It's not the approach they'd prefer to be taking in the wake of another loss at the hands of the Patriots, but even if Buffalo won Monday night in New England they'd be doing the same thing when they return to work on Wednesday. On a short week with another giant conference game on tap in Kansas City, lamenting their shortcomings in Foxborough won't help in their preparation for the Chiefs.
"We went out there and we did our best," said DT Corbin Bryant of the Monday night loss in New England. "We didn't come out with the end result, but when you look at where we're at in the race, we're still there. We can't let this one game just bury us and let our season just slide out of the window. We're going to get ready for Kansas City and put this one right behind us."
Bryant is right. The Bills fell to 5-5 and with Monday's loss fell out of the final AFC Wild Card playoff spot by virtue of their conference record, which is now 5-4 (.600). That allowed Kansas City and Houston to leapfrog Buffalo with superior conference records right now. The Chiefs are 4-2 (.667) and the Texans are 4-3 (.571) against AFC opponents this season.
The Chiefs have six more conference games in hand, but one of them is against Buffalo this coming Sunday at Arrowhead. Buffalo can reclaim the sixth and final Wild Card spot with a victory, which would move them to 6-5 on the season and the Chiefs to 5-6.
That would also render any conference record tiebreaker with Kansas City at the end of the regular season moot by virtue of a head-to-head victory over the Chiefs.
Houston, one of the other 5-5 teams, hosts a non-conference opponent in New Orleans, while the Jets are home against division rival Miami in Week 12. Even if the Jets beat Miami they would still sit behind Buffalo, if the Bills also win Sunday, due to their current head-to-head win over New York.
Kansas City comes into their game with Buffalo hot on a four-game winning streak. Their most recent win was a 33-3 dismantling of San Diego.
"We've got a big game coming up, a great team, a great defense, a great offense," said Sammy Watkins of the Chiefs. "So like I said we've got to focus on those guys. This one is behind us, we lost. We've got to focus on the next one."
Watkins also believes that focus has to be at a peak level for everyone on the team, and not only during the practice week, but from start to finish in the game.
"There are little things we've got to clean up. We're not far off," he said. "There are little situations we're in and we've got to focus a little bit more on both sides of the ball."
With upcoming games against two of the teams in the AFC Wild Card mix with them (Kansas City, Houston), dwelling on Monday night's loss serves no purpose.
"We still have a very good shot of doing some big things here," said Chris Hogan. "We move on to Kansas City next week and we go on from there."
"We've still got a long season," said Nigel Bradham. "We're still in the hunt. We can get the job done."
And if there is one thing for the players to be mindful of coming out of the New England game it's the importance of finishing.
"The one thing we need to take away is to get where we want to go, we have to beat teams like this," said Manny Lawson. "It's going to come down to these type of games where one score dictates it all. That's what we're going to do."
