Tuesday, October 06, 2009

A Bills/Browns preview, alternatively titled "A Study in Self-Loathing"

Did you know that the Bills haven't made the playoffs since 1999? Did you know that the Bills haven't won a playoff game since 1995? That isn't a typo. Buffalo hasn't won a playoff game since the Kelly/Thomas/Reed era. Think about how much has happened in your life in the past 14 years. Since 1995 I graduated college, worked four different jobs, got two advanced degrees, lived in three major cities (and had 8 different addresses), got married and divorced, owned five different cars, attended three OBFTs, and lived with two different women. I gained about 30 pounds and lost about 30% of my hair. I even adopted a stray cat. And I don't really like cats.

So things have changed for me since the Bills' last playoff victory. The one constant is, however, the abject misery and self-loathing I experience as a Bills fan.

And it isn't just because they haven't won a playoff game, or failed to make the playoffs. It isn't just because they finished above .500 once, once, since 2000 (they went a whopping 9-7 in 2004). It's the way they do it.

Everyone remembers Scott Norwood's "wide right" kick in SB XXV.


That sucked.

So did the Music City Miracle "Home Run Throwback" play. That one hurt the worst. I still get angry watching it. I wrote a 1,000 word email about that play the next day. "rob" told me he was looking forward to the email as soon as the game ended. My Bills angst is predictable.


Ronnie Harmon's drop hurt too.


As did SBs XXVI through XXVIII. It got so bad that they had to bring in OJ to find the Bills' killer.


But there are so many other miserable losses.

Just last year I went to the Meadowlands with TR for Bills/Jets. The Bills were winning, they had the ball, 2 minutes left. Just run the ball three times and punt if you have to, right? This is elementary stuff. Instead, JP Losman rolls out on a pass play. As soon as Losman started to roll out I stood up, put my hands on my head, and started yelling "No! No! What the fuck are you doing?! No! No! Sweet God no!" I just knew the play would end poorly. Losman gets hit and fumbles. Jets return the fumble for a TD and win. The one cool thing about being a Bills fan is that you get this weird sixth sense that lets you sniff out the exact moment they'll shit the bed and lose.

This year the Bills lost to the Patriots to start the season because Leodis McKelvin, an otherwise fine kick returner, ran the ball out of the endzone with a lead and 2 minutes left on the clock. I yelled at my TV "Take a fucking knee you jackass!" Sure enough, Leodis fumbled. Three plays later, the Pats score a TD to win.

How about the 1996 playoff loss to the Jaguars? The Bills had never lost a playoff game at Rich Stadium, and they were facing a 9-7 expansion team, albeit a 9-7 expansion team on a 5-game win streak, quarterbacked by future Redskin All-Time Great Mark Brunell. Brunell (and his passion for the Christ) drove the Jaguars down the field for a TD to tie things up, and Mike Hollis banked in a FG, he fucking banked it off the upright, to go up by 3. After Jim Kelly's clock was thoroughly cleaned and he was knocked out of the game, Todd Collins came in to cement the loss in the final minutes. This game was really the beginning of my era of self-loathing as a Bills fan.

After that loss to the Jaguars, Jim Kelly retired and Thurman Thomas got old, so Todd Collins and Antowain Smith took over at the skill positions and the team went 6-10. Marv Levy retired, and Ralph Wilson unleashed a parade of horribles upon Bills fans, hiring stupid mopes like Wade (son of a Bum) Phillips, Gregg (why the two g's?) Williams, Mike "full of" Mularkey, and Dick (less) Jauron.

Looking like the illegitimate love child of Fire Marshall Bill and Simple Jack, Jauron is the most maddeningly stupid and inept of the bunch, going 7-9 as regularly as TR's colon after his morning coffee. The other idiots were decent coordinators who got overwhelmed when they had to run the show. Jauron is a former defensive coordinator, but his defensive gameplans make no sense. Last week, facing the Dolphins in Chad Henne's first career start, the Bills gave up 250 rushing yards. Look, I'm an idiot, and I never played organized football. But I knew that the Dolphins were going to run the ball with Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams BECAUSE THEIR QB NEVER PLAYED BEFORE!!! There's no way in hell Henne was going to sling it around like Warren Moon. So stack your defense against the run. The Dolphins also apparently have some fancy offensive formation called "The Wildcat." You may have heard of it. The QB isn't involved too much in this formation. Their QB is new and likely scared, so I bet they will use this Wildcat thing quite a bit. Plan for it. The 2009 Bills are nothing if not a balanced team and were similalry useless on offense, going 1/11 on third down.

I could go on like this for 10,000 words. Maybe more. I could talk about how the Bills traded the #9 pick in the 1998 draft for Rob Johnson, and how that pick was used to draft Fred Taylor, and how Fred Taylor has twice as many career rushing yards as Rob Johnson does career passing yards, and how it makes me sad and angry that Rob Johnson has a Super Bowl ring but Jim Kelly doesn't. I could talk about Eric Moulds' career, how it should have been and how it was, how his abilities were wasted playing with a littany of shitty quarterbacks. I could talk about how the team constantly drafts good-to-excellent d-backs and lets them go in free agency. I could talk about how putrid Antowain Smith was, and how he became the featured back on two (two!) Super Bowl championship teams. I could talk about the abyssmal 2004 draft, which yielded only one player who is still in the league (Lee Evans) even though they had two (two!) first round picks (used on Evans and Losman).

I could talk about how sick I am of the media forcing stories about "long suffering" Red Sox and Cubs fans down my throat. They can kiss my ass. They don't know suffering. Try watching your team lose four title games in a row. Better yet, try watching your team lose to the Giants when you live in north Jersey, then move to Virginia right after they lose to the Redskins, and then deal with the bloviations of ubiquitous bandwagoneering Cowboys fans after back-to-back losses. That's real suffering. Well, it's not suffering like Fallujah-style suffering. Perspective. But it still sucks.

This is supposed to be a preview of this week's game against the Browns. The last time these two farcical squads faced off was a Monday night game in 2008. Brady Quinn hustled the Browns down the field in the 4th quarter to set up a Phil Dawson 56-yard field goal to go up by 2 with under 2 minutes left. After the kickoff, Trent Edwards completed one decently long pass. The Bills predictably ran Marshawn Lynch up the middle 3 times for a total of 5 yards to set up a 45 yard field goal, which Ryan Lindell predictably missed wide right.


Jim Kelly was on the sidelines. His reaction?

I stayed up late to watch the whole stupid thing. This is why I loathe myself.

The new-look Browns come to town with Eric Mangina's steady hand on the tiller. Under his stewardship, the Browns are 29th in points scored, 31st in points allowed, and 31st in takeaway/giveaway differential. Note that Romeo Crennel is still involved here. The two-headed monster that is Brady Quinn and Derek Alexander have combined for 761 yards, 2 TD, and 7 INT in 4 games. The Browns have mustered 1049 yards of total offense over that span. Note that Drew Brees has 1031 passing yards and 12 rushing yards, and thus has nearly equalled the Browns' entire offensive output by himself.

Despite these statistical problems, the Browns are licking their chops at the prospect of travelling to Orchard Park on Sunday. The Bills are 29th in points allowed and 26th in takeaway/giveaway differential. So they suck statistically too. They are, however, 100 yards ahead of Drew Brees, with 1163 yards of total offense through 4 games. Marshawn Lynch is back from suspension just in time to take carries away from Fred Jackson, who is a better and more versatile player than Lynch, and Alex "don't call me Lucy" Van Pelt is determined to find ways to keep Jackson off the field.

I predicted that TO would hate playing in Buffalo with Trent Edwards after 5 weeks. This is the game that will break TO's spirit. He has 8 catches for 158 yards and 1 TD through 4 weeks. Against the Saints he had 0 (zero!) catches. Backup defensive end Ryan Denney had 1 catch for 25 yards and a TD that game. You don't think that pissed TO off? No? Really? He is going to go apeshit unless he puts up something like 6/150/2 this week. But that won't happen. Not with Trent Edwards making plays like this.

The Browns are going to run buck wild all over the Bills. I mean that literally. Well, I mean that the Browns will run the ball for 300 yards. The Browns don't have a guy named Buck Wild. The Dolphins did it with Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams, so the Browns will do it with Jerome Harrison and Jamal Lewis. Jauron will adapt at the half by switching to a dime package.

Final score: Browns 20 Bills 7

40 comments:

  1. And by "Derek Alexander" I mean "Derek Anderson."

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  2. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

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  3. Admitting that I've only see him play three games in the NFL, I would trade Jason Campbell straight up for Trent Edwards right now. Sadly, I'm told I lack the authority to make such a move.

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  4. the caa just released its silver anniversary men's basketball team. 25 players. care to guess how many tribesmen made the list? for more fun, how many of the 25 can you get without cheating?

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  5. Obviously not a Tribesman. Did Purp make the list?

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  6. David Robinson? Blue Edwards? And...I'm done...

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  7. all 5 currently guessed are on the list. purp did not make it. barely.

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  8. Brett Blizzard? (please say yes)

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  9. william davis
    steve hood
    charles fisher
    dan ruland
    derek steele

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  10. kent "i wish i had not been involved in the jason williams' limousine driver shotgun murder" culuko? is he on there

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  11. Cal Bowdler has to be there. He went in the 1st round of the NBA draft. Get me a Hawks fan here to laugh at Zoltan's "misery."

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  12. Adam Hess? Thomas Roberts? Jim Moran? Is there a chance no Tribesters are on there?

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  13. just looked at the list...i whiffed quite a bit

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  14. w&m probably has best "equipment mgr" or scorekeeper on list...

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  15. Chris Gatling? I think Mark West was there when they were Sun Belt...

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  16. Oh, yeah, and was Kenny Gattison during the CAA years?

    Also, Nancy Lieberman should sort of count.

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  17. Wow, I just looked, and I was pretty far off, too.

    Back to the original topic, Zoltan, you can't talk about your Bills misery without at least acknowledging in concession that the Bills/Oilers playoff game of '93 was one of the greatest games ever.

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  18. What about the Australian center that played at ODU not too long ago?

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  19. The Frank Reich Game was indeed fantastic. But it raised my spirits up high, it made me believe that this was the year the Bills caught lightning in a bottle, found a genie in a lamp, that there was some magic in that old silk hat they found, whatever you want to call it, it gave me hope. It was the perfect set up for a 52-17 loss in the Super Bowl.

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  20. But you wouldn't cash in the 38-35 game in exchange for eradicating the memories of the 52-17 loss.

    The 38-9 Jack Squirek game was merciless, but that was an incredibly fun season to be a Skins fan right up until then. And plus, I could turn off the game, but our friend Flynn had to sit in the stadium and keep his dad from getting in fights with rowdy Raiders fans.

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  21. So, Braylon Edwards is a Jet?

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  22. Fall Out Boy is releasing a greatest-hits album this year. Did I miss something?

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  23. hood, newman, sessoms, alex loughton (australian guy from odu), yes. the rest, no. it's a measure of the hawks' competence that cal bowdler was a first-rounder. i believe we now have 10 of the 25, but probably all of the relatively obvious ones.

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  24. zoltan...i hesitate in admitting this, but i'm a fan of the golden domers...i've had nothing solid since '93 and nothing great since i graduated from high school...'88.

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  25. need to increase your fiber intake, danny boy.

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  26. A guy who started out playing ball at the same college as me wnded up walking on at ODU. I went up to visit him and hangout at ODU a couple times and ended up getting drunk with some ODU players, including Cal Bowlder. He was...boring as fuck.

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  27. did i read that wrong or did you say you played college ball?

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  28. So I watched the first "30 for 30" last night, and I think they gave the series this title because the show was about 30 minutes too long. Nothing happened. The Oilers traded Gretzky for financial reasons. Edmontonians were pissed. LA got into hockey for a while. The end.

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  29. And coincidentally I watched "13 Going on 30" last night. Jennifer Garner is charming and the story really makes you think. I give it 6 out of 9 butt plugs.

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  30. Rob (or other 80's alt-rock connoisseurs), if you had to pick one, would you go with New Day Rising or Flip Your Wig?

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  31. Totally "flip your wig".....so much better

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  32. Rob...I played at a Div. 3 school in NC for a year and a half. The school was barely bigger than my high school. We played schools like Methodist, Newport News Apprentice, Christopher Newport and North Carolina Wesleyan, among others.

    It had been a JUCO until about 8-10years earlier. Nate McMillan attended during the JUCO days and our gym was called the Jesse Helms Center. Not surprisingly, the Florida was a lot more fun.

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  33. It is so damn difficult to explain just how awful it is to be a lifetime Bills fan to others, and this just describes it perfectly. Great article.

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