Literal inches separated the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s AFC Championship. But as they have in the three previous postseason matchups, the Bills came up just short against the defending Super Bowl champions.

Buffalo played a clean game overall, conceding no takeaways while leaning on a run game that posted 147 yards against a top 10 rushing defense. Against most teams, those benchmarks clear a pathway to victory.

Individually, Josh Allen played a mistake-free game under center, making a number of brilliant throws throughout the night. Cook had the Chiefs defense reeling to start the second half and the Bills’ defensive line found ways to make an impact throughout.

But the Chiefs have held a read on Buffalo this time of year and looking at the biggest moments of the game, the home team seemingly ended on the right side of almost all of them.

From start to finish, the Bills had chances to take more firm control of the game and could not break through. That left Allen with a brutally frank 10-word explanation as to how this loss happened.

“To be the champs, you have to beat the champs. And we didn’t do that.”

In some ways, the Bills beat themselves instead. They left four points on the board between a pair of two-point attempts that would have been enough to seal the game late.

The most significant shortcoming perhaps came on the fourth down conversion attempt two minutes into the fourth quarter where Buffalo was unable to get Allen across the line to gain.

In comparison to last year, there is no question the Bills avoided the same flagrant errors that cost them the game against Kansas City in the AFC Divisional Round. One could argue the lessons of those mistakes were learned.

But it seems for yet another season they will be taking away another experience of heartbreak rather than taking vengeance on their vaunted rival.