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Christian Benford of the Buffalo Bills

The Buffalo Bills scored their most significant victory of the season last Sunday, when they defeated their archrivals, the Kansas City Chiefs, 28-21. Unfortunately for the Bills, the NFL saw fit to throw cold water on Buffalo’s celebratory mood, slapping four separate fines on Bills players for various actions in the game.

Making the NFL’s killjoy response even worse, only one of the four fines resulted from a play that was flagged by officials on the field during the game.

In the case of cornerback Christian Benford, the NFL announcement literally added insult to injury. Benford has been listed as questionable to play in Sunday’s game in Miami against the Dolphins, due to a groin injury that was apparently suffered in practice later in the week.

But on Saturday, the NFL announced a fine of $14,714 against Benford. The discipline resulted from play with 3:40 remaining in the first quarter when Benford was judged to have used his helmet to help him make a tackle.

Helmet Violation Difficult to See

The use of the helmet by Benford is difficult to see in video of the incident, in which several Bills defenders struggle to bring down Kansas City receiver Xavier Worthy, after Worthy caught a lateral from quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the backfield.

Benford has not exactly been a serious discipline problem for the NFL. He had not received a fine from the league office prior to Saturday’s announcement, and has been penalized only twice this year.

The four-year veteran was flagged for illegal contact in the Bills Week 5 loss to the New England Patriots, then again the following week for defensive pass interference in another Bills loss, this one to the Atlanta Falcons.

The helmet violation that drew a fine against the Chiefs was not penalized, keeping Bedford’s record of only drawing penalty flags in Bills’ losses intact.

Most Fines Against Bills in 1 Game

The fine against Benford was one of four leveled against Bills players — easily the most in any game this season, according to ESPN reporter Alaina Getzenberg. The only one that actually came from a play that was penalized on the field was a $10,778 assessment against running back Ty Johnson for grabbing an opponent’s facemask.

Quarterback Josh Allen was also fined for an offense that went unnoticed, or at least unremarked upon by game officials. But the NFL nonetheless hit him with a $14,491 fine because the NFL Operations Office determined that the generally mild-mannered Allen had made a “violent gesture” of some kind during a touchdown celebration.

“After rushing for a one-yard touchdown, Allen handed the ball to offensive lineman Spencer Brown to spike it. Allen then caught the ball after the bounce, spiked it himself, and turned to running back James Cook to make what appeared to be a motion of shooting a gun,” recounted Heavy.com reporter Nathan Dougherty.

4th Fine of Allen’s Career

But the NFL did not let the “violent gesture” incident go there. The league also slapped wide receiver Elijah Moore with a $13,888 fine during the same celebration.

The fines were the first of the year for both Allen and Moore.

The quarterback and reigning NFL MVP has been fined three times previously in his career, but not since 2023 when he was hit for $10,927 over a taunting violation. Moore had never received a fine.

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin

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