For the first time since 1998, the NFL postseason will unfold without a quarterback named Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, or Patrick Mahomes. And for the Buffalo Bills and Josh Allen, that’s a pretty big shift. After all, the Kansas City Chiefs have been the roadblock every single time Allen and the Bills have come close, knocking them out of the Super Bowl picture four different times in the postseason.

This year, though, that familiar obstacle isn’t there. No Mahomes. No Chiefs standing in the way, which naturally leads to the big question: Is this finally the Bills’ year? But CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco isn’t convinced, pointing to one specific reason the Bills will fall short.

“If they want to make me look good, they’ll win it,” Prisco joked when asked if the Bills can hoist the Lombardi this year. “No, look, if you’re out on the road in the playoffs, if you’re sitting at home and you lose and choke, that’s a whole different story. But you’re out on the road, and if they win, they’re going to win it by winning every game on the road. That’s hard to do. So, I’m not expecting them to win this year.”

Prisco’s concern with the Bills is rooted in how brutal their postseason path looks. If Josh Allen and company want to reach the Super Bowl, nothing about the road ahead is forgiving. Under Sean McDermott, this marks the eighth time Buffalo is heading to the postseason. But this weekend, the challenge begins in Jacksonville, where they’ll face the AFC South champions, the Jaguars. And that’s where things start to get tricky.

Buffalo enters as the AFC’s No. 6 seed, which means no home-field advantage at all. If the Bills want to get to the Super Bowl, they’ll have to do it the hard way: By winning three straight games on the road. Even in the best-case scenario, beating Jacksonville would only set up another road test in the divisional round, and potentially yet another away game in the AFC Championship.

McDermott knows exactly what’s at stake. After closing the regular season with a 35–8 win over the New York Jets, he didn’t sugarcoat what lies ahead.

“You’ve got to play good solid football and we’ll have a big challenge ahead of us here. We’re going to have to be a tough football team. That’s where it starts, and you can’t beat yourself. There’s more to it than that, but it’s an important week for us obviously and we have a lot of work to do.”

The problem is, history hasn’t been kind to the Bills in road playoff games. The Bills have won just four road playoff games in franchise history. And for McDermott personally, January away from home has been brutal. The head coach is 0–5 on the road, with losses to Jacksonville in 2017, Houston in 2019, and three straight defeats against Kansas City in 2020, 2021, and 2024.

Now, the path circles back to where it all started: Jacksonville. Whether McDermott and Josh Allen finally flip the script or see history repeat itself is the real question, especially with injuries already complicating things. And that road just got tougher, as a key injury in the season finale has already put the Bills’ defense in a bind before their first playoff snap.

Sean McDermott casts doubt on rookie CB playing in wild-card game

Like most playoff-bound teams, Sean McDermott and the Bills chose to rest several key starters in the regular-season finale against the Jets. On the surface, that decision didn’t seem to cost them much, considering they cruised to a lopsided win. But a closer look tells a different story, because not everyone walked off the field healthy.

First-round rookie cornerback Maxwell Hairston suffered an ankle injury late in the game. Initial optimism for his availability in the wild-card game against Jacksonville quickly evaporated when McDermott confirmed he is ‘unlikely to play’. This naturally raises eyebrows about why the rookie was out there in the first place.

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The logic behind that debate is simple: starting a rookie in a meaningless game only to lose him for the playoffs feels counterproductive. But context matters here. McDermott didn’t have much of a choice. Christian Benford was rested, and Tre White ended up playing nearly the entire game. And Hairston, along with those two, were the only active boundary corners on the roster.

McDermott addressed that reality head-on after the game.

“You want to be able to protect everyone in a game like yesterday, unfortunately, you’re not able to, right? Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get Dane [Jackson] up. Dane was out of ups anyway, at that point, so we would have had to cut somebody to bring up another corner. So, unfortunately, we were a little landlocked there.”

With Hairston now unlikely to suit up, the question isn’t whether the Bills have options. They do. It’s whether losing depth in the secondary becomes another factor stacked against them, especially given Buffalo’s history in road postseason games.

‘For a team already facing the monumental task of winning three straight road games, losing a starting cornerback is a critical blow. The path to the Super Bowl was already narrow for Buffalo; now, with a depleted secondary, it’s a tightrope walk with no safety net.