How Travis Kelce captained the Chiefs’ frantic 13-second drive against the Bills

With 13 seconds left in regulation of the Chiefs-Bills divisional playoff game on Sunday, Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen hit receiver Gabriel Davis with a 19-yard touchdown pass. That was supposed to be the last salvo in a crazy two-minute drill for both teams that saw lead change after the lead change, but after Davis’ fourth touchdown of the game — a pro football postseason record — the Bills were supposed to have won this one.

We all know what happened next.

The Bills kicked off with a standard kick into the end zone as opposed to the squib kick that would have taken some of that 13 seconds off the clock, and Patrick Mahomes had all of those 13 seconds to come up with field goal position to make it a 36-36 tie, and send the thing into overtime.

One 19-yard pass to Tyreek Hill and one 25-yard pass to Travis Kelce later, the Chiefs had moved from their own 25-yard line to the Buffalo 31, which allowed Harrison Butker to boot the game-tying 49-yard field goal. The Chiefs bombarded the Bills defense in overtime to win the game and advance to their fourth straight AFC Championship game, but let’s go back to the drive that tied the game.

Mahomes, head coach Andy Reid, and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy were all involved in the process, but as NFL Films shows us with its usual brilliance, it was Kelce who kept things straight on the two passes that put Butker in position to succeed.

First, he told Hill that the Bills were probably going to play man coverage on the first play, so Hill should go outside and come back in so that Kelce could “get in the way” to create room. Then, Kelce told Mahomes that the seam would be open on his catch, which it very much was.

It was an amazing demonstration of defensive awareness, and everything Kelce advised came true.

“It is a pretty common defense in a situation like that,” Kelce said after the game. “The defense will try and take away the sideline throws to give you more of the seams and the middle of the field open. That and they are soft so you can get a head start. I just told him right before they called a timeout right before we ran out there to run the play. I told him I am probably not going to run the route that is called. I am just going to run to the open area. Midway through his cadence, he was screaming at me at the line of scrimmage, ‘Do it’. ‘Do it. Do it.’ I was just like, alright — here we go, boys. It was just a little backyard football with a couple of seconds left that gave us an opportunity to take the game into overtime.”

Mahomes was most appreciative after the video came out.

And Kelce responded in kind.

It will now be up to the Bengals to deal with this kind of crazy in the AFC Championship game.

If you want more snippets of Kelce’s football smarts, check out this game tape session from September.