The Buffalo Bills are bringing plenty of baggage to Arrowhead Stadium for their Conference Championship showdown.

Sunday’s clash against the Kansas City Chiefs will see the winner crowned kings of the AFC and book a spot in the Super Bowl.

The Bills go into the road game as two-point underdogs against the No.1 seed.

And as well as taking their team and equipment to Kansas, they are carrying the weight of history.

Buffalo has never won the Super Bowl, with its last appearance in the big game coming in 1994.

On that occasion, the Bills suffered a 30-13 defeat to the Dallas Cowboys – the second straight year losing to America’s Team.

Incredibly, it was the fourth time in a row the Bills were one win from glory and fell agonizingly short – in 1991 the winning margin was just one point for Bill Parcels’ New York Giants.

Could victory there have sparked a dynasty like the one that arose to the east a decade later? We’ll never know.

NFL beat writer and Pro Football Hall of Fame voter John McClain was at all four losses and would hate to see a fifth.

“I felt so bad for the players, coach Marv Levy, but especially the fans.

“It’s just too much torture for the Bills to go back to the Super Bowl and lose another one. I don’t know if upstate New York could take it.”

If head coach Sean McDermott wants to avenge 99-year-old Levy, who coached the Bills from 1986 to 1997 and had a spell as general manager from 2006 to 2007, he will have to overcome a more recent hoodoo.

No quarterback has ever lost four consecutive postseason games to a rival passer.

But that may be about to change as Chiefs talisman Patrick Mahomes has Josh Allen’s number in the playoffs.

The two talented signal-callers have a 4-4 head-to-head record after Allen beat Mahomes 30-21 in Week 11.

With the three-time Pro-Bowler at the helm, Buffalo has a 4-1 record over the Chiefs in the regular season, including one clash in 2023 where Kansas City’s leader launched into a foul-mouthed tirade at the referees.

But Mahomes has come out on top three times when it mattered.

In 2020, he masterminded a 38-24 win in the AFC Championship Game before losing to Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

A year later, it was a 42-36 overtime defeat that ended Buffalo’s postseason in the Divisional Round – the Chiefs lost to the Cincinnati Bengals the following game.

And in 2023, Mahomes inspired a 27–24 victory over Allen en route to claiming back-to-back Super Bowl triumphs to set up a shot at an unprecedented three-peat.

“We’ll do it again, baby,” Allen told Mahomes after handing the Chiefs their first defeat of the season in November.

He knew at the time the road to glory would inevitably go through the three-time Super Bowl champion.

A city’s pride rests on Allen’s ability to turn the tables, if not it could always be a case of what might have been for upstate New Yorkers.