In my opinion, poor tackling cost the Bills this game. It made me wonder what causes a team to tackle poorly. Is it possible that what looks like poor tackling is really just effective tackle breaking by the opposing team? In baseball, hitters can have success at times and at other times, they fail miserably. Does good pitching cause poor hitting and vice versa? Same thing with basketball: players and teams shoot well at times and shoot poorly at other times. Good defence in basketball will limit the number of "open looks" shooters get during each game. So, the effectiveness of the opposing team surely plays a role in these situations but, when I watched this game, it seemed clear to me that the Bills just tackled poorly.
The officiating was questionable as well. In addition to a number of non holding calls on the Cincinnati offense, the review of the Steve Johnson catch in the 4th quarter was a critical play in the game. The ruling on the filed was that it was an incomplete pass and the replay, apparently, did not provide enough evidence for the referee to overturn the ruling on the filed. I was convinced, based on the replays I saw, that the catch was good. It would have resulted in a first down and at least allowed Buffalo to wind 2 or 3 more minutes off the clock even if they did not make another first down. None of that would have mattered if they had tackled better.
So, the Bills find themsleves out of the national media spotlight, although they were the last remaining undefeated team in the AFC. Next up is a very interesting and potentially dangerous game: The Philadelphia Eagles come to Orchard Park on this Canadian Thanksgiving Sunday. The Eagles signed a number of prominent free agents in the off season and were widely expected to be one the top teams in the NFC and challenge for the Superbowl. They sit at 1-3 and no doubt feel that slipping to 1-4 would seriously jeopardize their expectations for earning one of the top seeds in the NFC playoff draw. If the Bills lose, they would slip to 3-2 and then travel to New York to face the Giants. As the second quarter of the NFL season begins, this game is extremely important for both teams. Let's hope that the sold out home crowd can inspire the Bills.
Ok, on to the Ontario election. In every recent election, I seem to find myself hoping that a particular party does not win. As long as they don't win, I don't really care which of the other two does actually win. My dad has said for years that he would like to have the option of voting against a particular candidate, instead of only being able to vote for a candidate. Under this system, each candidate's vote total would be the net of votes for and against. This would essentially eliminate the need for strategic voting. But we don't have that option so I will, once gain, have to vote strategically.
I have just moved back to the riding of Eglinton-Lawrence, long held by Liberal Mike Colle. His main opponent is the turncoat Rocco Rossi. A long time Liberal Party executive, Rossi increased his public profile last year with a strong run for the mayoralty of Toronto. Based on the candidates debates I attended, he would have had my vote until he pulled out of the race a couple of weeks before the election. Maybe he was worried that Rob Ford might win. Then, somewhere along the way, he made a sharp right turn and is now running for Mr. Hudak's PC's. Yes,Mr. Rossi has joined forces with the party who supports prisoner chain gangs and seems to think that all taxes are bad. My theory is that he thought that the PC's had an excellent chance of winning the election and that was promised a prominent cabinet role in a Hudak government. Sadly for Mr. Rossi, it doesn't look like it's going to work out that way.
The Globe and Mail endorsed Dalton McGuinty's Liberals yesterday - although not anywhere close to a ringing endorsement. The editorial page was critical of Mr. Hudak for offering virtually nothing more that criticism of the governing party. He has also focused on a couple of what he hoped would be wedge issues - the "foreign worker" flap in the campaign's early days, the prisoner chain gangs and the usual "McGuinty is soft on crime" crap. Otherwise, he has offered nothing except the tiresome tax cuts with no service reductions mantra and no electricity rate increases. He says he will tear up the Feed-in Tarriff program and the Samsung renewable energy deal. These may well be bad deals for the province but in the process of promising to cancel them, Mr. Hudak has postioned himself as the leader who wants to turn away from the new economy and the (so far elusive) "green jobs" it will bring. His opponent talks about embracing the future and Mr. Hudak looks like he wants to wind the clock back. For those reasons, and the fact that, as a Toronto resident, I already have two right wing governments (and I most certainly do not want a third), I will be voting against Mr. Rossi and Mr. Hudak. I guess that means I'm voting Liberal - again - not because that's what I really want but because the alternative is what I really do not want.
No comments:
Post a Comment