Kings of New York

This season, the Buffalo Bills had gone on the road and defeated the Los Angeles Rams, the defending Super Bowl champions; the Baltimore Ravens, led by a former league most valuable player; and Kansas City, the team responsible for ending the Bills’ 2021 season in heartbreaking fashion in the divisional round of the playoffs.

But in the final seconds of Sunday’s game at MetLife Stadium, it was the Jets who were miming snow angels on the turf, celebrating a 20-17 win against their A.F.C. East rivals in front of a sellout crowd. The Bills (6-2) have been a midseason Super Bowl darling behind a league-leading offense, but they have yet to win a game in their division.

“It’s tough to win in this league when you’re playing a good team” and the quarterback plays poorly, Bills quarterback Josh Allen said at a postgame news conference, using an expletive to describe his outing.

Just a few days earlier, Allen had publicly defended Zach Wilson, his Jets counterpart, against pundits’ criticism of Wilson’s three-interception performance in a 22-17 loss to the New England Patriots in Week 8.

But Sunday evening, Allen was the one answering for mistakes: He threw two interceptions and lost the ball on a strip sack on the Bills’ final drive.

Bills offensive guard Ryan Bates recovered the loose ball, but Allen’s fumble sent the ball back to Buffalo’s 14-yard line for a third-and-21 with 40 seconds remaining. On the strip sack, as Jets edge rusher Bryce Huff crashed his arm as he was throwing, Allen’s right elbow bent backward, leaving the quarterback grabbing it before his final two throws. Both passes fell incomplete, and Allen said after the game that he had some “slight pain.”

Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner, the team’s top draft pick this year, was in coverage on Allen’s final incompletion and started the celebration afterward as the team moved to 6-3. The game was a collision between a Jets defense determined to turn around the franchise’s fortunes and a Bills offense that has found it harder to score over the last six quarters than earlier in the season, though the team held on for a win last week against the Green Bay Packers.

For the game’s first few moments, it seemed as though the Bills were primed to run away with an easy win: Jets punter Braden Mann slipped on the opening kickoff and, on the Bills’ first play from scrimmage, Allen completed a 42-yard pass to receiver Stefon Diggs, who whistled past Gardner on his route.

But on a second-and-10 within scoring distance, Allen promptly threw his first interception of the day directly to Jets safety Jordan Whitehead, whom Allen said he couldn’t see lurking behind the defensive end, at the 9-yard line. It was Allen’s second red-zone interception in two weeks. “I made some bad decisions tonight, and it cost our team,” Allen said. “A lot to learn from, a lot to grow from. That’s not the standard we hold ourselves to. That’s not the ball we play.”

The Jets’ defense pressured Allen throughout Sunday, but in the first half he used his legs to put the Bills ahead. He scored two rushing touchdowns, on a quarterback sneak and a 36-yard designed run, to put Buffalo up by 14-3. Allen’s second touchdown, which came midway through the second quarter, was the last time the Bills found the end zone.

Diggs caught five passes for 93 yards in the first half, but said the Jets changed their pass coverage after halftime, shifting from man-to-man coverage to Cover 2 zone defense. He didn’t have any catches in the second half. But the Bills’ mistakes also doomed the team the rest of the way.

There was an unusual 10-minute stoppage midway through the third quarter to take down the overhead TV camera suspended above the field after one of the cords holding it in place snapped. The delay came during a sustained Jets march, and after play resumed Wilson lost a fumble on a sack by Von Miller.

But just two plays later, the Bills gave the ball back to the Jets when Allen threw a second interception, this one to Gardner, in a mistake Allen said he could only explain as a “brain fart.”

On his way to the bench after the play, Allen slammed his helmet into the kicking net in apparent frustration. The Jets scored a touchdown off that turnover in Bills territory, taking their first lead of the game, 17-14.

In the fourth quarter, with the game tied at 17 after a Bills field goal, the Jets marched almost the entire length of the field, starting at their own 4-yard line and coming into position for a 28-yard field goal. Ten of the drive’s 13 plays were runs, taking advantage of a Bills defense that was missing linebacker Matt Milano and both starting safeties.

After the game, Diggs defended his quarterback, rebuking Allen’s profane self-assessment, and asserting that the Bills would rally around their quarterback. Diggs chalked up the team’s performance to the “ebbs and flows” of what is expected to be a long season, one including a playoff run.

But if the Bills are to avenge last postseason’s loss, they first have to take care of the regular season — and the teams in their division. On Sunday, the Jets reminded the Bills that they — along with the Miami Dolphins (6-3) and the Patriots (5-4) — won’t allow Buffalo to look past them.

“Our division isn’t the same division it used to be,” Diggs said.