Bills Clinch Spot

There will be no last-second miracle from Andy Dalton and Tyler Boyd necessary this time for the Buffalo Bills.

Sunday night, Sean McDermott’s team took care of securing an AFC wild-card playoff berth on its own by marching into Heinz Field and knocking off the Pittsburgh Steelers 17-10 in front of a national TV audience on Sunday Night Football.

With a 10-4 record, the Bills secured their first double-digit win total since 1999 and just their second playoff berth in the last 20 years, though both have come in the three seasons McDermott has been the head coach, the other in 2017 when the Bengals’ Dalton and Boyd gave them a stunning assist that pushed them in.

They also locked up the No. 5 seed in the playoff bracket because no other team can catch the Bills, even if they were to lose their last two games at New England and home against the Jets. This almost surely means the Bills will face either the Kansas City Chiefs or Houston Texans in the opening round of the playoffs the weekend of Jan. 4-5.

This was a tremendous night for the Bills as they were making their first appearance since 2007 on “Sunday Night Football” which is now considered the NFL’s weekly showcase game, far surpassing Monday night in prestige.

It was yet another opportunity for the Bills to prove who they are on the heels of their coming out party on Thanksgiving Day when the largest turkey day audience in nearly 30 years tuned in for their dismantling of the Cowboys.

It certainly wasn’t as pretty or entertaining as that game in Dallas, but the guess is no one in Bills Mafia cares all that much about the lack of style points.

The game played out exactly as most had predicted, both defenses making it terribly difficult for the offenses, but in the end, the Bills twice took advantage of great field position to score, and then put together an efficient fourth-quarter drive to win the game.