Hello, Cleveland.
A couple of months ago, the Buffalo Bills' mid-December journey to the other side of Lake Erie looked like an exercise in mutual futility, a consolation game for two franchises long since resigned to thinking about the dreaded next year.
Only after the Bills brutalized Miami and the Browns outlasted the New York Jets did the reality fully sink in: Two franchises that have been among the National Football League's most dismal for the better part of a decade are going to meet in a truly meaningful game.
The Bills at the Browns amounts to a knock-out game. The winner will have the inside track on a playoff berth, with the loser reduced to delusions based on infinitesimal mathematical possibilities.
Just getting to this place is a major achievement for two teams whose seasons looked over almost before they began. Despite scraping their way back to .500 after starting 0-3 and 1-4, the Bills hadn't even earned the right to look past the winless Dolphins, particularly given their struggles in South Florida barely a month earlier.
Since then, Buffalo endured demoralizing defeats by New England and Jacksonville, switched quarterbacks and rallied for a season-saving win at Washington.
Meanwhile, the Dolphins just kept losing, a trend they opened Sunday's game bent on continuing.
You don't make it this far into a season without finding creative ways to lose. On Sunday, a Miami team that had endured half of its dozen defeats by a mere field goal tried a new tack -- giving up right away.
Sure, the Dolphins' banged-up defense made it look good for three plays, forcing the Bills to punt on their first possession.
Then Ted Ginn Jr. -- quite possibly the dumbest top-10 draft pick made by any NFL team since the Bills took Al Cowlings with the fifth overall choice in 1970 because he was O.J. Simpson's friend -- let Brian Moorman's punt slip through his very expensive hands.
The Bills recovered the fumble, in large part because Mario Haggan leveled Ginn to prevent him from getting a shot at the loose ball, and three plays later, Trent Edwards connected with Robert Royal for the game's first touchdown.
The rookie quarterback, who had thrown one touchdown pass in his previous four professional starts, would finish the day with four.
The next series nicely summed up Miami's season. Dolphins rookie John Beck, selected 52 players before Edwards, tripped after taking the snap on first down and took a 4-yard loss. On second down, he under-threw Samkon Gado, who was all of 2 yards past the line of scrimmage. On third, he got sacked for a 7-yard loss.
After a trade of punts, Fred Jackson, who a few weeks ago was fourth on Buffalo's depth chart at running back, ripped off a 27-yard run through the heart of an eagerly surrendering Miami defense. On the next play, Edwards hit Royal down the middle for 28 yards and another score.
"It's over," confidently declared Pommy, a longtime BillStuff contributor who on this day had the Bills laying 7.5 points as part of a three-team parlay -- for entertainment purposes only, of course.
While he was correct in declaring the competitive portion of the game complete, the humiliation for Beck and the rest of the Dolphins was anything but.
Two snaps later, the ball squirted out of his hand as he reached back to throw. Buffalo safety George Wilson, a wide receiver until his conversion to the defensive side of the ball during the past offseason, used his pass-catching training to secure the fumble. Twenty yards later, it was 21-0.
Miami coach Cam Cameron had seen enough, replacing Beck with the legendary Cleo Lemon. It was the quickest replacement of an uninjured quarterback I've ever seen, surpassing Kerry Collins getting yanked by Mike Ditka when New Orleans fell behind Buffalo by the same score in the first quarter of the 1998 season finale.
Collins at least got to throw 12 passes before incurring Ditka's rage. Beck tossed two. The saddest part was seeing him on the sideline, his chinstrap still buckled, as if Cameron might change his mind and send him back in. On his first play, Lemon arched one to Ginn for 54 yards, setting up a touchdown. The deep strike worked so well, Miami never tried another one.
Lemon quickly remembered who he was and started scattering throws around the icy stadium, including a pair of interceptions.
Meanwhile, everything the Bills tried worked, including a 51-yard Rian Lindell field goal and a Lee Evans touchdown catch resulting from a successful replay challenge.
The lack of drama allowed us to follow the days' other early games on the myriad televisions at Slick Willie's on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Tonawanda, our vantage point for the afternoon. They included another locus of Pommy's triangular wager, the St. Louis-Cincinnati contest.
He was getting 10.5 points with the Rams, so for him, the endless series of punts, penalties and turnovers that the two teams inflicted on the football world were a thing of beauty, as they kept the game close and, when it ended with the Bengals ahead 19-10, his parlay alive -- for entertainment purposes only, of course.
By the final moments of the first half, it was so over that Dick Jauron eschewed a chance to expand a 31-7 lead. With the ball in Miami territory and 12 seconds left, the Bills called a short pass followed by a run to Jackson, rather than taking a shot at another score.
With two quarters remaining, Jauron's mercy could have been considered excessive. If the opponent were almost anyone but Miami.
To their credit, the Dolphins did pull within two touchdowns midway through the third quarter. So Edwards smothered any slowly building suspense by arching a perfect bomb to Lee Evans that covered 70 yards and pushed the score to 38-17, early in the fourth.
So while the Dolphins return home to ponder their wretchedness, the Bills start preparing for a pre-playoff opponent whose status as a contender is at least as unlikely.
The Browns benched their starting quarterback, Charlie Frye, during the first game and traded him to Seattle before the second. Rookie Brady Quinn wasn't ready to play, thanks in part to a predictably counterproductive holdout, so Derek Anderson got his shot.
He hasn't missed very often. Anderson threw two more touchdown passes in New Jersey on Sunday, giving him 26 for the year. That's more than any Cleveland quarterback since Brian Sipe compiled 26 scoring throws in 1983. No Browns passer had managed more than 18 since Bernie Kosar side-armed 22 in 1987.
Like Buffalo, Cleveland has won six of eight. Unlike the Bills, the Browns have been consistently explosive on offense, with a resurgent Jamal Lewis, who had 118 yards in Cleveland's 24-18 win over the Jets, balancing Anderson's aerial exploits.
The Browns average 27.7 points a game, fifth-most in the league as of Monday morning. Even after posting a season-high 38 against Miami, Buffalo ranks 26th with 17.1.
While Cleveland scores a lot of points, it gives up a lot, too -- 27.4 per game, the highest number in the NFL. Even with a pair of blowout losses to New England on the ledger, Buffalo's average of 22.4 points allowed per week ranks 16th. A win in Cleveland won't guarantee anything for the Bills, other than finishing with at least a .500 record for the first time since 2004.
But it certainly beats the alternative that looked like a certainty not so long ago.
BILLS' MVP: With so many players making so many plays -- on offense, defense and special teams -- it's probably unfair to single out the quarterback. But Edwards' scoring passes, which included a variety of the throws that an NFL starter needs to make, put the Bills way out front and kept them there.
THE OTHER GUYS' MVP: Samkon Gado, the 23rd running back the Dolphins have used this year, ran for both Miami touchdowns. So there's that.
THE OTHER GUYSÕ MVP: Samkon Gado, the 23rd running back the Dolphins have used this year, ran for both Miami touchdowns. So thereÕs that.
STAT OF THE WEEK: The Dolphins fumbled eight times, a pretty strong indication that youÕve just stopped trying. Lemon dropped the ball on four occasions, though he did retrieve it on three. He almost made up for his selfishness with those two interceptions, though.
STAT OF THE WEEK NO. 2: Jackson finished with 115 yards while Marshawn Lynch rolled up 107 in his first game back after missing three with an ankle sprain. The last time Buffalo had two runners surpass 100 in one game was Nov. 3, 1996, when Darick Holmes and Thurman Thomas ran for 122 and 107, respectively.
WING REPORT: One of the bonuses of the at-least-annual BS sojourn to Slick WillieÕs is the next-door presence of FrancoÕs Pizza, which provides the fare available in the tavern.
The pizza, at once thick, crisp and airy, was a revelation. As were the mediums and barbecues, which graded out at A-minus.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 11 2007 |