Western Michigan beat Buffalo 20-17 on Saturday, and the three points on the scoreboard are the least interesting number in the game. The one that matters is two. Two seconds on the clock, fourth-and-goal, and Buffalo lined up to win it rather than kick it even.
Dieter Kelly had put the Broncos ahead with a field goal at 79 seconds remaining, which left Buffalo exactly the kind of drive that decides seasons in this league: no timeouts to spare, a field to cross, a defense that knew what was coming. The Bulls got there. They got all the way to the goal line with the clock showing 0:02, close enough that a chip shot sends it to overtime.
They didn't kick it. Western Michigan's defense held. Game.
How did Western Michigan beat Buffalo 20-17?
The shape of this one is the shape of a lot of MAC openers. Nobody ran away with anything. Twenty points won it, which tells you the margins were measured in field position and third downs rather than explosive plays, and the whole afternoon came down to a kicker and a goal-line stand.
| The decisive sequence | Clock |
|---|---|
| Kelly's go-ahead field goal | 1:19 left |
| Buffalo's final snap, fourth-and-goal | 0:02 left |
| Final score | WMU 20, Buffalo 17 |
That is a conference opener distilled to about ninety seconds of football. Both teams now carry it into the rest of their MAC schedule, one of them with a win that will feel enormous in November, the other with a loss that will feel exactly as close as it was.
Why did Buffalo go for it on fourth-and-goal instead of kicking the tie?
Because overtime is not free, and because coaches in this league understand their rosters better than anyone yelling from a couch. Overtime means more snaps for a defense that has already been on the field all day, more chances for the other kicker, more variance stacked on top of a game you already dragged back from the edge. One play from the goal line to win it outright is a cleaner proposition than a coin flip you have to survive twice.
I like the decision. I like it even having watched it fail. The worst version of that moment is kicking the tie, losing in overtime anyway, and spending the bus ride wondering. Buffalo picked its own ending. The Bulls just didn't get the last yard.
checked the almanac: the most famous version of this instinct is Boise State in the January 2007 Fiesta Bowl, down one in overtime against Oklahoma, taking the two-point try instead of the extra point and the Statue of Liberty working. That one gets replayed forever because it worked. The call is the same call either way.
What comes next for Western Michigan and Buffalo
For the Broncos, a conference opener won on a late kick and a stop is the kind of result a program builds a month on. Western Michigan has been in the business of outrunning its own recruiting rankings for a decade now, and the 2016 team that went 13-0 before the Cotton Bowl is still the standard anyone in Kalamazoo measures against. Winning ugly in the first MAC game is how those seasons start, not how they end.
For Buffalo, this is the hard one. This is a program that has had real teeth in the MAC East, that sent Khalil Mack to the league from a roster nobody recruited, and the identity has always been tougher than the brand. The Bulls were a yard from stealing the opener on the road side of the ledger. The thing about a one-score conference loss in early October is that it stays on the standings page all season, visible every single week, while everybody tells you how well you played.
What I'm watching: how both teams respond to an afternoon that hinged on a single snap. Nobody got exposed. Somebody just ran out of clock.