Tensions are absolutely always going to be high when the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills square off. These have become the AFC’s two perennial contenders with several meetings in the playoffs in the 2020s alone. Oh, and they also happen to have perhaps the NFL’s two best quarterbacks in Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.

On Sunday, they met again in Buffalo. And the influence of the prevalent and always-wild Bills Mafia in the stands may have gotten the juices flowing a bit too much for both teams.

Early in the second quarter with the Chiefs on offense, Mahomes dropped back but saw immediate pressure from the Buffalo defense and just threw it away. That’s when things got quite ugly, though. Kansas City guard Trey Smith was entangled with Bills linebacker Dorian Williams and took the battle well past the whistle and too the ground — or, perhaps more aptly, right into wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster.

That, naturally, drew the ire of the Bills roster as A.J. Epenesa dove in to try and break it up, sending more players from both sides into a mini brawl that go ugly.

Bills and Chiefs getting a bit chippy pic.twitter.com/eOpRRDtKmK

— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) November 17, 2024

Chiefs, Bills get into mini brawl as bad blood boils over

Smith and Epenesa drew unnecessary roughness penalties that offset, moving things forward with everyone staying in the game.

Honestly, shouts to the officiating crew in Buffalo for getting on the scene quickly and making sure things didn’t escalate further. Yes, it was chippy. Yes, there was a small skirmish or brawl. But it didn’t escalate to anything more than some shoving, some pushing and so on. That’s what refs need to ensure in such moments and they did a great job.

As for the bad blood, we know that Mahomes and Allen have the utmost respect for one another. However, both quarterbacks and their respective teams also came into Sunday’s game with monkeys on their backs that they were definitely trying to shake off.

For the Chiefs, while they have the Super Bowl rings, they came into this matchup undefeated and not having beaten Allen and the Bills in the regular season in the 2020s. On the flip side, though, Allen even noted prior to Sunday that none of those wins they’ve gotten mattered because Kansas City has come out on top when it matters most in the playoffs.

All that is to say, this probably won’t be the last time we see a dust up involving these two contenders.