The future is here...and it's not leaving us anytime soon

Bills, Bucs, Chiefs, Rams … just let us breathe for a moment, okay?

On Sunday in a distant continent, drama and poetry combined on two separate strips of green grass in an attempt to send its global audience into cardiac arrest. So many emotions. So many throbbing hearts both shattered and repaired. An emblem for sport shimmering in the night sky above those American amphitheatres. But perhaps now we should learn to expect such nonsensical narratives: absurd comebacks, walk-off field goals, 13-seconds left…

Of course Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers tied the game in the fourth quarter after trailing 27-3 with three minutes left in the third. And of course Patrick Mahomes moved his Kansas City Chiefs into field goal range whilst starting from his own 25 with only thirteen seconds remaining on the clock, later advancing in overtime. Evidently someone had tampered with the Los Angeles Rams’ script as Matt Gay knocked it through the yellow uprights in the final moments to send a humbled Brady home early. A city on its knees, impaled by the golden sword of Matthew Stafford.

Now, originally this was planned to be the customary Brady arse-licking, bowing down once more to the greatest to ever throw an egg-shaped ball. Even despite his side’s brutal defeat this remained to be a remarkable recovery when all seemed lost in a playoff mist. It’s not like he hasn’t done it before (sorry, Atlanta). But then the next game happened, and by the end of it (we still don't know what it was) the jaws weren’t only on the floor, they were detached from the face completely. That’s a painful thought, although it was probably a tad more excruciating for Buffalo Bills’ quarterback, Josh Allen.

One that throws for 329 yards, four touchdowns, zero interceptions AND is their team’s leading rusher is usually a healthy recipe for a win. ‘Ha ha haaa’, laughed Mahomes, smugly. With the aid of his good chum Tyreek Hill, Mahomes would go 8-11 for 144 yards and two TD passes … after the 2-minute warning. In all your ferocious dreams you could not comprehend such divinity, such vision on a football field. Even after Hill’s 64-yard touchdown with a mere 1:02 left to lift them up by three, this silly, goofy, typical, un-bloody-believable basketball game had two more twists to tell.

First, it was the Allen-Davis combination that resulted in the latter’s fourth receiving touchdown of the cloudless, bracing evening. Bills up by three with thirteen seconds to go. Thirteen famous, nervous, long seconds. Surely that’s the game. Surely that’s tickets bought, let’s start planning next weekend’s hosting of Cincinnati. Surely not. Oh, Mahomes: in an ecstasy of swirling, flagging bodies he zings an arrow to Hill … to the Chiefs’ 44-yard line those chains are moved. Eight seconds. This is the season, months of throwing gems, taking hits, travelling every mile of the country, and for what? For this: Separation appears — so too does Travis Kelce — as he reaches the revered range for a kick, for overtime.

It’s an effective boot, too: twisting and flopping through into the netting of success behind. Harrison Butker with the ball of gold, and steel. 76,000 thousand shattered larynxes not to be in vain as the Chiefs cavort ceremoniously, knowing that a triumph in a game of heads or tails would likely send them through to the AFC Conference Championship. And so it came to be that a poleaxed, snoozing Bills defence would wither under Mahomes’ supremacy. One final touchdown, one happy Kansas.

Bemused are the Bills. It’s the knowing that guessing the outcome of the coin toss correctly likely would have seen them slither ever closer to that coveted, maiden Superbowl title. Both defences were already tucked up cosily in bed, evidently oblivious to their current location. Indeed, this further underpins the stupidity of the rule to whichever bonehead thought it wise to call a game without the other team having a chance. This contest deserved one final Allen attack and, who knows, maybe they’d still be playing now had that rule never been introduced.

Step away from Sunday’s starter and main course for a minute. Look at it like some sporting God who thinks they know what they’re talking about. What we have here is simple: two intrinsic quarterbacks in Mahomes and Allen whose rivalry will later be quilled into the books of footballing fame, replacing the one that currently stands defeated, dejected. Though not in spirit, nor in disgrace - this past weekend showed that we can move on from legends like Brady, and not feel too saddened by it.