Alive.
Just barely, but alive nonetheless.
The Buffalo Bills didn't win a lot of style points on Sunday. Just the game. And at least one more week of pondering the Euclidean equations that give the Bills a chance of reaching the playoffs despite the woes of October and November.
Buffalo's 17-6 stifling of the New York Jets may not have thrilled the casual fan who needs a long pass every other series and a minimum of two touchdowns per hour to enjoy the game. But for anyone who likes to see a team execute the basic fundamentals of winning football, it was a thing of beauty.
The Bills ran the ball. Forty-one times for 203 yards, to be exact.
They didn't shut down Curtis Martin, but they kept him under control. He finished with 84 yards, earned 3.4 yards at a time.
Having thusly forced the Jets into plenty of long-yardage situations, Buffalo again displayed a pass rush apparently rediscovered on Thanksgiving Day. A week after leveling New York Giants quarterback Kerry Collins six times, the Bills flattened Chad Pennington on five occasions.
And Buffalo's kicking teams turned in a solid, if unspectacular, outing, maintaining a critical field-position advantage. The average Jets drive started at their own 25-yard line, while the Bills typically began from their own 41.
Old-time football. The only thing needed to make the afternoon complete would have some heavy snow and mud. The former skirted Orchard Park and all of Western New York over the weekend. The latter was tragically rendered obsolete at Buffalo's home games 30 years ago. The more realistic-looking fake grass the Bills installed before this season only made you want to see Travis Henry and Sam Adams covered in grime even more.
Buffalo's generally solid afternoon rendered Drew Bledsoe's performance -- and for that matter, his presence -- almost irrelevant. In case you missed it, Buffalo's $6 million quarterback spent a second straight week battling the after-effects of a blow to the head sustained on Sunday. He insisted this one wasn't a concussion. It's just that he had the exact same symptoms as if it was.
On Sunday, he completed nine of 15 passes for all of 72 yards. Not sure those numbers justified jeopardizing the immediate and long-term health of the team's highest-paid player. But I guess he and Bills management proved a point of some sort.
"He's playing better since the concussion, anyway," said Mark, the generous-to-a-fault host of the near-weekly house party where BillStuff perused a Bills-Jets clash for the second time this season.
The first meeting came in Week 4. The Jets' 30-3 gutting of the Bills forced the first realization that Buffalo's season might not be destined to last into late January, even February, no matter how well the Bills had played in winning their first two games.
If that game exposed Buffalo's flaws, this one, like last week's, showed what might have been.
While officially euthanizing the postseason aspirations of both teams with New York in their names, the Bills demonstrated they could actually play like the team we heard about all winter, spring and summer. Running the ball. Stopping the run. Generating pressure on the quarterback despite the lack of a single, dominant pass rusher.
Of course, playing sound defense is much easier when you're not playing from behind on a short field, two factors largely in control of the offense. On Sunday, it was easy to ponder the defeats directly attributable to the surreal game plans of offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride.
Had his alleged genius been able to conjure even a single offensive touchdown against Dallas or Houston, or way back when in Miami, Buffalo would have very real playoff possibilities to consider.
Instead, a whole lot of things -- too many to honestly expect -- will have to break the right way for the Bills to extend their season into 2004 (see "Playoff Picture" below).
BILLS MVP: Travis Henry ran for 163 yards and the clinching score on 32 carries. He also caught a pass for six yards, meaning he accounted for two-thirds of Buffalo's 256 net yards.
Sam Adams delivered the kind of game that helped put Baltimore and Oakland in Super Bowls when the mammoth tackle toiled in those cities - seven tackles, two sacks and a tipped pass.
It's impossible to say one performance was more vital, or dominant, than the other, so Travis and Sam are just going to have to share.
THE OTHER GUYS' MVP: Martin totaled 104 yards on 25 carries and three catches. He earned every one.
PLAYOFF PICTURE: New England's win over Indianapolis last week ended Buffalo's shot at the AFC East title, but neither wild-card berth has been clinched. Despite winning two straight by a combined score of 41-13, the Bills need the following to seize it:
a) Wins in their last three games.
b) At least one loss by Cincinnati.
c) The Dolphins and Broncos either disbanding their franchises and withdrawing from the National Football League before the first weekend in January, or losing their last three games.
Thanks to Indianapolis' 29-27 escape from Nashville, there's also a scenario in which the Bills could overtake Tennessee for the last wild-card berth. Buffalo would hold the edge on the Titans if both teams finished 9-7, since that would require the Bills winning next Sunday in Tennessee.
Buffalo could also win some tiebreakers against Denver and Miami, depending on what happens over the next three weeks.
Everybody got a headache? Good. Now forget all that until Sunday. For your own good.
WING REPORT: La Pizza Club in Buffalo delivered meaty, flavorful mediums. The delivery guy earned a grade enhancement of one level by realizing he had forgotten the blue cheese before we opened the box, going back to the shop to retrieve it and returning with three mini-tubs of tangy dip within five minutes. Grade: A-.
BS FAN OF THE WEEK: Buffalo's win didn't bring a lot of joy to the party, since most of the bettors in the group had turned on the home team and taken the Jets and the three points.
So Russ won the honor with this retort to a verbal jab from Mark, our host.
"I'll crack your windpipe open and suck it out like a crab leg."
I'm pretty sure Russ was kidding. But it was funny either way.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 9 2003 |