’t look overwhelmed in his first taste of the postseason. Overall, the Bills looked comfortable and spry, ready for the moment.

With 6:02 to play in the third quarter, Buffalo led 16-0. But it was impossible to shake the feeling that the Texans were still very much in the game. The Bills’ offense, unable to match the level of execution from their scintillating opening drive, was the culprit in an afternoon that featured so many missed opportunities:

• Early in the second quarter, Allen connected with Brown, which would have given Buffalo 1st & Goal from the three — but Smoke couldn’t keep two feet in bounds.
• With 30 seconds remaining in the first half, the Bills had 1st & 10 from the Houston 23. Following a timeout, and with just one remaining, the play call was a rush with running back Frank Gore. No gain.
• After Buffalo killed the clock on the next play, wide receiver Duke Williams beat his man, but couldn’t haul in a pass in the end zone despite getting both hands on the ball.
• On the opening play of the second half, Watson threw the ball into defensive back Siran Neal’s bread basket, but a case of butterfingers followed.
• On 1st & 10 from the 14, the Bills eventually settled for their third field goal of the game.

Even worse was the knowledge that the Texans had the best player on the field, Watson. It’s an uncomfortable admission that fans of most Bills’ opponents have now, and the main reason why one touchdown was never going to be enough.

Two touchdowns, two two-point conversions, a lost fumble and a field goal later — giving Houston a 19-16 lead — and fervent pandemonium was now familiar pessimism. Particularly when, on a late-game 4th & 27 at the Houston 42 that followed an intentional grounding, Josh Allen was sacked for a 19-yard loss.

“What was so promising only two plays ago,” ESPN’s Joe Tessitore said on the broadcast, “has become a nightmare for Buffalo.”

The Bills kept their dream alive by stuffing Watson on a 4th & 1 sneak that would have ended the game. They dodged a bullet with an ill-advised Allen lateral to tight end Dawson Knox, and got to overtime with a 47-yard Hauschka field goal. But despite forcing a Texans punt in OT, and converting on both 3rd & 12 and 3rd & 9, the nightmare reached its crescendo. On Houston’s second possession of overtime, Buffalo allowed a 3rd & 18 conversion, then somehow failed to sack Watson before he hit — of all players — former and future Bills running back Taiwan Jones for a 34-yard gain.

The replay of Neal and linebacker Matt Milano failing to wrap up Watson before the dagger throw sat with the Bills for the entire offseason, and added to the franchise’s ever-expanding legend of playoff what-ifs.

Ed McGrogan is the Senior Editorial Manager at Tennis.com (@TennisChannel / @Tennis) — where you can find more of his journalism work. An unabashed member of Bills Mafia, to keep up to date with Ed, follow him on social media @EdMcGrogan.