You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that two changes approved for the 2025 NFL season stem from a pair of Buffalo Bills’ postseason losses to the Kansas City Chiefs. When a fan highlighted this point with Shannon Sharpe, the former NFL star and current media personality did not hold back as he criticized the Bills during his latest Night Cap podcast.
This week, the NFL announced it will implement Sony’s Hawk-Eye technology to accurately measure first downs. This decision follows the controversial moment in last season’s AFC Championship Game, where the Chiefs scored the go-ahead touchdown after Bills quarterback Josh Allen was ruled short on a quarterback sneak, despite replays indicating he likely had it.
The Chiefs go-ahead TD drive was set up by a ruling that Josh Allen did not get a Bills first down.
Jim Nantz, Tony Romo, Gene Steratore react to the ruling.
“Wow.” – Romo
“I felt like he gained it by about a third of the football…” -Steratore
“I agree.” – Nantz 🏈🦓🎙️ https://t.co/R4Xs0phM0P pic.twitter.com/8xvT1t1rdn
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 27, 2025
Furthermore, another significant change for 2025 is that each team will now get a possession during regular-season overtime games, a rule already in effect for the postseason due to the outcry after the Chiefs’ victory over the Bills in the 2021 AFC title game when the Chiefs took the ball first in overtime and scored to win. “Chiefs fan points out the NFL changes the rules the last two times the Buffalo Bills lost,” Sharpe noted, prompting his co-host Chad Johnson to ask, “Is it coincidental?” “No,” Sharpe replied. “Too many coincidences is not a coincidence.”
While Johnson expressed his approval of the new overtime rule for promoting fairness, Sharpe was less enthusiastic. “It evens the playing field and makes the game fair,” Johnson stated, but Sharpe shifted focus back to the Bills, ridiculing their 2021 AFC Championship defeat and asserting they deserved to lose in overtime after allowing the Chiefs to set up a field goal in the final 13 seconds of regulation.
“Hey, Buffalo, you got to be on the right side of history,” Sharpe remarked. “Ya’ll had a lead with 13 seconds left. Listen, Ocho, you deserve to lose if you have a lead with 13 seconds and you allow a team to get in field-goal range; you deserve to lose. You earned that loss. This is what the Chiefs fans are saying: ‘Damn, they want Buffalo to get to the Super Bowl so bad, they change the rules to help them.’ And guess what, they’re going to find another way to lose.”
