Football season is a few tantalizing days away and predictions abound.
Self-proclaimed experts around the country and across the Internet boldly predict that the home team will either show tremendous improvement by winning another game or two more than a year ago, take a step back by losing another game or two more than a year ago, or continue rebuilding by winning roughly the same number as a year ago.
Well, not BillStuff. When we're asked about the fate of the 2005 Buffalo Bills, we neither hesitate nor equivocate.
Sixteen-and-zero, baby. That's right, the second unbeaten season in National Football League history.
Remember, you read it here first.
Now, some pessimists are worrying about first-year starting quarterback J.P. Losman, particularly after a terrible throw led to one of his two interceptions in Friday night's exhibition-season finale against the Detroit
Lions, his second straight mistake-filled outing.
Not me. There are a couple of reasons for this.
One, I didn't actually see the game, due to the occasional mercy of the National Football League's blackout rule. Mere televised highlights and written accounts aren't going to dampen the giddy optimism that permeates the BS coverage team each Labor Day.
And two, anybody who thinks Losman isn't going to make mistakes, and plenty of them, has apparently watched, or at least paid attention to, very little football over the years.
All quarterbacks make mistakes. Jim Kelly threw at least 17 interceptions in three of the Bills' four Super Bowl years. Drew Bledsoe turned the ball over 52 times over the past two seasons.
The difference between Nos. 12 and 11, though, was that Kelly more than compensated for his occasional tendency to force the ball into coverage. Mistakes often spurred him to play better, like in the 1991 Monday night game against Cincinnati when he reacted to throwing three first-quarter interceptions by chucking for five touchdowns.
Fumbles and interceptions jarred Bledsoe's increasingly fragile psyche, though, steadily converting him from the cocky gunslinger who arrived in Buffalo in 2002 to the rickety statue exiled last February.
While Losman's skill set is still a source of debate, he does seem well equipped to shake off a bad throw or foolish decision without going Bledsoe on a team still learning to trust him. And he's also shown the knack for making a play where there seems to be nothing, a trait that abandoned his predecessor during the past three seasons.
While the Bills aren't going to fall apart due to Losman's nearly guaranteed inconsistency, they're not going undefeated because of his playmaking abilities, either.
That's where the elements that carried Buffalo to the brink of the postseason last year despite Bledsoe's bumbling come in.
Willis McGahee looks, as advertised, a step faster and at least as powerful as he did while becoming one of the league's top young runners.
Despite the loss of Pat Williams, the defense has been staunch against the run and showed the potential for a dominant pass rush.
And the special teams showed every indication through the first three exhibitions that they're primed to continue as a game-changing force.
If there was cause for real concern in Friday's finale, it came when Nate Clements left the field with trainers attending to his shoulder. In keeping with an increasingly bizarre team policy, no information had been divulged about the nature or extent of the injury at press time. Because, well, just because.
So while we'll have to wait to see whether Clements returns for Sunday's home opener against Houston or has to undergo amputation, there's no reason to delay the wild and largely unfounded Polyannaism.
That outlook is apparently shared by a healthy portion of the ticket-buying public. The 47,246 season tickets sold rates as the seventh-highest total in the franchise's 46-year history, trailing only the years after Buffalo's first three trips to the Super Bowl, the franchise's first two seasons at the then-Rich Stadium and 1989, the year following the Bills' first playoff appearance of the Kelly Era.
In a slight derivation from the rich BS tradition of absorbing games from taverns, house parties and other remote locations, regular-season coverage for 2005 is slated to begin from the midst of the first sellout of the season, on or near the 50-yard-line at Ralph Wilson Stadium. (Any suggestions for unique or decadent vantage points for the rest of the season can be e-mailed to dstaba13@aol.com.)
But back to that 16-0 thing. If it's easy to overlook the home team's flaws if you try hard enough, the glaring inadequacies of the enemy, particularly the foes occupying the AFC East, are impossible to miss.
New England opens the season without either of the coordinators who carried out Bill Belichick's vision on the way to three Super Bowl wins in four years, as well as Teddy Bruschi, the soul of the Patriots' defense. There's also that pesky law of averages to be reckoned with. (In the interest of full disclosure, though, BS admits to being haunted by a vision of the Patriots returning to the AFC title game, wherein Tom Brady suffers a late-game injury and is replaced by Doug Flutie. Little Dougie Touchdown Hero leads his hometown back to the Super Bowl and another Vince Lombardi Trophy, capping his 54-year playing career and guaranteeing a TV movie will be made about his plucky life).
Chad Pennington's shoulder still causes concern in New York, where they should also be worried about the petulant "it is a privilege" whine the Jets quarterback issued regarding the mean Big Apple press corps last year. If he couldn't take the heat en route to the playoffs, how's he going to hold up if Curtis Martin starts showing his age?
Miami? The Dolphins just stink, even if Ricky Williams regains his pre-spiritual journey form.
So that's six wins right there. We could spend a few hundred more words analyzing the rest of the schedule, but why complicate a simple premise.
With Losman's first start that counts -- in a throwback uniform in front of a frothing crowd, no less -- getting closer by the minute, the Bills are undefeated. They're going to stay that way for quite a while. And BS promises to stand by that prediction.
At least until next week.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Sept. 6 2005 |