Looks like it's time for Chris Berman to come up with a new catch-phrase when narrating the highlights of the football team that plays its home games in Western New York.
Then again, "Nobody, but nobody, gives up right away at the first sign of adversity like the Buffalo Bills" doesn't have the same ring to it as that whole circle-the-wagons thing, does it?
The Bills' variation of the ESPN mainstay's lone verbal trick -- repeating the same phrase about the same team/player over and over and over until all but the most brain-dead of fans wants to attack the screen with a flat-bladed coal shovel -- lost any relevance it had right about the end of the 2000 season.
That, you might recall, was when Buffalo owner Ralph Wilson publicly humiliated then-general manager John Butler by firing him before the end of the season, then canned coach Wade Phillips. The treasonous crime that triggered the purge? Finishing .500 and missing the playoffs for the first time in four years.
Wilson immediately anointed Tom Donahoe as the franchise's president-for-life. And the stunning, heart-pumping and sometimes bizarre comebacks for which the Bills had become known over the previous 15 years pretty much stopped.
Since Ol' Whitey took the reins, Buffalo has yet to make a single playoff appearance. Moreover, the Bills have won precisely four games in which they trailed at any point in the fourth quarter. The last time it happened was Week 5 of the 2003 season, when a furious rally wiped out a seemingly insurmountable three-point Cincinnati lead en route to a 22-16 win in overtime. For the calendar-challenged, that's more than two years ago.
Two of the other
fourth-quarter resurrections came during Drew Bledsoe's regretfully
brief period of brilliance in Buffalo, the first half of the 2002
season. First came a 54-yard Mike Hollis field goal on the last play of
regulation in Minnesota, setting up a 45-39 overtime win in Week 2. A
month later, the Bills overcame a seven-point deficit against the
first-year Houston
Texans in a 31-24 thriller.
In Week 13 of 2001, Alex Van Pelt helped fill a six-point hole as Buffalo edged Carolina 25-24. The loss was the 12th of 15 straight for the Panthers, who clearly got cocky after earning their lone victory on Opening Day.
Not exactly the stuff of NFL Films, eh?
Donahoe's fifth Bills squad has proven itself even less resilient, losing each of the five games in which they've trailed, while leading wire-to-wire in the three wins.
So, please, tell us again about those playoff chances.
Actually, if Buffalo were a bit better at keeping leads, the idea of challenging anyone in the AFC East other than the New York Jets for anything but last place might not be so silly. The Bills have, after all, scored first in four of their five losses.
The most glaring, and galling, example of the Bills' gumption deficiency came last Sunday in New England, when a combination of aren't-we-cute play-calling, atrocious offensive line play and far-from-relentless (or is relentfull a word?) defense diddled away a nine-point advantage in the final eight minutes.
We won't get into offensive coordinator Tom Clements' haughty play-calling, which again proved disastrous when Buffalo needed to run out the clock, mainly because it gets tiring writing the same thing week after week. Suffice to say, when you're leading by two points with less than half the fourth quarter remaining and your running back has already run for 121 yards on 27 carries, it might be a good idea to give him the ball again.
That aside, the Patriots' 21-16 win once again spotlighted the biggest personnel shortcomings of Donahoe's Bills.
After a solid evening, the offensive line collapsed at the worst possible moment. You can argue whether left tackle Mike Gandy or left guard Benny Anderson blew the block on that second-and-6 from Buffalo's 32-yard line with the Bills leading 16-14 and a little more than six minutes left, but there's no debating that Roosevelt Colvin's sack and strip of Kelly Holcomb was as predictable as it was fatal.
Gandy and Anderson represent the sort of bargain-shopping Donahoe loves to do on the offensive line. The two alleged blockers got dumped by Chicago and Baltimore, respectively, two of the NFL's worst offenses a year ago. But they were more than good enough for Buffalo.
Donahoe's equally who-cares approach to the defensive front left Buffalo once again unable to stop a decent offense when it mattered.
So instead of sitting in sole possession of first place in the division at the season's halfway point, albeit at 4-4, the Bills are 3-5 -- the same as after eight games a year ago.
Last year's team went on a 6-1 run before blowing the finale against Pittsburgh, along with a playoff spot. With seven of the eight games remaining after this week's bye against teams with better records, forget circling wagons. Just keeping the wheels on and losing fewer than 10 games would be an upset.
(Editors' note: BillStuff took in last week's game from Jillian's, a sports bar in downtown Las Vegas, so all betting references are to perfectly legal gaming activity. Gambling on sports anyplace but Nevada or Ontario or through an offshore account is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.)
BILLS MVP: Willis McGahee is on pace to become Buffalo's first runner to gain 1,500 yards on the ground since O.J. Simpson's 1,503 in 1976. Proving that one guy can't do it all, those Bills finished 2-12.
THE OTHER GUYS' MVP: Despite what ESPN would have you believe, not Teddy Bruschi. The linebacker's comeback from an offseason stroke is certainly a great story, but every one of his 11 tackles took place downfield, and a few times, he lined up in the wrong spot to create a seam for McGahee. Tom Brady, however, again delivered when it mattered.
REASON NO. 319 NOT TO BET ON FOOTBALL: If you thought Buffalo's collapse was irritating, imagine if you'd put a few hard-earned dollars on the Patriots, giving 9.5 points. Even when the Bills led for nearly 53 minutes, BillStuff had no doubt that New England would come back. But after Rian Lindell's third field goal, we were equally certain that the (expletive) Patriots weren't going to cover.
Adam, BS's guest analyst for the weekend, shared a similar experience when Pittsburgh, a 13.5-point favorite, squeezed by Baltimore by a point on Monday night, but at least he had the consolation of being a Steelers fan.
BS STORY OF THE WEEK: This has nothing to do with the Bills, but it seems like it should have. A member of the Green Bay media contingent forgot to turn off his cell phone during Wednesday's press conference with Packers coach Mike Sherman. When it rang, a disgusted Sherman stormed away from the podium.
Which was weird enough. But then a member of the Green Bay media-relations department demanded that the guilty party step forward, possibly to be punished by having his or her credential for Sunday's game yanked. When no one 'fessed up, the Pack canceled Brett Favre's weekly meeting with the media.
Given the organization's passion for treating the media like naughty children, let's just hope someone at One Bills Drive was taking notes.
WING REPORT: BS used to order wings when outside the Western New York area mainly to scoff at them. But Jillian's produced perhaps the best batches during Sunday's games and again on Monday that we've yet encountered beyond the Buffalo-Rochester metroplex.
They were the breaded variety favored outside the state, with a crunchy coating surrounding tender, yet thoroughly cooked meat. The mediums were spicy but lacked the true Buffalo flavoring, contrary to the menu's labeling. But different isn't necessarily worse, and we discovered a new flavor variation we're going to work at developing with a local eatery before revealing it publicly.
We'd give it away now, but want to be sure introducing this non-native recipe in the Wing Kingdom won't have an impact similar to smuggling a mating pair of koala bears out of Australia and releasing them in the forests of upstate New York. Not that we know anything about anything like that. Grade: A-minus.
BS FAN OF THE WEEK: Wearing a Bruschi jersey, Tony, a Rhode Island resident, conducted himself with class and dignity, even in victory. Unlike a certain group of Chargers fans earlier in the day we could mention.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 8 2005 |