Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs suffered their first loss in the 2024 NFL season on Sunday, when Josh Allen led the Buffalo Bills to a 30-21 victory over the defending Super Bowl champions.

This result ended an impressive winning streak by the Chiefs, who were riding on 15 consecutive victories dating back to the 2023 NFL season. Mahomes and company hadn’t lost since December 25, 2023, when they fell 14-20 to the Las Vegas Raiders.

While their unbeaten run coming to an end was one of the biggest storylines about Sunday’s game, it’s not the most important thing for the Chiefs. Mahomes made that clear during his postgame press conference.

“You can use it as fuel. That’s a good football team, so it’s nothing to hang your head [about]. We feel like we can play better, so we’ll get back to work and try to use this as a spark to be a better football team in the end. The undefeated thing was cool, but that’s not our ultimate goal. So we’ll keep building towards that,” Mahomes said, via Arrowhead Pride.

Mahomes, Chiefs fail to stay unbeaten but still eye bigger goal

With the loss to Allen’s Bills, Kansas City is now 9-1 in the 2024 NFL season. This means the 1972 Miami Dolphins will spend at least another year as the only team with a perfect season in football history. Mahomes, however, has another goal in sight.

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What the Chiefs are really looking for this year is to pull off the first three-peat in NFL history, aiming to build on their last two Super Bowl wins. The loss in Buffalo is not changing the team’s mindset.

Losing to Bills in the regular season a good sign for the Chiefs?

Allen is now 4-1 in regular season matchups against the Chiefs, but Mahomes and company are 3-0 against the Bills in playoff games. Curiously, the last two times Buffalo beat Kansas City in the regular season, the Chiefs went on to win the Super Bowl. Both Allen and Mahomes know that they could face each other again in the 2025 NFL postseason.

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“Given our history, we tend to meet in the playoffs,” Allen told reporters after the game. “Again, we’re not there yet, we’ll focus on that when we get there…”

“At the end of the day, that’s a really good football team,” said Mahomes. “It’s going to take your best football to beat great football teams — and we didn’t play our best football today. They went out there and beat us. That’s just how it rolls in the NFL. All the respect to them. That’s going to be a good football team — that we’ll probably see again.”