Bills 24, Chargers 22

Christmas Greetings from Moncton, New Brunswick. There’s no snow here either which is much more unusual than green Christmases are in southern Ontario. Yesterday we drove four hours or so from Edmundston on deserted roads through a series of unpopulated valleys with Irving gas stations sprinkled every 50km or so. It’s like driving in northern Ontario but with major rivers taking the place of small lakes. This is Canada’s only truly bilingual province where the young people working in service jobs pivot effortlessly between English and French. We tried ordering in French at a Tim Horton’s drive-through (because we were greeted in French) but the young woman recognized my weak accent and switched to English. What remains of my high-school French is embarrassingly poor but probably not as bad as New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs whose French accent and vocabulary makes John Diefenbaker sound like Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet.

The Saturday night Bills game was on television in our Edmundston hotel room on CTV 2 which, for whatever reason, was only available in standard definition. At first, it made me realize that I watched every hockey and football game without HD for the first few decades of my life and that I managed this just fine. But when Josh Allen heaved a long bomb to Gabe Davis for the Bills first touchdown of the game, I thought that the ball had slipped through his hands…..until I saw him dragging a defender into the endzone clutching what appeared to be a football. It was a spectacular catch by Davis who decided to have a “number one wide receiver” game with four catches on six targets for 130 yards and that important first touchdown which cut an early ten-point deficit to three. As Chris Collinsworth pointed out, Davis seems to have two speeds: he either goes off for more than 100 receiving yards or he focuses on blocking (at which he is very good) and is not targeted at all in the passing game.

I can’t quote the percentages but generally in the NFL a team that loses the turnover count also loses the game. But obviously not always. Teams that lose the turnover count by three surely have an even worse record. The Bills handed the Chargers three turnovers on two fumbles – one by Deonte Harty on a punt return and one by James Cook (who thankfully was not benched afterward) - and a Josh Allen interception. The Chargers did not record a turnover and certainly played well enough to win anyway. But the Bills defence stiffened when it was most needed: Ed Oliver, a rare example of a player who responded to a lucrative second contract by significantly improving his play, recorded a crucial sack in the last minute of the game which mostly sealed it for the Bills who briefly looked like they may have found a way to lose another last-second heart-breaker. The final play of the game for the Chargers featured the obligatory series of laterals which might just have worked if one of them had not been an illegal forward pass.

Yesterday, Bills fans became Dallas Cowboys fans for three hours but they were not able to close out the Dolphins who clinched a playoff spot with their last-second 22-20 win in south Florida. I was surreptitiously following the game on my Score app through Christmas Eve dinner (which was tourtiere from an Acadian family recipe passed on through many generations) but I managed to slip away to catch the last ten minutes on television. The Cowboys remain a good team but they will have to figure out how to win away from Jerry Jones’s palatial AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The road to the Superbowl, on the NFC side of the draw, will very likely go through Santa Clara, California and the Cowboys will be in tough if they even make it far enough to face the 49ers.

Although the Patriots came up big in Denver last night for only their fourth win of the season, the Bills should be able to handle them next week in Orchard Park to go to 10-6 on the season. Hopes for another AFC Division title for Buffalo are now in the hands of the Baltimore Ravens who face the Dolphins next week at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. I love the story of the naming history of that stadium which was called PSI.Net Stadium between 1999 and 2001. PSI.Net filed for bankruptcy in June, 2001 but since the company had pre-paid the stadium naming rights through 2001, the stadium carried that name throughout the 2001 season despite the company having ceased operations before the season began. I’m sure that PSI.Net shareholders took a special kind of comfort in the stadium continuing to bear the company name during the 2001 season after its stock was delisted and while the liquidation process played out. If the Dolphins can win next week (or if the Bills were to fall to the Patriots), the AFC East title is theirs despite what may happen in week 18.

Week 17 brings Bills fans a rare 1pm (Eastern) Sunday game on New Year’s Eve. The out-of-town scoreboard will be closely watched as the Ravens and Dolphins kick-off at the same time. Ironically, New Year’s Eve is really the only night of the year where I actually try to stay up until midnight (I usually don’t succeed) so I would welcome having a late-night football game as extra motivation. I’m glad I don’t live here in the Atlantic time zone where night NFL games start at 9.15pm. Maybe I should try the west coast where they start at 5.15pm and the regular Sunday slate begins at 10am. Go Bills! And equally importantly, Go Ravens!   

Bills 31, Cowboys 10

Former Bills offensive lineman and nine-time Pro Bowler Rueben Brown was a guest on WGR 550 Sports Radio in Buffalo a few years ago talking about, among other things, what makes NFL offensive linemen tick. He explained that while today’s pass-happy style of play values the pass-protection abilities of offensive linemen, what they really love doing – what makes them feel complete as football players – is run blocking. The offensive lineman’s task in pass protection is to fend off, impede, hold up and misdirect defensive pass rushers (whose job seems more offensive than defensive) for long enough to allow their quarterback time to find open receivers downfield. On the other hand, with run blocking, the offensive line is in proactive mode, creating gaps for running backs to dart through then moving second level linebackers and safeties out of the way down the field. They need not worry about the dreaded offence of being “illegally downfield” which only applies on passing plays. Ask any NFL offensive lineman what plays they like to run and they will all provide the same answer: running plays. The Bills ran the ball yesterday in Orchard Park as effectively as they have in years. They won the game easily despite Josh Allen completing only seven passes for 94 yards. After the game, he said that he felt like the kid who contributed almost nothing to the class project but still got an A.  

In his post-game locker room speech yesterday, Bills head coach Sean McDermott started by acknowledging the play of his offensive line which created enough gaps and made the right blocks to enable the Bills offence to rack up 266 yards on the ground with James Cook accounting for 179 of those while adding another 42 yards on two catches with two touchdowns. Cook’s outstanding rushing day was almost 100 yards short of the single-game franchise record of 273 yards set in 1976 by one Orenthal James Simpson. Yesterday belonged to the Bills offensive line - a five-man unit which has remained healthy and has started every game this season. The Bills yesterday demonstrated that In this current era of “chunk plays” and speedy wide receivers “taking the top off the defence”, an old-fashioned running attack can still win football games. The Cowboys defence, on the field for a full ten minutes longer than their offence was, looked tired and demoralized as the game ground on. They are a unit built to defend against the pass, often this season playing with a big lead and letting their dominant pass rush quickly turn games into blow-outs.

The Bills sent their fans home brimming with optimism about the final three games of the season and the prospect of a playoff berth and maybe even a division title and the coveted home playoff game which comes with it. There is much work to do to get there and the Bills will need help from others to challenge for the division. The Dolphins moved to 10-4 with their 30-0 shellacking of the Jets yesterday but their schedule becomes considerably tougher over the next two weeks. First up for the Dolphins is a home game next week against these same Dallas Cowboys who are battling the Eagles for the NFC East division title and still have their sights on home field advantage in the NFC. After that, the Dolphins travel to Baltimore to face the Ravens who will be trying to shore-up their hold on the top seed in the AFC. Should the Dolphins lose one of these games and if the Bills were win their next two, the week 18 game in south Florida will decide the winner of the AFC East. If this happens, expect the Bills v. Dolphins to be the Sunday Night Football match-up and the final game of the NFL regular season.

Before Bills fans start shopping for February package deals to Las Vegas (the site of Superbowl LVIII), they have a short week to prepare for a team which will have had three full days of extra rest and preparation and have just fired their head coach and general manager after an embarrassing loss on Thursday to the Raiders who hung 63 points on them. The Los Angeles Chargers have had a very disappointing season to say the least but teams coming off a head coach firing can be dangerous for a few intangible reasons: professional pride, players looking ahead to their next contracts, the naturally injected energy of a new coach (interim head coach Giff Smith has been a defensive coach on the Chargers staff since 2016) and, if they felt any contempt toward the fired coach, an instinct to show the team owner that he made the right move. Add in a cross-continent trip to the west coast for a Saturday night game and this is certainly an opportunity for the Bills to stumble. I don’t think they will.

Saturday’s game will be carried on Peacock, an NBC-owned streaming service which I gather is not available in Canada – at least not legally. I assume then (but have not been able to confirm) that it will be available on TSN or CTV in Canada. I’ll be watching the game from a hotel in Edmundston, New Brunswick, a popular stopover point on the drive from Ontario to Atlantic Canada. On Christmas Eve, we drive to Moncton to spend Christmas with family there. We are booked in for three nights. Second prize was five nights in Moncton.        

Bills 20, Chiefs 17

With unlimited pre-snap motion which allows all receivers and backfield personnel to charge the line of scrimmage with a running start, on almost any play in a typical CFL game, it looks to me like at least one offensive player is offside, crossing the line before the ball is snapped. I have never seen it called. In American football which limits pre-snap motion to one player, the other ten players must be lined up and set for one second before the snap. Receivers must not line up ahead of where the ball lies. It’s pretty simple. I don’t think I’ve ever seen offensive offside called in an NFL game – until yesterday. As Gene Staratore, former NFL referee and CBS in-house officiating commentator posted on his Twitter account last night, it is almost never called because offensive players almost never line up ahead of where the ball is spotted. But when they do, shouldn’t it be called?

I watched Patrick Mahomes post-game press conference last night. When the game ended, he was visibly upset, slamming his helmet and screaming at someone on the Chiefs sideline. He explained that he was upset at the call which negated a “hall of fame play by a hall of fame player”. And it also happened to be what could have been the game-winning touchdown. He explained that playing organized football going back as far as he could remember, this isn’t called before multiple warnings are issued by officials. As kids playing football, receivers would take their place at the line of scrimmage and look at the line judge who would then indicate that they were positioned correctly or motion them to move back as needed. Last night, no such warnings were issued (probably because there were no infractions) but as referee Carl Jeffers said afterward, “if it’s egregious enough, it would be beyond a warning”. Chiefs coach Andy Reid corroborated his quarterback’s analysis after the game saying that he would typically be given a warning before a call is made and that “it’s a bit embarrassing for the National Football League for that to take place”. There is no question that Chiefs receiver Kadarius Toney was lined up forward of the ball on the fateful play. The camera angles showed very clearly that he was lined well forward of the ball. Mahomes said that when he saw the flag fly before he made his throw to Kelce, he assumed that it was for defensive offside (sometimes called a “neutral zone infraction”).    

It seems clear to me that the real issue was that the penalty call – which was correct by any standard – negated a brilliant play by Travis Kelce which could have and probably would have been the game-winning touchdown. Had the call been made on a three yard run or a short pass to Kelce, it would not be the subject of such scrutiny this morning. Successful offensive plays are regularly called back in football games – for holding penalties, for players illegally downfield, for offensive pass interference, etc. It’s part of the game and always will be. The play by Kelce where he made the catch 25 yards downfield then turned and threw a perfect lateral to (ironically) Kadarius Toney who streaked down the left sideline and into the endzone was a highlight reel play for sure and had it stood as the game-winning play, would surely have been in the season’s top ten plays. But it doesn’t appear in the boxscore this morning and basically never happened.

Were I a Chiefs fan this morning looking back at the plays which changed the trajectory of the game, I would be focused on the Josh Allen “completion” to Latavius Murray which kept the Bills drive alive and allowed them to kick the what became the game-winning field goal. As he fell out of bounds, Allen floated a pass to Murray who got his hands on it and as Gene Steratore explained, appeared to complete the requisite three steps needed to make it a completion before fumbling. The ball was then pushed out of bounds on the ensuing scramble and the Bills maintained possession. When CBS went to commercial for the replay review, I was convinced that the ruling would be overturned based on the angles shown. I am equally convinced this morning that had the pass been ruled incomplete on the field, that would have been upheld.

The Bills find themselves still in the AFC playoff contention, although just barely because at 7-6, they are tied with five other teams all pursuing two wildcard playoff spots. Since all but one of the Bills losses this year have been to AFC teams, the Bills would lose most tie-breaker scenarios so a prolonged winning streak will be required and still might not be enough.

Up next: The Dallas Cowboys make their once-every-eight-years trip to Orchard Park next Sunday for another 4.25pm start. The Bills are early two point favourites.