Bills' magic catches come just a 2-pointer short of a Buffalo comeback once again

Tyrell Shavers and Brandin Cooks made the two best catches of the Buffalo Bills' season.

In the end, they are footnotes.

The Bills' five-season streak of winning the AFC East Division is over. The Philadelphia Eagles edged the Bills on Sunday, 13-12. And with it, the New England Patriots won the division crown.

Shavers had a leaping, bobbling, crazy catch to set up the Bills' first touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Cooks had a leaping, bobbling, helmet kind of catch to set up the Bills' second touchdown in the fourth quarter.

The Bills, down 13-12 because Michael Badgley had his extra point blocked on the first score, chose to go for 2 and the win with five seconds left.

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Josh Allen had Khalil Shakir open in the end zone, but the QB pulled his pass wide left, and the Bills came up just short.

How do you make sense of a game like this?

The Bills' offense was brutal for most of the game. They had a fumble in a crucial spot, and a 19-yard loss on a sack of an aimlessly wandering Allen in another spot.

Buffalo didn't play well enough to beat the defending Super Bowl champions, but the Bills' defense kept them in it, and they nearly got it done anyway.

Did it even mean anything?

The odds of the Patriots losing to the Dolphins in Week 18, and even leaving the division door open, were low.

So this was really about wild card seeding, and even that probably isn't too crucial.

The Bills' most important tasks are still ahead of them. This game, even if a win, would've been a footnote eventually anyways, because the playoff results this season will again tell the story of the year.

The AFC is open enough that the Bills can make it to the Super Bowl.

They didn't look good in Week 17, but they showed moxie.

Week 18 will matter just a tad, but really, it'll be about staying healthy and getting ready for the second season.

The Bills know they can rely on Cooks and Shavers in key moments now.

The next big moments will come in January, with a trip to Santa Clara and the Super Bowl the only thing that really matters in Buffalo.

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