In the spring of 2001, I attended a mortgage banking conference at The University of Maryland in College Park which is essentially a suburb of Washington, DC. Someone in the group had secured a block of tickets to an Orioles game one night and on the way to Camden Yards, we passed by the relatively newly built football stadium in downtown Baltimore. I remember, as we passed it on the expressway, looking at a large sign on the outside of the stadium which read "PSI.net Stadium". Someone in the car mentioned that PSI.net has been a victim of the recent "dot-com bubble" and was now bankrupt. It had beforehand, however, acquired the new stadium's naming rights and pre-paid for the first few years. I remember thinking that having a football stadium continuing to bear the name of a now bankrupt corporation could really only happen in America. I could look up the other corporate names that the stadium has been through since then but, for now, it is called "M & T Bank Stadium". Reminds me of a Simpsons episode where the family visits someone who has been incarcerated and as they approach the institution's front gates, they pass a large sign which reads "Welcome to Campbell's Chunky Soup Maximum Security Prison".
The CBS broadcast flashed a graphic late in yesterday's rain-soaked game at M &T Bank Stadium about the last time that the Buffalo Bills overcame a 17 point deficit to win. It happened 11 years ago on a warm September afternoon in Orchard Park against Tom Brady and the hated Patriots - a game that I attended and one which I remember as being among the best regular season games I've seen. That day, the Ryan Fitzpatrick led Bills overcame a 21-0 deficit with Rian Lindell kicking the winning field goal as the game clock clicked past zero. Bills coach Chan Gailey, whose tenure with the team was mostly quite unremarkable, demonstrated superior clock management in the game's final minutes, leaving Brady no time to engineer his own comeback. Maybe Sean McDermott watched the highlights of that game on the flight to BWI on Saturday because he accomplished the same result yesterday in the remnants of Hurricane Ian.
With the Bills down 20-0 in the second quarter, things looked grim - just the way Jerry Sullivan likes them - causing him to tweet "We're getting dangerously close to the point where the Bills are no longer Superbowl favourites". With the weather in Muskoka offering us an absolutely perfect fall day, I went outside for a break from the misery and started to put away deck furniture. After a few minutes, I checked back in on the game in time to see Josh Allen hit Isaiah McKenzie just before halftime to cut the deficit to 10 points. That made a full comeback definitely seem more plausible.
In the loss, the Ravens dominated the game in terms of time of possession by almost a two-to-one margin - just as the Bills did last week in Miami. The still-depleted Buffalo defence stiffened in the second half and in the end was the difference in the game. Jordan Poyer made his return from injury and was rewarded with two key interceptions; Linebackers Tremaine Edmunds and Matt Milano were both outstanding. Are there two better tacklers in the league right now? Devin Singletary looked dangerous at times, Stefon Diggs made a couple of difficult catches in the wet conditions and Khalil Shakir contributed two key receptions as well after Crowder and McKenzie went down with injuries.
The officials had a rough afternoon in my opinion and I can think of two instances - one non-call on an obvious pass interference by the Bills on a third down play and a questionable roughing-the-passer call on the Bills final drive. After that call, Sullivan tweeted "I can only imagine the whining if they called that on the Bills". Sullivan also noticed a couple of holding calls on Shaq Lawson that were not made so I guess the poor officiating went both ways. The always aggressive Ravens coach John Harbaugh faced questions after the game about his decision to go for the touchdown on fourth down late in the game which led to Poyer's second pick and gave the Bills a drive start at their own 20 yard line.
Up next: the reeling Pittsburgh Steelers come to Orchard Park for a 1pm Sunday game on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. At 1-3, and after losing at home yesterday to the Jets, the Steelers will be playing to avoid seeing their season slip away. I guess the Mitch Trubisky era might be over in Steeltown as he was benched at halftime in favour of Kenny Pickett whose name I like but Steeler-Nation probably doesn't want to pin their hopes on.
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