Rematch ripe with newfound perspective
Heading into Week 17, the Bills’ game against the Bengals in Cincinnati had the recipe for an instant classic. Two prolific quarterbacks. Two AFC contenders. Two teams vying for a statement win before a postseason run.
A win would have kept the Bills in control of the No. 1 seed with their stated goal of home-field advantage still in front of them. They had checked off their first two goals: a playoff berth and a division title.
The Week 17 game was likely to define the Bills’ success in the regular season from a football perspective. Instead, the night of Jan. 2 and the days that followed defined the Bills in a different way.
When safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field, the game lost its meaning.
Hamlin’s health took priority as terrified players comforted each other. Three days later, the game was canceled.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen the rest of season on the field, I really don’t,” general manager Brandon Beane said days later. “This is a group of winners, and I will forever remember this team, this season, the moments of it.
“I’m still hopefully optimistic that we can make a run. But I don’t know if there’s ever a team I’ll be more proud of than this.”
Emotional reunion
Three weeks later, the Bills and the Bengals will meet again, this time in Orchard Park. Two franchises tethered together, first by one horrific shared experience on the field, then by the goodwill that followed.
Now, their goals are in conflict. Each aims to send the other one home.
For a few reasons — Hamlin’s improved health, the passage of time and the win-or-gohome stakes — both teams seem poised for what is sure to be an emotionally charged atmosphere.
Start with Hamlin’s remarkable recovery. While his great strides can’t erase what the two teams saw on the field, there is profound relief that he is still here. The Bills now get to see Hamlin almost daily.
But like the Bills’ locker room, some 400 miles away, the Bengals found solace in each update on Hamlin. Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan felt the weight was still lingering when they faced the Baltimore Ravens in Week 18.
“I thought the pregame warmups, it just felt off, and rightfully so,” Callahan said Wednesday.
As the game went on, the Bengals settled in. They just needed time.
Two full games for each team since helped flush the unknown of what it would be like to play football again.
“I think, if anything, the emotional residue would be to just be out there playing football more so than facing a team,” Bills center Mitch Morse said Wednesday. “These two teams shared an experience that no other teams (have) that I have known. … But I wouldn’t say there’s any apprehension out there or residual effects.”
The stakes also help both teams.
Neither team has won a Super Bowl. The Bills, historically, have often been defined by their losses. Last season was a another painful reminder of that.
When the Bills take the field Sunday, it will be nearly a year to the date since their last season-defining moment: the gutting overtime loss in Kansas City in last year’s divisional round. A lead was erased in 13 seconds, and a shot at the title vanished quickly after.
A season of high expectations ended too soon, a fan base was shattered once again.
As Beane spoke the morning after he returned to Buffalo following four days in the hospital with Hamlin and his family, he said he could talk for hours about how proud he is of this team.
He said that without knowing what this season’s end result would wind up being.
“Thirteen seconds means nothing,” Beane said. “This is what it’s truly about. Building teams, building men, leading.”
Reaching new heights
For Bills coach Sean McDermott, the real time to reflect will come later. After all, the ultimate goal is still within reach.
“It’s harder for me, because coaching a team, it’s hard to step back,” McDermott said Friday. “I think after the season, two or three weeks after the season, I’ll have a better assessment, really, big-picture-wise. What I can tell you now is that you learn so much about life through sports. And that was one of those moments that you learned a lot about life in general, through the sport of football.”
In a pivotal moment for the Bills, football briefly took a backseat.
“I think the biggest thing I learned as a human was, when people can put aside their agendas for the common good of accomplishing one goal, we can be pretty good as a society in America, and in the world for that matter,” McDermott said Wednesday. “That experience — we’ll carry that with us and there’s a challenge to that, but there’s also a lot of good that came from that. And I think right now we need to focus on the positives and the positives that came out of that.”
The story of the 2022 Bills is still unfolding. But the response, perspective and healing that all followed Hamlin’s emergency are central to this year’s story.
“It just gave us another chunk of armor,” left tackle Dion Dawkins said.
Dawkins and the Bills hope they’re still adding, hopeful the latest piece of armor is followed soon by a ring.
To do that, they have to get past the Bengals. A win Sunday won’t rewrite the lessons from the last time these two teams met. It will reiterate them.
“It just brought our family closer,” Dawkins said. “I would say that only meaning that it really gives us is just a deeper meaning of love — where you didn’t think that you could really reach that height of love to have for a brother or a teammate. But with the situation that occurred, it brought us there.”