ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — As Jalen Carter and his Philadelphia teammates celebrated in the end zone after making one last crucial stop, Buffalo’s Josh Allen removed his helmet and yelled out in frustration.
In a game decided by a 2-point conversion attempt, Allen came up short — a foot wide, actually — when he sailed his pass out of the reach of Khalil Shakir in the back of the end zone with 5 seconds remaining. That was the difference as the Eagles beat the Bills 13-12 on Sunday in a late-season matchup of Super Bowl contenders.
“Winning’s hard in this league, and I’m always going to enjoy a win,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said after his team nearly squandered a 13-0 fourth-quarter lead.
“If you come out of this and you’re just thinking about all the negative things that happened, then it’s just a miserable existence,” Sirianni added.
The NFC East champion Eagles (11-5) are assured of at least the conference’s No. 3 seed in the playoffs. They improved to 7-3 in one-score games and became the NFL’s first team since the Patriots in 1987 to win multiple games in which they failed to complete a pass in the second half.
Buffalo (11-5), which clinched a playoff berth last week, dropped to the No. 7 seed in the AFC. New England won its first AFC East title since 2019 with the Bills’ loss.
Allen had a far different take on the outcome than Sirianni.
“Yeah, it means a lot. We can learn a lot from this experience,” Allen said, looking ahead to the playoffs in two weeks. “I’d rather have won and learn from that too, but again, I got to make a play.”
After being shut out for nearly 55 minutes, Allen rallied the Bills by rushing for two touchdowns in the final 5:11. His second TD came on a 1-yard tush push on fourth-and-goal — one play after a replay review determined that tight end Dawson Knox’s elbow came down just short of the goal line.
Rather than playing for overtime, coach Sean McDermott opted to go for 2. Allen dropped back and was being pressured by linebacker Jalyx Hunt when he let loose a pass that sailed wide of Shakir. The Bills then tried an onside kick that Goedert recovered.
“Yeah I just missed. Rolling left, got to get him a better ball,” Allen said.
Dallas Goedert caught a 1-yard touchdown pass and Jake Elliott accounted for the rest of Philadelphia’s offense by hitting field goals of 28 and 47 yards.
Hunt had two of Philadelphia’s four sacks and a team-leading three quarterback hits.
And Carter made a major contribution in his return after missing three games with injuries to both shoulders. Carter got his hand up to block Michael Badgley’s extra-point attempt after Allen’s 2-yard touchdown run with 5:11 left.
“Just a big-time player who makes big plays,” Sirianni said of Carter, who also had a sack. “Relentless in everything that he does. Relentless effort.”
The Eagles needed their defense to preserve the win after their offense evaporated in the second half. Not including its game-closing kneel-down, Philadelphia combined for one first down and 17 yards of offense on five second-half possessions — all ending with punts.
“It’s a big-time win,” Hurts said. “Hell of a performance by the defense and how they played and how they were able to find a way to gut that out and make plays when we needed it the most.”
Hurts went 0 for 7 in the second half and finished 13 of 27 for 110 yards with a touchdown. Goedert’s TD was his team-leading 11th of the season and set the single-season team record for tight ends — one more than Pete Retzlaff had in 1965.
Allen went 16 of 25 for 172 yards in the second half and finished 23 of 35 for 262 yards. With his two rushing scores, the 29-year-old Allen increased his career total to 301 (passing, rushing, receiving) and became the first player to reach 300 before turning 30.
Allen, who was limited in practice this week with a sore right foot, got X-rays after the game. McDermott said the tests were negative, and Allen said he felt good and the foot injury had zero impact on his performance.
What hurt was coming one completion short.
“It just comes down to us executing, making one more play than they did. And obviously we saw that we didn’t make that last play,” Allen said, before correcting himself. “I didn’t make that last play.”
Injuries
Eagles: LB Nakobe Dean (hamstring) did not play.
Bills: LB Terrel Bernard did not return after hurting his calf in the first half. … Defensive tackles DaQuan Jones (calf) and Jordan Phillips (ankle) and safety Jordan Poyer (hamstring) did not play. TE Dalton Kincaid missed his fourth of seven games with a nagging knee injury.
Up next
Eagles: Host Washington next weekend.
Bills: Host the New York Jets next weekend.
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