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After Rian Lindell's field goal with 5:22 remaining extended Seattle's lead over Buffalo to 20-13 on Sunday, the outflux started.
The sun was shining and the home team trailed by but a touchdown, possessing all its timeouts and more than enough clock to tie the score. The turnstile count was only 60,836, so beating traffic wasn't a major consideration. And still, the fans left. Was this because they:
A) Had no faith the Bills could tie it?
B) Figured, having endured a two month course in Creative Losing, that even an Alex Van Pelt-led touchdown wouldn't be enough for Buffalo to improve to 2-7?
C) Couldn't bear the confusion wrought by the amount of hair accorded Jim Kelly on the bobblehead dolls given away as part of his Wall of Fame celebration?
D) Didn't care much one way or the other?
Or, most likely:
E) All of the above.
You could look at Seattle's 23-20 win and call it some sort of improvement. After all, it comes after a 16-point drubbing against Indianapolis on Nov. 4 and a 10-point loss last week in Foxboro.
And then there was Alex Van Pelt, who went 28-of-42 passing for 310 yards, all career highs.
While some will gush over Van Pelt's acumen in running the West Coast Offense that so bewildered and ultimately broke Rob Johnson, the Bills provided no evidence Sunday that the final seven games will be much less tedious than the first nine.
Yes, Van Pelt did throw two touchdown passes, a decent achievement Johnson failed to achieve in any of his eight starts.
But when you score is at least as important as how. For these Bills, "when" almost invariably ends up being "too late."
Both Van Pelt's touchdown throws, a 16-yarder to Peerless Price in the second quarter and a 6-yard flip to Jay Riemersma with 1:23 left, came with Buffalo trailing by at least 10 points.
That's nothing new -- of the Bills' 14 offensive touchdowns through nine games, 12 were scored against defenses protecting double-digit leads.
Buffalo's inability to reach the end zone when it counts gets even more glaring at home, where the Bills offense has yet to score a touchdown except when down by at least 10. Of those eight scores, four served no real purpose other than to make the score closer and provide practice for special-teams coordinator Danny Smith's onsides kick innovations.
On Sunday, the Bills opened with Van Pelt by doing just about what they had been doing with Johnson -- not much. Van Pelt was 3-of-9 for 26 yards in the first quarter, when Buffalo went three-and-out on three of four possessions, with Travis Henry's fumble snuffing the fourth.
Once the Seahawks took a 10-0 lead on Matt Hasselbeck's 7-yard touchdown pass to Koren Robinson with 9:17 left in the first half, though -- look out. From there, Van Pelt hit 76 percent of his passes. He made plenty of plays. Just not when they mattered.
In the third quarter, he threw incomplete twice from Seattle's 8-yard line, forcing the Bills to settle for Jake Arians' field goal and a 17-13 deficit.
On a third-and-1, apparently lacking even minimal confidence in the running game, offensive coordinator Mike Sheppard called for a quick timing pass. Van Pelt said he misread the route, throwing incomplete.
Still within a touchdown in the fourth quarter, one Buffalo drive ended with a failed 45-yard field goal try into the wind and another with a sack and lost fumble.
Speaking of sacks, Van Pelt went down just twice. Problem was, the pair of dumps killed Buffalo's last two meaningful drives.
Sheppard shares the blame for the first. After a holding penalty on Eric Moulds offset a 12-yard pass to Peerless Price that would have put Buffalo six yards from the tying touchdown just 2:03 into the fourth quarter, the Bills faced first-and-14 at the 22.
Buffalo's running game, which scratched out just 23 yards in the first half, was finally showing some life. Two plays earlier, Travis Henry bolted off right tackle for 16 yards.
But the Seahawks didn't have to worry about the run, since Sheppard had summoned the empty-backfield spread set that has accomplished little but allow defenses to blitz with even more impunity.
And that's precisely what happened. Blitzing Seattle linebacker Tim Terry blind-sided Van Pelt, forcing a fumble that Buffalo center Bill Conaty fell on at the 32. A long pass when they should have gone long and a dump-off when a downfield throw was required left Arians outside his range, given the headwind.
Lindell made it 23-13 with a 51-yard field goal.
The Bills, back in their comfort zone, ate up the middle of Seattle's prevent defense. Their quarterback hit six straight, the last to Riemersma. Nobody slices up a prevent defense like Alex Van Pelt.
Then it was the weekly onsides kick and the eighth post-game attempt to explain a loss in nine weeks.
After Arians' miss, the not-so-faithful started gathering their belongings. After Lindell's field goal on Seattle's next drive, they started heading for the gates.
The real reason? The Bills made Kelly their first alumnus to have his number retired because he made it seem like they were never out of a game. But on Sunday, they left you with the inescapable feeling that they were never really in this one.