Ice Game

This is a Column by Sally Jenkins published in "The Washington Post" January 20, 2025.  We believe our repost of her column falls within the "Fair Use" provisions of US Copyright law.  If you have any issues with the repost of her column, please contact idahovolunteer@gmail.com

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — There was a third opponent that shouldered its way in between Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson: the ice. It was coldly neutral and all but invisible, but it was a show-stealing presence in their playoff encounter. It became a solid-state defender when there wasn’t one in sight, making the Baltimore Ravens’ usually sure-handed and footed tight end Mark Andrews look like he was a kid trying on his first pair of skates while trying to juggle a frozen trout. The ice pitilessly took the game away from the quarterbacks, skittered the ball out of Andrews’s hands and turned the end into something almost laughable.

The dropped two-point conversion pass to Andrews with 93 seconds left wasn’t the whole determinant, but it sure was the defining moment in the Buffalo Bills’ 27-25 victory over the Ravens, in which bodies skidded like sleds across the field at Highmark Stadium. Jackson’s throw hit Andrews squarely between the 8 and 9 on his uniform jersey, and for a second it seemed like a potentially immortal comeback to tie the game.

You think Andrews should have caught it? Well, probably. But you try it. Try running in a sleet storm with a wind chill below zero and have someone pitch a frozen fish at you, while reeling backward in cleats and falling on your butt, which is what Andrews did. This divisional round game was not won by the Bills so much as it was decided by, what?

“By God’s grace,” Bills Coach Sean McDermott said.

“You take it as it is,” Allen said.

The drop by Andrews was just the last misadventure for the Ravens, on top of three turnovers, two by Jackson, including a first-half fumble that turned into a touchdown for the Bills. “Tried to squeeze the ball, it slid out of my hand,” Jackson said helplessly afterward, looking strangely like a nun in his white cold-weather hood.

Meanwhile the Bills handled the ball immaculately in the fine misting snow and sleet that fell throughout, because they are so used to it. Granules of ice dusted the field and bleached everything of color and definition. The sky was the color of sink water, and Highmark like a dirty dish in the bottom of it. Slush pooled on aluminum benches and ice crusted the railings, and in the parking lots black coal cinders drifted out of metal stoves full of briquettes. And that was just the way the Bills liked it, the perfect home conditions for them.

“It’s gonna be late, gonna be cold, it’s everything we want,” pass rusher Von Miller said on reading the weather report. Bills alum Ryan Fitzpatrick showed up on the pregame field and whipped the fan-mafia into a frenzy by ripping off his shirt and thrusting his arms in the air, bare-chested.

The slippery conditions, which triggered local emergency weather alerts, essentially killed a potential classic. This was supposed to be a jousting match between two all-pro quarterbacks in Allen and Jackson, vying for most valuable player honors, edgy with hankering ambition. They were big-shouldered, quick-legged multi-dynamic presences, who gave the opposing head coaches acid reflux. When McDermott was asked to describe the challenges presented by Jackson, he shot back, “You got an hour to talk about it? I don’t.”

Instead, the ice inhibited both teams and it became a contest to see who could manage it better. It was a game in which you had “to earn every blade of grass,” as McDermott put it. That’s what Allen did for the Bills, a prime example his four-yard scoring run late in the second quarter, in which he dragged four opponents hanging on his back as if they were Christmas ornaments.

Allen’s physical presence was plenty imposing, 6-foot-5, 237 pounds, and fast as a pronghorn. But it was the emotional demeanor, his carriage which mattered more. The former farm kid from the aptly named Firebaugh, California imbued his team with a sense of certainty, of sureness and sure-handedness.

“He’s not affected by what’s said on the outside,” Miller said earlier in the week. “He truly knows who he is and it’s inspiring. When you know who you are, the team takes on a shade of who the QB is. You see Josh Allen walking around and he’s good in his own skin and that really bleeds off into everybody else on the football team. … He’s the guy who makes this thing go, and he could just say ‘Hey, were going to eat peanut and butter and jelly sandwiches today,’ and everybody will want to do it. That’s just the effect he has on the team.”

Jackson can have the same effect, and you got an inkling of just what this game might have been, had the weather been better, from that last gasp drive by the Ravens, when Jackson took just 1:56 to move the Ravens 88 yards, culminating in his 24-yard touchdown pass to Isaiah Likely.

But Jackson also seems to give his team some jitters in the postseason. A team that had given up just 11 turnovers all season, third best in the league, had to grapple from the first quarter on with its inability to hang on to the ball. The ice was to blame — but the fact is that one quarterback and his team simply handled it better, literally. So while Allen goes forward in the playoffs, Jackson will go home again to deal with discussions of why he has done everything on a field except what he most wants to: carry his team to a Super Bowl. He’s led the Ravens to the postseason five times now, but their record is 3-5, and in four of his playoff appearances he has given up at least two turnovers.

The Ravens lost just 11 turnovers during the regular season, but they had three turnovers against the Bills. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

“I’m the leader, I’ve got to protect the ball, so I’m hot,” Jackson said, cracking his knuckles, and then smacking a fist into his palm angrily. So, Jackson wasn’t having it that Andrews was somehow most responsible for this loss.

“I’m just as hurt as Mark,” Jackson said. “All of us played a factor in that game. I’m not going to put that on Mark. … Got to get over this, because we’re right there. And I’m tired of being right there. We need to punch it in. We need to punch that ticket.”

But in this instance, what they needed to punch through was the ice.