In case you found a more pleasantly entertaining way to spend Sunday afternoon, like eating all the light bulbs in your home, or removing your toenails with a pair of pliers, you missed the Buffalo Bills hitting bottom.
The Houston Texans' wheezing, stumbling 12-10 survival at Ralph Wilson Stadium wasn't just the low point of this season, or even Gregg Williams' crashing bore of a coaching tenure.
Losing in such execrable fashion, at home, to a second-year expansion team operating with its second-string quarterback while failing to score an offensive touchdown for the third full game stands as the most pathetic moment in the franchise's 44-year history.
Yes, plenty of Bills teams have lost in heinous fashion to opponents who were supposedly even worse.
But nobody expected anything of the teams that won one game in 1968 and 1971, or the two-time winners Buffalo fielded in 1976, '84 and '85.
Even during the worst moments of Williams' 3-13 rookie campaign two years ago, there were some signs of improvement, a few reasons to hope things would get better.
But for the 2003 Bills, loaded with big names, high salaries and heady potential, Sunday was the day that all the preseason hopes, and all the excuses for why they weren't fulfilled, officially became meaningless. While there's surely a mathematical possibility that some arrangement of losses and ties by other teams could leave the Bills a path to the playoffs, such a journey would require them to win their last six games.
After Sunday's loss, expecting one more victory looks like a stretch. If Williams holds any remote hope of returning for a fourth season and doesn't possess an extremely incriminating photograph of Bills President/General Manager Tom Donahoe and/or owner Ralph Wilson, his friends and family should hold an intervention.
And when Williams hits the job-hunting circuit around the second week of January, he'd better have a creative explanation prepared for why he allowed his offensive coordinator to undermine his team's playoff hopes, as well as a defense good enough to get them there.
It's easy to pick on the offensive coordinator when things don't go well, and overlook him when the points come easily.
The latter hasn't happened in more than two months, when the Bills thrashed the feeble Jaguars in Jacksonville, 38-17.
And the fact he's still employed by the Buffalo Bills means Kevin Gilbride hasn't come close to getting his share of the blame for this mess.
Chronicling Gilbride's weekly array of pass calls on third-and-short starts to feel like self-plagiarism when he forces you to write the same thing after every game. But he does.
This week, to his credit, he called running plays pretty regularly and, whaddya know, Travis Henry ran wild, even after breaking his leg.
Of course, Gilbride didn't rediscover that portion of the playbook until blowing two chances to establish scoreboard control of a game Buffalo was clearly dominating on both sides of the ball.
On the Bills second and third drives of the game, each coming after the defense had forced the Texans to go three-and-out each and their own territory, Buffalo's offense faced a third-and-2.
The first time, Bledsoe got sacked. The second, from Houston's 40-yard-line he threw incomplete. Not on a high-percentage, get-the-first-down-and-into-field-goal range pass, either, but on one of the deep-down-the-sideline calls with which Gilbride is so infatuated.
Gilbride even had the gall to call a play-action pass on third-and-short. That might have worked, if the Texans and the rest of the National Football League didn't know that the Bills had thrown in that situation 849 straight times and so were able to ignore the run fake.
Williams himself took some heat off Gilbride with some idiocy of his own. There was the wasted timeout while trying to decide whether to try a field goal or go for it on fourth-and-goal from the Houston 2-yard-line in the third quarter.
Down by four points, riding the momentum of Antoine Winfield's interception and perched 6 feet away from the first end-zone journey by his offense in more than a month, you'd think Williams would have taken about two seconds to decide to go for it.
But no.
It was very important to take a timeout -- Buffalo's second of the drive, which, again, took place entirely in the third quarter -- so that all interested parties could be consulted on how to proceed.
All that brainpower came up with this -- sending out a field-goal kicker who had missed twice in the first half. Even though a failed attempt for a touchdown would leave Houston's quivering offense backed up to its own goal line, from where it had already surrendered one safety.
At least Lindell made that field goal. But he'd never get a chance for another one, and thanks to Drew Bledsoe's fumble in the final moments, the Bills would never come nearly as close to the Texans' end zone again.
Then there was the fiasco in the final minute. Someone -- whose identity is still being protected more fiercely than a sex-crime victim's by the Bills -- decided it would be a good idea to accept a third-down holding penalty on Houston, instead of forcing a punt that would have given Bledsoe one more chance to fumble.
It doesn't really matter who made the call, or whether referee Johnny Grier accepted the decision of the proper person (he didn't, by the way). The simple fact that such a blunder was even possible is a damning indictment of Williams. A guy who got the job in large part because of his organization skills should be absolutely certain that anyone who might be on the field in that situation knows at least the rudimentary rules of clock management.
The wisdom of Donahoe's past personnel choices, as well as Bledsoe's future with the Bills and what else they need to do in the offseason can be debated until next September.
But the first order of business has to be forcing Williams to polish that previously sterling resume. Since those two late-summer wins to open the season, his team is 2-6. Extrapolated over an entire season, that's 4-12.
That's bad enough if you have a salary cap-squeezed roster full of free-agent rookies and never-were veterans, like Williams' first Bills team.
With the talent he was given this year, it's inexcusable.
BILLS MVP: The offense couldn't come through with its end of the equation, but Winfield made the sort of game-turning play everyone's been waiting for by the defense (which also put Buffalo ahead with Jeff Posey's sack that resulted in a safety).
THE OTHER GUYS' MVP: I'd point out that Banks outplayed Bledsoe, but who hasn't lately? Houston's backup made just one big play, a 46-yard touchdown hookup with rookie Andre Johnson in the second quarter, but that's all it takes against Buffalo these days.
STAT OF THE DAY: The Bills outgained Houston 228-82 and hadn't committed a turnover before that Banks-to-Johnson touchdown, but thanks to Gilbride's play calling and Rian Lindell's Scott Norwood imitation, Buffalo led only 5-0.
TENACIOUS TRAVIS: It may have been his last game of the year, and quite possibly his Buffalo career. But after running for 149 yards, many of them on a cracked fibula, Henry deserved better than having such a gutty performance buried under the avalanche of pigskin manure issued by the Bills on Sunday.
WING REPORT: In an effort to provide some variety amidst the game's numbing sameness, BillStuff sampled the grilled barbecue and butter-garlic offerings at the Arterial Lounge. Grilling the barbecued wings kept them from being excessively goopy, while the butter-garlics offer an option for people who want high fat content, but are averse to spicy foods. Grade: A.
BS FAN OF THE WEEK: It finally happened. Buffalo's grinding ineptitude over the past month finally broke the spirit of the fans. Or at least most of the ones at the Arterial. But this week's award goes, appropriately enough, to Billy, whose devotion to his team and his Budweiser qualify him as a downtown Niagara Falls legend.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 18 2003 |