One-Stat Recap: Defensive brilliance continues for the Bills in win over Chiefs

The Buffalo Bills’ defense came into Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs as the number-one ranked defense in the league according to Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric. Some questioned whether the defense was just feasting on inferior opponents and most expected a matchup with the high-powered Chiefs to slide the Bills down those rankings. Their dominate performance against Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the Kansas City Chiefs’ offense proved that narrative wrong as the Bills’ retained their status as the number-one defense in the National Football League.

They earned that number-one ranking by playing so well on Sunday Night Football that the Chiefs’ offense had an expected points added (EPA) of -1.20. It’s just the fourth game of Mahomes’s career where his offense has recorded a negative EPA. Sunday’s performance was the third-lowest of those four games. Their worst EPA performance was the -7.90 EPA they posted in their Super Bowl loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this past February.