Uncanny "Game of the Year" Losses for Bills Every Year Since 2020

[BeastMaster]

This is what I call the "McDermott factor"

 

It's truly insane that this happens to this team every season now

[TwoFlocksofFury]

13 hours ago, Big Turk said:

 

We have the 2nd fewest losses in the NFL over the past 5 years next to KC and in fact the 2nd best winning percentage in all of pro sports.

 

Hard to really take this comment seriously.

 

Besides, doesn't matter if you lose by 1 or 100 they all count the same in the standings. You don't get bonus points for "losing better".

I think it'd actually matter to the players if they lost by 100 🤣

[machine gun kelly]

14 hours ago, 2003Contenders said:

The Bills have been on the losing end of what could arguably be called the "game of the year" (regular season) each of the last 5 seasons, and the similarities are uncanny.

All 5 games:

   -- Came against NFC teams.

  -- Josh played lights out in all 5 games.

  --  All of the games were decided by a single score

   -- All games essentially ended on the final possession. Indeed, 3 of those 5 games went into overtime.

 

Let's look back....

 

2020 Week 10: the infamous "Hail Murray" game. Josh passed for 284 yards and 2 TDs. He also rushed for 38 yards AND CAUGHT a 12-yards TD pass.

 

2021 Week 14: the overtime loss to the Tom Brady-led Bucs. After a slow start, the offense explodes in the 2nd half overcoming a 3-TD deficit. Josh passed for 308 yards and 2 TDs and tacked on 109 rushing yards along with a rushing TD.

 

2022 Week 10: the overtime loss to the Vikings thanks largely to insane catch made by J. Jefferson on a 4th-and-a-mile conversion. That was inexplicably followed by a fumbled exchange between Morse and Josh in the endzone, which the Vikings recovered. Josh was still able to tie the game with mere seconds left -- but ultimately lost in overtime. He passed for 330 yards and rushed for 84 in that game.

 

2023 Week 12: this was another overtime loss that was set up at the end of regulation where Elliott made good on a 60-yard field goal in the driving rain. Josh passed for 339 yards and 2 TDs, and added 81 yards rushing in that game.

 

2024 Week 14... Well, we all know about this one against the Rams.

 

All of them exciting games that unfortunately went the wrong way. Josh racked up 400+ total yards in 4 of those 5 games -- and caught a TD pass in the other.

 

Now, here is the GOOD news. In years 2020-2023 those games would all serve as the Bills final loss of the regular season, as the team would go undefeated the rest of the way! Here's hoping that this latest misstep follows suit!

It’s high hopes, but I was thinking the same that maybe the only positive is it galvanizes the team for the rest of the season.  You know most analysts will pick Detroit this week.  My response.  Who cares?

[Mikie2times]

6 hours ago, Generic_Bills_Fan said:

I like how the bills lose credit for the mediocre/pretty good dolphins being in their division yet the only think keeping the dolphins stuck in the pretty good category is the bills beating them twice basically every year 🤣

 

nobody is happy with just making the playoffs…this team has been right there with the best team in the conference in the playoffs more often than not and beating them in the regular season pretty often.  I’m sure some people think that luck will change and some don’t.  If we were making the playoffs and getting blown out by cincy every year nobody would be happy lol 

The Dolphins are below .500 vs winning teams since 2020 excluding games against us.  They wouldn’t be winning any division in football regardless of the Bills

[RiotAct]

20 hours ago, peterpan said:

It’s really a pattern forming.  We lose in true record setting fashion.  13 seconds.  254-0   There are others.  And there’s a distinct pattern.

… that all the games on this list were entertaining and exciting?!?!?

[ganesh]

16 hours ago, Buffalo716 said:

He's better than Mike McCarthy and he's absolutely on the same level as harbaugh in Baltimore and Mike Tomlin 

 

Probably better than harbaugh ... I'm not worried when we play Pittsburgh or Baltimore and I don't think we're going to get out coached ... Did harbaugh beat McDermott in the playoffs?

 

He's absolutely in the second tier of coaches with harbaugh and Tomlin etc

 

If harbaugh didn't have 1 magical super bowl run... He's not even held in that upper stratosphere of coaches

 

wouldn't the same be true for Tomlin too...He won a SB with Rothlisberger and went to another one.

[Donuts and Doritos]

Since 2020??? Don't short change them, they've been doing this since 1960 baby!!!

[Goin Breakdown]

Ugh that Tampa bay game when the refs started allowing TB defenders to stretch Diggs jersey across the field sideline to sideline and blatantly ignore it. Buffalo would have won that game if it for blind reffing. 

[ProcessTruster]

Only on this board would this OP exist.  Unbelievable.   Please move on people.   

[Generic_Bills_Fan]

20 hours ago, peterpan said:

It’s really a pattern forming.  We lose in true record setting fashion.  13 seconds.  254-0   There are others.  And there’s a distinct pattern.

Idk there were competing stats in this particular one…idk what teams records are when they give up a blocked punt td but they’ve gotta be pretty bad.  And a blocked punt td probably should go down as a turnover which would make what I’m assuming 254-0 is referring to not apply.  Really was no different than a pick/fumble 6 game flow wise. 

 

13 seconds was definitely really bad but it isn’t unprecedented.  we hit a humongous play to walk off fg the lions with very little time remaining last time we met. There were 23 seconds left instead of 13 but the play getting us into ‘used to be good Tyler bass range’ 🤣 only took about 7.  Just one specific example but there’s a bunch.  
 

The Minneapolis miracle for example was much worse than 13 seconds I wonder if saints fans talk about that one as much as we talk about 13 seconds haha 

Edited December 11 by Generic_Bills_Fan

[Mister Defense]

What a silly willfully ignorant OP

 

He chooses losses and calls all of those the "games of the year" and ignores the many actual games of the year, such as the one just a few weeks ago against the Chiefs, just to make the nonsensical bash-the- Bills point. And the game of the week last year, for the division against the Dolphins?  And Etcetera etcetera etcetera.....  The Bills come through over and over and over again under McDermott.

 

But in this OP the games of the year are the Bills' few losses, that is how he determines if they are games of the year.  Willful and comical ignorance. "Uncanny" only if you cherry pick in an extremely negative, illogical way. How the heck was the game against the Cardinals, the hail Mary game, a game of the year?  No one was saying that at the time--NO one.  Chosen here just because it was a Bills' loss. And redefined now as a "game of the year".

 

Since 2020 the Bills have a 14-3 record in December, coming through almost every time, in one big, vital game after another.  That is uncanny, not this drivel pushed in the OP.

 

 

Edited December 11 by Mister Defense

[mike22nc]

21 hours ago, US Egg said:

Maybe it's age, maybe it's Bills Burnout, but whatever, I get over a game in fast fashion regardless how it went.

 

My wife, thanks to #17, for the 1st time in our marriage wants to watch with me. It's ***** brutal to be honest. 

 

So game ends, she's po'd. I say "oh well it was a great game". She snaps "how is it a great game if we lost ?"   

 

Is she right?  

When the Bills scored with ~9 minutes left in the 4th, I was feeling the same way as you. I said I don't even care if we lose at this point, it is so much fun watching Josh play QB and it's amazing he's even gotten us into this position. 

 

My mood took a 180 when the coach made indefensible (in my opinion) end-of-game decisions. In the grand scheme of things, the loss isn't that important. But man, it's hard when an all-time performance by the QB isn't maximized by coaching.

[Utah John]

Except for the Vikings game, where the fumble between Morse and Allen made the loss possible (but not inevitable), all those losses came about because the defense let us down.  (And in the Vikings game the fourth and a mile completion to Jefferson happened only because our DB tried for an interception instead of just knocking the pass down.) 

 

Josh is the issue only in the sense that if he wasn't so excellent we wouldn't have been in the situation in the first place -- we would have lost by a mile instead of making it close.  I can find it in my heart to forgive him, how about you?

 

The other point to make is that we have one regular season abomination per year, and we hope we've already seen this year's.  

Edited December 11 by Utah John

[T.E.]

I can't believe the Bills fans on this thread who insist that they don't lose in insanely improbable ways at any higher frequency than any other team. I'll just assume they're 15 years old.

[Einstein]

22 hours ago, RkFast said:

 

Literally every team loses games "like the Bills" literally every year.

Show me a list of teams who lose games while their QB has 400 yards and 6 TD's.

Im guessing the list is very short.

 

2 hours ago, Mister Defense said:

 

 

But in this OP the games of the year are the Bills' few losses, that is how he determines if they are games of the year. 

I'm not OP, but several of the games he listed were called game of the year by the media. Not the OP.

[2003Contenders]

47 minutes ago, Einstein said:

Show me a list of teams who lose games while their QB has 400 yards and 6 TD's.

Im guessing the list is very short.

 

I'm not OP, but several of the games he listed were called game of the year by the media. Not the OP.

That is exactly right.

 

And for those complaining about this post and suggesting that I am "woe is me as a Bills fan" or "reliving the past", I guess you missed (or perhaps I did not properly articulate) my whole point, which was that this game was strikingly similar to the LAST losses in the regular season for the past 4 seasons. This was intended to be  OPTIMISTIC -- pointing out that after suffering defeats like these, the Bills rallied and went on to win all of their remaining games en route to division titles. Often times these late-season victories came against long odds (like beating KC in KC the week after the Eagles loss) when many believed that their season was over.

 

Hopefully history repeats itself in these regards.

[wjag]

On 12/10/2024 at 3:28 PM, peterpan said:

It’s really a pattern forming.  We lose in true record setting fashion.  13 seconds.  254-0   There are others.  And there’s a distinct pattern.

 

It's part of the lore.  The Jefferson one though, that one was really a comedy of horrendous errors.

[msw2112]

On 12/10/2024 at 1:24 PM, 0017 said:

Every team does this, just about every team that’s played the Chiefs has a heart breaking loss this year. 

 

I was thinking the exact same thing, but you got to it first!

 

Not all of those Chiefs wins were epic shootouts, but the point remains that those were tough losses to take.

Edited December 11 by msw2112

[uninja]

On 12/10/2024 at 3:45 PM, MJS said:

What makes them games of the year?

As a neutral fan you’d watch that game excited af because it’s two teams just going at it. Exciting plays, big momentum swings, large deficit comebacks and it coming down to the wire. 
 

Basically the Hollywood version of an NFL game. 

[HamSandwhich]

I think the Josh putting on the cape and being superman in games we lose in a tough way is a bit of the chicken or the egg. He will usually put on the cape when we are behind, so that tends to be when he puts up monster numbers. However, because we are playing from behind, there is a higher likely hood we lose vs being ahead. So this is bound to happen from time to time, even when Superman is your QB, sometimes the other team has kryptonite.