The Buffalo Bills suffered many heartbreaking losses during safety Jordan Poyer’s stay — none worse than the ’13-second’ game. How did he reflect on that loss?

This offseason represented an inflection point for the Buffalo Bills, and in many ways, the end of an era. Safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer have hit the open market, the latter signing with the Miami Dolphins.

Poyer was a beloved cog in Buffalo’s defensive machine, but like the rest of that core, was not able to secure a Super Bowl for Bills Mafia.

Of course, the ends to those playoff runs have so frequently come at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs. Their most recent clash saw catastrophe strike Western New York, but no loss will haunt Buffalo quite like the 2021 season, when Buffalo was 13 seconds away from taking down Patrick Mahomes when it mattered most.

Instead, Kansas City drove down the field and hit a game-tying field goal, preceding the overtime touchdown that would eventually change the rules of the sport.

Oct 10, 2021; Kansas City, Missouri, USA; Buffalo Bills free safety Jordan Poyer (21).

Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

Now removed from the Bills, Poyer had the chance to speak about the loss on “The Danza Project.”

“From getting the ball back without much time, without squibbing the ball, and then [we] give up a freaking screen that goes 30 yards down the field to Tyreek [Hill],” Poyer said. “We [were] just playing soft zone. And you look back and you look at the ‘NFL Films’ and you just see really how much more connected [they were] and they were just way better than us in that time.”

The Chiefs, unsurprisingly, were “way better” than most teams during their reign of terror. They’ve now won three Super Bowls in the Mahomes era and will enter the 2024 season as favorites once again.

There are reasons why the Bills haven’t caught up, despite a superstar quarterback of their own, and questions about how they’ll adjust in the future. But sometimes it’s as simple as one team being better than another.

“You can point fingers here and there and elsewhere,” Poyer said. “It was just an entire operation. There’s not really one finger that you can point at all because it was the entire end of our game operation that wasn’t good enough.”

To some extent, that falls on head coach Sean McDermott, who saw heat of his own thanks to mid-season struggles and a story about a locker-room speech gone wrong.

Buffalo has had the talent to compete with Kansas City – but two of its constants, general manager Brandon Beane and McDermott – have yet to deliver. Chalk it up to variance or bad luck if you wish, but another bungled late-game operation could be curtains for the Bills’ braintrust.