A brief political discussion broke out in the kitchen about half an hour before kickoff. Something about Rush Limbaugh, or Iraq, or something.
"Hey -- not on Sunday," scolded Mark, the host of the party that served as BillStuff's vantage point for the New York Jets' 30-3 flogging of the Buffalo Bills. "Not during football."
The bash featured an array of political viewpoints, ranging from just left of Trotsky to wanting to put George W. Bush's face on the $20 bill. But as it usually does, football brought the disparate perspectives together.
On this day, Democrat, Republican and Anarchist could agree on one point -- the Bills stunk worse than New Jersey usually does.
Before the season, Gregg Williams swore up and down that he wasn't worried about entering the final season of his contract with the Buffalo Bills without an extension in sight.
Looks like he should have been.
The Bills have put on lousier performances in their 44-season history -- games in which they proved more inept in every phase of the game and more lifeless while doing so -- than Sunday's fiasco in New Jersey.
But most of those atrocities came with guys like Bruce Mathison or Gary Marangi playing quarterback and caretaker coaches rightfully worried about their next job in charge.
The New York Jets' 30-3 pasting of the Bills looked like an end-of-season game in the mid-1980s, with the red, white and blue showing little skill and even less fire.
But nobody expected anything better from those men of Kay Stephenson and Hank Bullough. Anything more than utter futility came as a pleasant surprise.
Gregg Williams' Bills are supposed to be, at the very least, playoff contenders. On Sunday, facing the winless Jets, they looked like the team jockeying for the first overall pick in next April's draft.
Buffalo didn't even lose strictly due to the flaws that emerged over the past month. The Bills actually ran relatively often during the first half. Travis Henry didn't cover a whole lot of ground -- 35 yards -- on his 13 attempts, but the persistence should have opened some downfield passing lanes for Drew Bledsoe.
To quote Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel from The Simpsons, "Shoulda, but didn'a."
Bledsoe's 19 attempts yielded a dozen completions, but only 82 yards. Wide receivers Bobby Shaw and Josh Reed, operating in the void created by Eric Moulds' groin injury, got open and caught the ball. It's just that they did so very close to the line of scrimmage.
Factor in the five yards lost on the Jets' only first-half sack and Bledsoe's scramble for no gain, and Buffalo gained 3.66 yards per pass play in the first half. The 13 runs-by-design netted an average of 2.69.
Offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride that less than a yard per play represented such a gaping disparity that he had absolutely no choice but to give up on the run completely.
If one sequence pointedly displayed everything wrong with the Buffalo offense as of mid-October of 2003, it was Buffalo's first possession of the third quarter.
Down 13-3, the Bills started off from their own 24-yard line. A long possession would drain the growing life out of the crowd, which was starting to believe for the first time all season that the Jets had a chance to win. Time-consuming marches usually result from running the ball. Pounding away with Henry may have cracked the Jets defense, which came into the day as the league's worst against the run.
It almost goes without saying that Gilbride knew better.
First-and-10: A pass, of course. And not a play-action pass designed to fool, or even slightly mislead, the Jets, but a straight, deep drop-back. Buffalo's offensive line, facing a New York defense missing its best pass rusher, immediately collapsed. Down went Bledsoe - the first of six second-half sacks absorbed by the Bills quarterback.
Second-and-16: A draw play to Henry out of the shotgun. With the Jets retreating on an obvious passing down, Buffalo's blockers manage to clear the way for a 3-yard gain.
Third-and-13: Another pass call, another sack - this one by former Bills linebacker Sam Cowart.
Fourth-and-21: Brian Moorman, whose booming punts provided the few Buffalo bright spots, outkicks the Bills coverage. The 47-yard return by Santana Moss sets up Vinny Testaverde's second touchdown pass to tight end Anthony Becht, an 18-yarder on the next play. Jets 20, Buffalo 3.
Gilbride's surreal play-calling had thoroughly shattered whatever sense of continuity the Bills possessed much earlier.
Late in the first quarter, Buffalo faced a third-and-1 at the Jets' 34-yard line. Up 3-0, the Bills had a prime opportunity to go up by two scores and douse any thoughts New York may have been harboring about an upset. All Buffalo had to do was move the ball 3 feet, and a fresh set of downs would start on the verge of field-goal range.
Instead of building on the limited success enjoyed on the ground in the first half, the Bills ran a quick pass, one that required precision and timing -- even though Bledsoe and his receivers had demonstrated neither in more than a month. It fell incomplete.
Still needing that single yard, Gilbride called not for the quick-hitting, straight-ahead sort of run usually used to secure such minimal real estate, but a slow-developing toss sweep.
In short-yardage situations, defenses generally shoot the gaps between offensive linemen, hoping to disrupt the play before it gets started. Which was exactly what happened here, swinging the momentum to the Jets for the first time.
It never swung back.
And whatever impetus Buffalo possessed during its 2-0 start is long gone. Owner Ralph Wilson made it clear after the game that he isn't happy.
His team's utter failure in every aspect of the game left Williams to do what he does best -- start laying blame.
Not on Gilbride, of course. Williams hired him, after scapegoating his first offensive coordinator, Mike Sheppard, for his 3-13 debut season. Criticizing the abysmal play-calling would be an admission that Williams' famous lists of assistants might not have been altogether accurate.
Instead, Williams attributed the meltdown to problems with "execution."
In other words, it's all the players' fault. Forget that the coaches are the ones supposedly teaching them how to execute and putting them in situations to do so.
Not that Williams should have been able to explain what happened on Sunday. Too much went wrong in too many areas to possibly focus on one factor.
We've already discussed the offense and special teams. The defense allowed 248 yards, usually good enough to win, but forced no turnovers and registered only two sacks against one of the NFL's least mobile quarterbacks, leaving him unhurried the rest of the day.
The sky-is-falling fans were calling for Williams' job well before Sunday. The chorus got significantly louder on the post-game call-in shows, and figures to dominate the radio waves and conversations in coffee shops and taverns all week.
Wilson, like most NFL owners, doesn't like to pay the salaries of two head coaches, so replacing Williams at this point seems unlikely. But another performance or two like Sunday's, and Williams may have to start updating those lists for his next job interview.
BILLS MVP: You've got to be kidding.
THE OTHER GUYS' MVP: That Cowart character is pretty good. He made 15 tackles, 11 of them solo, and delivered a sack that ended Buffalo's first second-half drive.
SELF-INFLICTED WOUND: Trey Teague has been having trouble getting the ball to Bledsoe in the shotgun formation all season. After Buffalo's center set up New York's second scoring drive with a hideous snap early in the second quarter, it's time to abandon the shotgun or find a new center. WING REPORT: A lack of wings would normally constitute a full-blown BS crisis, but Mark's succulent spicy ribs and fresh shrimp on the side more than compensated. Brilliant work by the generous-to-a-fault host.
BS FAN OF THE WEEK: There wasn't anything football-related to get enthusiastic about all afternoon, unless you were a Jets fan. The bash was originally billed as a birthday fete for Marty. It turned out his birthday was actually four days earlier, and will be commemorated again next weekend at the Bills-Redskins game. Anyone who can turn his birthday into a fortnight-long celebration deserves some sort of honor, so this one's for you, Marty.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 14 2003 |