Bills 40, Jets 14

Bit of a difficult day yesterday for us but not in any way related to the Bills decisive win over the Jets yesterday in Orchard Park. Awoke just before 4.30am to the sounds of our 14-year-old White Sheppard/Husky having a seizure, foaming at the mouth, legs flailing and barely able to breathe. This lasted about 10 minutes then we carried her to the car and headed south through thick fog to the Huronia Emergency Veterinary Clinic in Barrie where she took her last laboured breath around 9.30am. Amazingly – and thankfully – she settled comfortably for her last few minutes before the sedative and the final syringe took effect. This was an animal with whom I had spent a great deal of time and, although we knew her days were numbered, having received a devastating diagnosis of an aggressive and untreatable cancerous growth on her throat, she had been energetic and content for the last 10 days or so, thanks mostly to the miraculous effect of prednisone, a widely prescribed (to humans and animals alike) cortico-steroid. I thought I was prepared for this – and I mostly was – but it was still heartbreaking and intensely sad. Having been through this four times before, I know that the grief of the loss of a dog is severe but relatively short in duration (for me anyway), at least compared to the loss of someone close. Our Sophie is gone now but our Christmas present was her last week at the cottage running in the snow, eating everything in sight and giving us her unconditional love – as she always did.

But we were back at the cottage in time for the week 17 slate of NFL games and the Bills did not disappoint as they built a 40-0 lead with four second-half touchdowns, and cruised to a 40-14 win, sealing up the second seed in the AFC playoff bracket. Aaron Rodgers was understandably frustrated and although I usually pride myself on never rooting against specific teams or players, his failure yesterday - and all season long – did please me. This may have been his last trip to Buffalo in an NFL uniform. Time to kick him to the curb. The Jets will have a huge salary cap hit for the next two seasons if they release him but what choice do they really have? Will another owner choose to sign Rodgers to make some headlines and sell some tickets? Maybe but if I were a fan or a season ticket holder of the team that does that, I’d be pissed.

Week 18 in the NFL is always fascinating and fraught with challenges for book-makers and punters alike. Some teams are out of playoff contention and are playing for pride and draft positioning; some teams need to win to clinch division titles or playoff berths; some teams need to win and hope for others to lose; some teams (like the Bills and Chiefs) are locked in to their playoff seeds and can rest starters, call up deserving players from their practice squads and save their real game-plans for the playoffs. Setting gambling lines amidst all of this is a huge challenge and gamblers who invest time to do their research thoroughly can, in theory, profit more than they do in earlier weeks. Bills coach Sean McDermott mentioned yesterday after the game that there are back-up players who will earn starts next week and practice squad players who will get a chance to earn a real NFL game-cheque. Imagine how hard these men will play when they’re given this rare opportunity then imagine how hard their opponent - the Patriots at 3-13 – will play. The Patriots are in the interesting position of controlling their own destiny in terms of picking first overall in the 2025 NFL draft. All they need to do is lose to the Bills back-ups and subs and it is theirs. The league doesn’t like the idea of teams “tanking” for this purpose but Patriots management and coaches may design a game-plan and deploy personnel for this purpose while creating the appearance of trying to win.

By locking up the second seed, the Bills have effectively earned themselves a bye week and will probably turn their attention to their potential opponent in the Wildcard round. The most likely team to come to Orchard Park in two weeks is the Denver Broncos who need to beat the Chiefs back-ups to the clinch the seventh and last AFC playoff spot. If they lose, then the Miami Dolphins are the Bills next most likely opponent as they need a Broncos loss and a win over the Jets in the Meadowlands to get in. Still alive are the Cincinnati Bengals who need to win in Pittsburgh on Saturday night and hope for losses by the Broncos and the Dolphins. Who of these three would the Bills prefer to play?  They will of course never say but honestly, I’ll take the Broncos. If the Dolphins make it, the Bills would need to beat them for a third time this season and it just seems like they don’t match up well against the Bengals. The Broncos have a rookie quarterback while the Dolphins and Bengals both have seasoned veterans who have played in Buffalo in January before. But the Broncos have to hand the Chiefs what would be only their second loss of the season. And the Chiefs will be resting their starters. But the Chiefs second-stringers and practice squad crew are probably good players looking to make their mark. So, who knows what will happen in week 18. Denver is favoured by 9.5 points and they’re at home. I’ll take Denver then I’ll take the Bills to beat them the following week. That’s what Sophie would have wanted.

    

 

Bills 24, Patriots 21

Like local television stations track Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, yesterday I was tracking the movements of a friend of mine – let’s call him Paul F. – on his journey from Riverdale to Orchard Park in a large passenger van with his two sons and a group of 11 friends of theirs – 14 of them in total. Not much information on their travels was available in real time but as the day progressed, I was imagining where they might be along their way: stopping in St. Catharines to buy warm winter boots, in a line-up at the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, dealing with US border authorities, trying to find a suitable place to park near the stadium so as to not be too far away but far enough away to avoid being trapped in the insanity which is post-game traffic trying to exit the stadium lots and then Orchard Park. Would they be prepared for the cold, I wondered as yesterday’s game was one of the coldest home games in Buffalo Bills history – certainly the coldest one in recent years. And even colder with kick-off changed from 1pm to 4.25pm. Was their recently purchased small charcoal barbecue enough to feed 14 chilly Bills fans? They were certainly hoping for - even expecting – a comfortable Bills lead in the second half to permit a stress-free early exit, easy egress from wherever they managed to park and a manageable arrival time at home. I will request a full report in a few hours but for now the only thing I know for sure is that if they did leave the game early, they missed what was a closer finish than Bills fans – and sports books - were predicting.

“It’s hard to win in the NFL”, former Bills head coach Dick Jauron famously said 15 or so years ago as he was busy stringing up 7-9 seasons like Christmas lights on his house. Sean McDermott repeated that after yesterday’s game which the Bills won mostly because of an unsuccessful lateral pass attempted by Patriots quarterback Drake Maye under the shadow of his own goalposts. The fumbled lateral landed just inside the goal-line where Taron Johnson pounced on it for an easy touchdown. The Bills added a 50-yard Tyler Bass field goal which ended up being the margin of victory in a tense final few minutes which saw the Patriots score late then try an onside kick which the Bills actually fumbled then recovered.

It definitely is hard to win in the NFL especially late in the season when pitted against a 3-11 team with “nothing to play for” except pride, roster spots for next season, possible free agent dollars in the off-season and the development of a promising young quarterback who could become the foundation of the franchise going forward. Bill Parcells once said of these late-season games with teams who have been eliminated from playoff contention: “Anyone who says these games don’t mean anything doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” If I were a Patriots fan, the play of Drake Maye yesterday in a cold and hostile environment would have given me a strong measure of confidence going into the season’s last two games and hopefully many seasons beyond. His composure and throwing accuracy were impressive given the opponent and playing conditions. Even in a loss, the Patriots probably came away feeling pretty good about their effort and their future prospects. Given the last 20 years of history, maybe success shouldn’t come too quickly for them.

As for the Bills, they continue to give up yardage on the ground but this time, rather than hanging 40 or more points on their opponent as they’ve been doing in recent weeks, their passing offence sputtered as they found themselves down 14-0 in the second quarter. We learned that Josh Allen actually broke his left hand on the game-winning touchdown way back in week one against the Cardinals. Yesterday, he pranged the funny-bone on his right arm on another scramble and temporarily lost feeling in his hand which was evident on his next throw. He told CBS sideline reporter Evan Washburn after the game that everything was fine with his right arm and hand. Of course it was. Hopefully, it doesn’t evolve into another nagging injury for him.

The US college football bowl season and new playoff format are well underway now. The ever-changing names of the lesser bowl games invite ridicule in some circles but I just find them amusing. I may not catch all of the Potato Bowl this afternoon in Boise, ID between Northern Illinois and Fresno State but I’ll definitely be thinking about it when I’m cross-country skiing. As for the new 12-team playoff format, it seems to be off to a good start with the four home teams winning their games comfortably this past weekend, leaving eight teams going forward. The remaining seven games will be played at neutral sites with the National Championship Game set for Monday January 20^th. I have a niece who is currently residing in Athens, GA, home of the Georgia Bulldogs and for that reason (and since the Michigan Wolverines have been relegated to playing in the ReliaQuest Bowl on New Year’s Eve), I’ll be rooting for the Bulldogs when they play Notre Dame on New Year’s Day.

The Bills have another home game coming up next against the farcical New York Jets. It is set for 1pm on Sunday but, who knows, maybe it too will be flexed to the late afternoon slot. The Jets managed another loss yesterday, this time at home to the Rams. The Jets will come to Orchard Park with a 4-11 record and have been a dumpster fire / train wreck all season. They have one more win than the Patriots do but expectations going into the season were high – probably unrealistically high – and they have failed epically to deliver anything promising to their fan base. The meddling owner fired the head coach early on, then the general manager and we heard this past week that he vetoed a trade earlier this season because the player they were trading for had a “Madden Score” which wasn’t high enough for him. For the Bills, this represents another potentially dangerous opponent with “nothing to play for”. Let’s hope they are ready as the top seed in the AFC, although fading away, remains within reach.  

 

Bills 48, Lions 42

With three games remaining, the Chiefs schedule gets a little more difficult now:  home to the Texans, at the Steelers then at the Broncos. Conversely, the Bills schedule gets a little easier: home to the Patriots and Jets then at the Patriots. At 13-1, the Chiefs are well-positioned to earn the top seed in the AFC playoff bracket, two games ahead of the Bills. For the Bills to jump ahead of the Chiefs, they must sweep their remaining games and hope that the Chiefs lose two of three. This scenario is certainly possible but probably not likely.  

With another stellar performance yesterday in Detroit, Josh Allen took another step toward earning MVP honours for 2024. His likely closest competitor, running back Saquon Barkley of the Eagles, ran for a rather pedestrian 65 yards yesterday in a win against the Steelers. While Allen didn’t post numbers quite as eye-popping as Jared Goff did yesterday, he did manage 362 passing yards with two touchdown passes, two rushing touchdowns and, once again, no turnovers. Goff came within six yards of hitting 500 and had five touchdown passes in a loss. Allen’s quarterback rating of 122.4 was slightly better than Goff’s 118.9.  

Over the last two weeks, the Bills have played in the NFL’s two highest-scoring games this season. They have become the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s who seemed to win every game 8-5. The offensive juggernaut they clearly are led Lions coach Dan Campbell to try an onside kick early in the fourth quarter with his team down by 10 points. It backfired as Mack Hollins made an athletic play by recovering the kick and returning it deep into Lions territory setting up another touchdown – this time a five-yard pass to Ray Davis. One strange statistic from the game is that Bills receiver Amari Cooper had no touches on the day and no targets either. James Cook continued his strong play with 105 rushing yards and two touchdowns of his own.  

Recent polling of NFL fans clearly indicates that the preferred Superbowl match-up is Buffalo v. Detroit. Neither franchise has ever won a Superbowl and the Lions have never been to the big game although they came close last season, losing the NFC Championship Game to the 49ers after blowing a 17-point lead. Football fans have grown tired of seeing the Chiefs - just as they grew tired of the Patriots a decade earlier. If yesterday’s game was any indication, a Superbowl between Buffalo and Detroit might be one of the highest-scoring championship games ever, with two outstanding quarterbacks with weapons to match.

Lions head coach Dan Campbell is the face of Detroit’s franchise and his turnaround of the team which in 2008 lost every game to finish 0-16, has resulted in him being handed the keys to the City. On our satellite television service, US network affiliates originate from Detroit and Campbell can be seen all over the airwaves in local business television advertising, from law firms to car dealerships to retail stores. Every business in the state of Michigan would welcome his affiliation with their brand. He has endeared himself to the Lions fanbase by imparting his own physically imposing, gruff-voiced tough guy persona on to the identity and character of his football team. When he was first hired in 2021, he talked the talk as they say – referencing kicking opponents in the teeth and “knee-capping” them - and he has clearly now shown that he can also walk the walk. The team’s results speak for themselves, with the Lions now standing at 12-2 and remaining in position to earn the first seed in the NFC playoff bracket. But with yesterday’s loss, they are now tied atop the NFC with the Eagles with their division rival Vikings likely to join them in a three-way tie with a win at home over the Bears tonight. Last season’s implosion in the NFC Championship Game notwithstanding, the Lions haven’t enjoyed success like they have under Dan Campbell’s leadership – at least not in the Superbowl era. The team joined the NFL in 1930 and won four NFL Championships in the 1950s, most recently in 1957.

In a couple of hours, early on this Monday morning, I’ll be having what is, by my count, my seventh colonoscopy. Every three years since the age of 40 is what’s recommended for those like me with a strong family history. I stuck close to home yesterday and, yes, everything came out according to plan. By far, the best part of the entire preparation process and the procedure itself is deciding what to eat once its done. Thinking omelette or maybe a cinnamon roll.

The Bills return home next week for a game against the 3-11 Patriots. They are early 14-point favourites. I’m surprised to see that the Chiefs are two-point underdogs at home to the Texans on Saturday. Expect that line to tighten as the week goes on.

 

       

 

Rams 44, Bills 42

 A blocked punt, whether returned by the blocking/receiving team for a touchdown or not, does not count as a turnover in an NFL boxscore. But it should. I suppose we could differentiate partially blocked punts which do make it past the line of scrimmage from fully blocked punts which do not but a blocked punt is usually as negative a play for the punting team as any turnover is. And often worse like it was yesterday for the Bills who lost their game in Los Angeles yesterday because of one. It was clearly the difference in what was truly a spectacular game at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles.

If Roger Goodell could pick a game from the 2024 season to showcase the entertainment value of the National Football League, he would be hard-pressed to come up with a better one than yesterday’s heavy-weight tilt between the Bills and the Rams. No turnovers (except for a blocked punt), no quarterback sacks, 902 yards of total offence, brilliant quarterback play and offensive play-calling on both sides – this game was as thrilling to watch as any we’ve seen this season and with five weeks to go it’s hard to imagine another one topping it. It was a tough one to lose for Bills fans but being down 17 points then coming almost all the way back was perhaps not as painful as a back-and-forth game which stayed close the whole way might have been. Until yesterday, the Bills had not lost since October 6 ^thin Houston.

If Josh Allen wins the Most Valuable Player award this season, those who vote may look back on this game as the deciding factor. Allen went 22 for 37 for 342 yards with no interceptions, three passing touchdowns and three rushing touchdowns (I say “rushing” but they were more like “pushing” – as in pushing his butt over the goal line). Either way, these six touchdowns – three passing and three rushing set an NFL record. He added 82 rushing yards on ten carries which was four times what James Cook was able to generate as the Bills abandoned the running game early on.  

I still can’t decide if I like Tom Brady as an analyst or not. His insight is solid – how could it not be? – but his comments sometimes seem forced and a little too long. Maybe he needs a full season under his belt to be as smooth, comfortable and unscripted as Troy Aikman or Tony Romo are and that’s why colour analysts, no matter how successful their playing careers were, don’t usually start out on a network’s number one team. FOX obviously recognized Brady’s star power when they parachuted him into the chair beside Kevin Burkhardt - and maybe he would not have agreed to anything less – but for me his broadcasting chops aren’t quite there yet. It isn’t usually the kind of job where you start at the top then learn as you go.

In the early hours of the WGR pregame show yesterday – around noon or about an hour before the early games kicked-off – they were looking on StubHub at the price of tickets for the Jaguars v. Titans game at Nissan Stadium in Nashville. There were apparently tickets available for as little as $3.00 although those sold during their discussion and the lowest priced ticket shot up to $5.00. After losing their one-time promising quarterback Trevor Lawrence to injury last week (on as dirty a hit as we’ve seen this season), the Jaguars came into the game sporting a 2-10 record and had been officially eliminated from playoff contention. The Titans were a game better at 3-9 and although this was a division match-up which usually carries some importance or intrigue for one of the teams, football fans in Nashville weren’t interested in taking in a game between two also-rans in dreary 50-degree weather. And why would they be?

This reminded me of my own difficulties in trying to find takers for some of my late-season Bills tickets during the drought years. When discussing ticket sales with interested parties before the season began, I’d hear “The Patriots game in mid-September looks good” to which I often replied “The Jaguars game in mid-December is the one I have my eye on for you”. The secondary market has been good to Bills subscribers since Josh Allen showed up but as much as the secondary ticket market can give, it can also taketh away. We know that the Bills will have at least one home playoff game in January but before that, they have home games against the Patriots and the Jets which, depending on the state of the race for playoff seeding, may offer some good value for those looking to buy tickets on the secondary market. Always best to wait as long as possible as prices drop to their lowest level in the hours before kick-off. The most profitable ticket investment I’ve ever made was in Lot 7 parking passes for this season which have consistently been selling for at least three times my cost this season. The construction of the new stadium – both the site itself and the materials and equipment staging area beside it – have made stadium parking a scarce commodity this season.

The schedule does not get any easier for the Bills as they travel next week to Detroit to face the 12-1 Lions in a possible preview of what I would consider to be a dream Superbowl match-up. Equally compelling would be if the Bills were to face the Minnesota Vikings in the big game with both teams sporting 0-4 Superbowl records. The Bills will need another MVP performance from Josh Allen next week  if they are to avoid their second two-game losing skid this season.

Please indulge me as I add one international affairs note here: When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won the 2021 Syrian presidential election and another seven-year term with more than 95% of the vote, I wondered if he said during the campaign “Ask yourselves good people of Syria, are you better off than you were seven years ago?”. The Economist magazine publishes a Democracy Index every year and Syria has finished at or near the bottom of it for a long time. Good riddance to Assad and let’s hope that whichever group fills the Syrian power vacuum doesn’t take it right back to a different form of authoritarian rule.

Bills 35, 49ers 10

In grade six geography we learned about orographic precipitation where moisture-laden air rises as it meets mountainous terrain, then cools, then dumps its moisture in elevated areas often in the form of snow. This is why alpine areas can receive epic amounts of snow, often within a short time-frame. In the Kootenay Mountains of the southern interior of British Columbia – an area I am quite familiar with – daily dumps of 60 to 80cm which continue for several days make for fantastic skiing and can deliver up to ten metres of snow in the high alpine by spring. I don’t recall learning about a comparable phenomenon which can impact areas to the lee of the Great Lakes, at least early in the winter season. Lake effect snow is the reason why Collingwood, Ontario and Ellicottville, New York have traditionally been good ski areas with massive early season dumps of snow which create a deep base which usually lasts until April. This past weekend, lake effect snow made headlines in Ontario, western New York and northeast Pennsylvania. I experienced it first-hand in one of the worst-hit areas.

No, I didn’t make the drive into the snow bomb which hit the “South Towns” of western New York. That only delivered around two feet of snow to Orchard Park and Highmark Stadium. Just a dusting compared to what we got in the Muskoka area of central Ontario where between Thursday afternoon and Sunday close to a metre of snow fell over that period, stranding motorists, closing highways and knocking power out to more than 150,000 Hydro One customers, me among them. Power is still out on our lake on this Monday morning as crews work to re-connect the last 40,000 customers. The latest official estimate of our re-connection time is 2pm today. It could and probably will take longer than that. I heat my cottage with an airtight woodstove anyway so warmth is not a problem and I do have a stand-by generator which, unfortunately for me, is not working properly, delivering power to only a few circuits. With some creativity and a few extension cords, I was able to power my television and satellite receiver to watch football yesterday and my internet to publish this blog today – although later than usual.

A metre of snow sounds nice enough in terms of setting up the skiing season and creating a stunning looking winter wonderland made even more striking against the backdrop of an unfrozen lake. But it can also lead to an uneasy feeling where you’re sort of trapped with no access to the outside world – at least until the plow comes through, then comes through again, then two more times after that. Before football started yesterday, I made my way down to the dock through hip-deep snow to the buried satellite dish to clear it and trim some snow-laden limbs overhanging it. That took about 30 minutes and was more exhausting than I would have expected. Two neighbours on the far side of the lake - both recently widowed women in their early 80s - experienced generator failures and would have been in real trouble but for our snow-plow guy who doubles as a general handyman and is everyone’s first call for help. He was able to clear snow from the air intakes of each generator and get them going again, saving the day. If he wasn’t around or if he had an accident, fell ill or had some other emergency, some folks who have chosen to live at the cottage would be well-advised to re-think that plan. Sections of Highway 11 remain closed this morning and the Town of Gravenhurst has declared a State of Emergency which the mayor expects will last well into Tuesday.

As I gradually turned my attention from the snow to the Bills v. 49ers game, reports of the possibility of several feet of snow in Orchard Park led to speculation about postponing or moving the game as has happened twice in the past 10 years – in 2014 and again two years ago when these two Bills home games were moved to Detroit. The logistics of clearing roads, parking lots and the stadium itself of several feet of snow on 24 hours notice obviously presents challenges. While two feet of snow is considerable and had it amounted to much more than that, the NFL would have had a scheduling nightmare if last night’s game could not go ahead. But go ahead it did in light but continuous snow.

Josh Allen became the first quarterback in NFL history to score touchdowns running, passing and receiving. The running and passing ones were nothing new to Bills fans but the receiving one was quite remarkable as Amari Cooper channeled his inner Travis Kelce, making a very difficult catch at the five-yard line then in an unscripted move, flipped the ball to Allen who lunged to the pylon and scored. The Bills certainly earned the win but the 49ers started the game with a strong running game but were touched by bad luck once again as fullback Josh Juszczyk had the ball punched from his hands on his way into the endzone on their first drive of the second half. A touchdown there would have made the score 21-10 but the Bills scored next to extend their lead to 28-3 putting the game out of reach. The Bills seemed to handle the slippery conditions relatively well while the NBC broadcast repeatedly showed 49ers players losing their footing at critical moments.

The Bills are AFC East champions for the fifth consecutive season. At least one home playoff game will be played in Orchard Park in January. The first overall seed in the AFC remains within reach but depends on the Chiefs losing at least one more time. They squeaked out another win on Friday as the Raiders managed to implode on their final and potentially game-winning drive. Up next for the Bills is a trip to the west coast to face the Los Angeles Rams at Sofi Stadium next Sunday at 4.25pm.

Bills 30, Chiefs 21

“The play of the year” exclaimed Jim Nantz on the CBS broadcast after Josh Allen bulldozed his way to the endzone on a game-clinching 26-yard run on fourth down and two to put the Bills up 29-21 last evening in Orchard Park. Tyler Bass came on for the critical extra point to extend the lead to two scores and made it. I had spent most of the game - after Bass missed the extra point wide-right in the first quarter – convinced that the Chiefs would end up winning the game by a point, making Bass the scapegoat once again. But he was solid on his one field goal try and his other three extra points. Not as confidence inspiring as we might want but Bass does seem to have the ability to shake off his shaky moments and regain consistency.

When Josh Allen is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, yesterday’s touchdown run will be included in the highlight reel of the top ten plays in his career. Hopefully, along with his multiple Superbowl winning plays as well. Someone commented that on his touchdown yesterday, Allen ran as if it might be the very last thing he did in his time on this earth. I was happy enough to see him pass the first down marker then amazed as he made another three or four Chiefs miss or get dragged into the endzone with him. The play of the year indeed.  

When I saw late in the week that Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker sprained his misogynous bone and was placed on Injured Reserve (meaning he must miss at least four games), I wondered how his wife Isabella was feeling about the prospect of having him around the house more than usual during his recovery from arthroscopic surgery. His traditional ideas around marriage and the role of women, which sound like those of a stereotypical 1950s American family, probably mean more work for her with him laid up as he is. She’ll be doing more cooking, more cleaning etc. I guess but will probably be happy to oblige as, according to her husband, and by happy coincidence, she shares his views on family roles and responsibilities.

The Chiefs plucked Spencer Schrader from the Jets practice squad to handle placekicking duties for the next four games. The Jets had elevated Schrader for their week 10 game against the Cardinals and he made both kicks he tried. But they left him on their practice squad rather than protecting him by moving him up to the active 53-man roster - presumably unaware that another team like the Chiefs might claim him. He kicked his three extra points yesterday as if they were 60-yard field goal attempts and certainly looked confident doing so. He will be a much cheaper option than Butker next season and beyond.    

I’ll be sure watch Chris Berman’s halftime week 11 recap package tonight where he will be sure to include some Grey Cup highlights as he does every year.  Berman is one of the all-time great sports broadcasters, having invented the convention of the insertion of a middle name for sports figures as in Tony “what are they” Pena, Pat “international” borders and probably my favourite: “fettuccini” Alfredo Griffin. Berman will be running through highlights of another Toronto Argonaut Grey Cup victory – the team’s 19^th in its 151-year history. The Argos are the oldest professional sports team in North America which still uses its original name. Now owned by MLSE (the reason why CEO Keith Pelley was shown celebrating fourth quarter touchdowns), the Argos have had an eclectic ownership journey over the last few decades which famously included Wayne Gretzky and John Candy in the early 1990s.

I have never been to a Grey Cup game but I make up for it partly by having attended several Vanier Cup games at Varsity Stadium and one – my last one – at the dome in Toronto. My CFL cred comes from being at a few Argos games in the early 1980s at Exhibition Stadium and running onto the field afterward to celebrate. One of those times, we smoked a joint in the Blue Jays dugout. Seriously. I am also one of the very few surviving attendees of the Las Vegas Posse game in Edmonton in the final week of the 1994 CFL season. Originally scheduled as Posse home game, it was moved to Commonwealth Stadium on account of stadium lease issues in Vegas along with a general lack of fan support. The Posse folded immediately following the game. A great CFL story indeed.

The Bills now find themselves at 9-2, a half game up on the Chiefs and now holding the potentially all-important tie-breaker with them. Teams usually hope for a late bye week and this one now upon them comes at a perfect time for the Bills with a growing list of nagging injuries which will benefit from a couple of weeks off.

The Chiefs have an easy remaining schedule, starting with a trip to Charlotte this week to face the 3-7 Panthers. They may not lose again in the regular season which would lock up the number one seed in the AFC for them. It safe to assume that their offence will improve when stud running back Isiah Pacheco returns from injury perhaps as early as next week. The defence – and the run defence in particular – is mainly what led them to the 9-0 start and it looked very good most of the time yesterday as well. Despite trying, the Bills were unable to establish an effective run game yesterday and had most of their offensive success by way of Josh Allen.

After the break next week, the San Francisco 49ers come to Orchard Park for Sunday Night Football on December 1^st. The last time they visited western New York was in the middle of the Colin Kaepernick controversy when players were kneeling or choosing to stay in the locker room during the national anthem. Kaepernick was on the 49ers roster that day. I was at the game and saw many anti-Kaepernick signs in the parking lot. The political situation in the United States seems ripe for another round of some form of civil protest. Who knows if and when it might manifest itself but Roger Goodell is certainly hoping that if it happens, it happens well away from NFL stadiums.   

Bills 30, Colts 20

My dad grew up in Scarborough and attended Scarborough Collegiate (now R.H. King Academy) in the early 1950s. One of his pals and class-mates was Danny Nykolyk (older brother of one-time Leaf coach Mike Nykoluk) who went on to play 16 seasons as an offensive tackle for the Toronto Argonauts. When I was a kid, we watched the Argos and the CFL. The NFL was not on our sports radar at all. Only later in his life, and mainly due to my fandom of the Buffalo Bills, did my dad develop an interest in the NFL – and that interest was only a passing one (forgive the pun) at best. In the 1970s, average CFL salaries were actually higher than those in the NFL. Tony Dorsett once famously said “I’d play for peanuts before I’d go to Canada”. The Dallas Cowboys paid him more than peanuts I’m sure but many US college players came to the CFL because it paid well, was popular and well-attended and offered black players a chance to be revered - even worshipped - by appreciative Canadian fans as well as offering a much more equitable social setting. Times have obviously changed considerably in the last 50 years with the CFL now an afterthought for most Canadian football fans, except for a shrinking and aging cohort of what Stephen Harper called “Old Stock Canadians”. Fun fact: Canadian football is actually a four-down game but, being Canadian, teams are so conservative that they always punt on third down.

Last year, the CFL finally figured out that it might draw more viewers if it played its playoff games (except for the Grey Cup) on Saturdays rather than going up against the NFL juggernaut on Sundays. The two conference championship games played two days ago – the East game in Montreal and the West game in Winnipeg – were both well-attended. Percival Molson Memorial Stadium on the campus of McGill University was sold out and Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg looked completely full as well. The East game was exciting and close with the visiting Argos holding on for a 30-28 win and a birth in the 111^th Grey Cup game next weekend in Vancouver. The Blue Bombers sent their fans home happy with a dominating 38-22 win over Saskatchewan. I heard a report that Grey Cup tickets were selling well last week in Vancouver, a market whose support of the CFL in recent years has been about as lukewarm as Toronto’s has. Let’s hope we don’t see many empty seats. The Argos will be without their starting quarterback Chad Kelly (nephew of Jim Kelly) who suffered a gruesome broken ankle in the second half of Saturday’s game. The Argos will look to Nick Arbuckle (a great sports name), who finished the game capably, to guide them to the Grey Cup.

The Indianapolis Colts have suffered from problematic ownership since Robert Irsay acquired the team (then the Baltimore Colts) in 1972. After his extended unsuccessful negotiations with the City of Baltimore around the construction of a new stadium, the Maryland legislature passed a law permitting the City of Baltimore to seize the Colts from Irsay under the legal principle of Eminent Domain. In response and after receiving a sweetheart offer from the City of Indianapolis, Irsay orchestrated the team’s “midnight move” in the early morning hours of March 29^th, 1984 when 15 tractor trailers were loaded with the team’s filing cabinets, office furniture, shoulder pads, athletic tape, etc. The move made headlines around the North American sports world and reinforced the doctrine that NFL owners can do almost anything they want to. Son Jim Irsay assumed control of the team following his father’s death in 1997 but only after a bitter legal battle with his stepmother. Jim Irsay has struggled with addiction and was charged with impaired driving in 2014. Police found oxycodone and a large amount of cash in his car but he was able to avoid jail time, pleading to two misdemeanors. He faced heavy criticism two years ago for firing head coach Frank Reich mid-season and replacing him with former Colts Pro Bowl centre Jeff Saturday who had no previous coaching experience beyond the high school level. After drafting Andrew Luck first overall in the 2012 NFL draft, Luck abruptly retired from football two weeks before the 2019 season was to begin. The team has struggled since then and those struggles continued yesterday against the Bills with 39 year-old Joe Flacco under centre.

The game at Lucas Oil Stadium was a sloppy affair with multiple errant passes and fumbles by both teams. Star slot cornerback Taron Johnson intercepted Flacco on the Colts first play from scrimmage and returned it for a pick-six touchdown. The Bills have not lost since Johnson returned from injury five weeks ago. Curtis Samuel made an appearance and a significant contribution early in the game as the Bills were without both Keon Coleman and Amari Cooper. The Colts Jonathan Taylor had great success running in the first half, racking up 107 yards but managed only another seven yards in the second half. The Bills final scoring drive was a classic close-out drive, chewing up significant fourth quarter time and finishing with a James Cook two-yard touchdown run to put the Bills up 30-13.

Someone said last night that the Kansas City Chiefs are the worst 9-0 team ever. That may well be but they extended their winning streak to 15 games (including the Superbowl) yesterday by blocking a 35-yard field goal in the dying seconds to hang on for a 16-14 win over the Denver Broncos. Will their win streak come to an end on Sunday in Orchard Park? In the most anticipated game of the 2024 season so far, CBS has decided to send its studio crew to the Highmark Stadium parking lot on Sunday. They are expecting to witness Bills Mafia fully in its drunken stupor, chugging beer bongs, jumping through folding tables and proving that they are the hardest drinking and most dedicated fans in the NFL. With the late 4.25pm start, Bills fans will definitely not disappoint.  

Bills 30, Dolphins 27

The Miami Dolphins played well enough to win yesterday’s game in Orchard Park. But of course they didn’t and their season is probably done – definitely done in terms of any hopes for a division title and probably also out of contention for a Wildcard playoff spot. Statistically, they topped the Bills in most key categories: they registered 26 first downs to the Bills 24, they outgained the Bills 373 yards to 325 and they held the ball for just under 32 minutes compared to the Bills 28. Tua Tagovailoa played very well with only three incomplete passes in 28 attempts, 231 yards, two touchdowns and an impressive Quarterback Rating of 124.9. It felt like the Dolphins knew that this game was essentially their season and they responded accordingly. It just wasn’t quite enough.

The ups and downs of Bills pipsqueak place-kicker Tyler Bass have been well-documented this season and yesterday’s game was a perfect sample of his inconsistency over the last two seasons. While he hit two field goals from 40 and 49 yards in the first half yesterday, he missed one extra point and doinked another off the goalpost which did go in but did not inspire confidence. On the Bills second touchdown, Bass remained on the sidelines as the Bills went for the two-point conversion and got it. His unlikely game-winning kick in the dying seconds of a tie game was a moment for the ages – a 61 yard kick which probably would have been good from 70 yards. He hit it perfectly – high, long and close to dead-centre. It was in fact the longest field goal in the team’s 65 year history, breaking the previous record of 59 yards set by Canadian Steve Christie 31 years ago.

The Bills dominance over the Dolphins in recent years – they’ve won 15 of the last 17 match-ups including playoffs – is noteworthy but still doesn’t match the Dolphins streak of 20 consecutive wins over Buffalo which extended through the entire decade of the 1970s including the OJ Simpson years. These division rivals have now played 123 times and, despite the Bills recent strength, the Dolphins still hold a 62-60 advantage with one tie game in 1968. The squishing of the fish remains a highly satisfying result for Bills fans, especially those old enough to remember the 1970s. Tyler Bass has kicked the winning field goal two of the last three times that the Dolphins have come to Orchard Park – yesterday and in a snow squall in December of 2022. Based on the team’s reaction to Sean McDermott’s awarding of a game ball to Bass in the locker room after the game yesterday, it seems clear that Bass is a popular figure with his team-mates. He stuttered his way through accepting the game ball, tearing up in his gratitude. It’s hard not to pull for him. Let’s hope that his huge kick yesterday will shake his jitters away for the rest of the season.

Against my better judgment, I ended up watching a bit of CNN over the weekend. Wolf Blitzer is one of the network’s most recognizable faces, dating back to 1990. His coverage of the 1991 Gulf War made him a household name and, now 76 years old, he is still going strong. Blitzer is also known as one of the most famous fans of the Buffalo Bills. Blitzer was born in Germany but grew up in Buffalo, attending Kenmore West Senior High School and earning a history degree from SUNY at Buffalo. Blitzer posts a photo on his Twitter account before every Bills game, usually adorned in Bills gear and always holding a Bills coffee mug. For whatever reason, Blitzer has for the most part been able to avoid being included in Trump’s “Fake News CNN” attacks which have targeted Jim Acosta, Anderson Cooper, Kaitlin Collins and most other CNN anchors. The chances of the US presidential election results being known a week from now seem to be about 50/50. Blitzer and his colleagues have a busy week ahead. Let’s hope that election unfolds in an orderly manner and that chaos is avoided. I’m referring, of course, to the Ward 15 Don Valley West Toronto City Council by-election which takes place today. I’m supporting whoever has the best chance at keeping former Sun columnist Anthony Furey from winning.

The Bills head to Indianapolis next week to face the Colts who lost last night with 39 year old Joe Flacco under centre. Anthony Richardson, the fourth overall pick in last year’s draft, made headlines last week by taking himself out of the game for one play due to fatigue in a loss to the Texans. Regardless of who the Colts start at quarterback, the main concern the Bills will have is running back Jonathan Taylor who helped the Colts spank the Bills in Orchard Park 41-15 in their most recent meeting three years ago. At 4-5, the Colts still have playoff aspirations and the Bills better not be looking ahead to their huge match-up the following week with the Chiefs at home. Kansas City plays tonight on MNF at home against Tampa Bay. Go Bucs!

Bills 31, Seahawks 10

When the NFL realigned its divisions before the 2002 season, some teams were required to leave old rivalries behind and join newly created divisions in order to land on the existing structure of two conferences, each with four divisions with each division having four teams. The Houston Texans were the final piece of the symmetry puzzle as they became the 32^nd team that year and joined the AFC but maybe the oddest change was that the Seattle Seahawks moved from the AFC West to the NFC West to re-balance the conferences at 16 teams each. After that, the pattern of each AFC team playing each NFC team every four years – and every eight years at home – has held. The addition of the 17^th game in 2021 upset this overall pattern as each team’s 17^th game is against a non-conference opponent but the Bills and Seahawks have not met in a “17^th game” yet and have been on that schedule of meeting each other every four years since 2002.

The all-time series between the Bills and Seahawks since the Seattle joined the NFL in 1976 amounts to only 15 games, including yesterday’s, with the Seahawks now holding a narrow 8-7 advantage. One of those games, a 50-17 Seattle blow-out in December 2012 was played in Toronto as part of that ill-fated six-game experiment. I was there for it, unfortunately. The half-time show featured Psy. Before yesterday, the last meeting between these teams took place before empty stands in Orchard Park with the Bills outlasting the Hawks 44-34 in November of 2020. The Seahawks home stadium, now called Lumen Field, is now almost 25 years old but still claims the Guiness World Record for the loudest crowd in an outdoor stadium. Visiting teams are flagged for false starts more than in any other stadium in the league, although recently, these have reverted closer to the mean. It is a difficult venue for visiting teams to play in because of crowd noise but also because many visiting teams, including the Bills yesterday, have to travel a long distance through multiple time zones to get there.

Anyone looking for a scenic drive this autumn in Ontario, outside of the stretch from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay which is tough to beat but a long way from Toronto, need look no further than the remote area between Renfrew and Haliburton. I mention this because that’s where I was from shortly after 4pm yesterday, having attended a family memorial in Ottawa. This relatively unknown part of Ontario is surprisingly mountainous with grand vistas from the heights of land, lush river valleys below and hardly any vehicle traffic at all. Once west of Renfrew, there is basically no cell service for most of the way and obviously no updates to my Score app were coming through either. And no AM radio (other than a French station which my scan function kept landing on) so I found myself in an unconnected bubble for pretty much the entire time that the Bills were flexing their offensive muscles in Seattle. When I passed through Bancroft, I saw that the score was 17-3 which boded well and the next score I got as I approached Haliburton was what would be the final score of 31-10 with a few minutes remaining. I had plenty of time to reflect on the loss of my beloved uncle for whom the NFL represented the antithesis of his core beliefs. I hope that he would have been impressed that I was silently thinking about him at the very time my team was on the field.

I did get back in time to see the end of the Commanders game and the Hail Mary(land) miracle. Bears coach Matt Eberflus explained afterward that his team had practiced its defence against this play multiple times and he just wasn’t sure what had gone wrong. Luckily for the Bills, the Hail Mary they gave up two weeks ago against the Jets did not cost them the game. Speaking of the Jets, they managed to lose their fifth straight game, this time to the Patriots. The Dolphins managed to lose at home, with Tua Tagovailoa back under centre, by one point on a game-ending field goal by the Cardinals. The Bills are now sitting very comfortably atop the AFC East at 6-2 while the Jets, Dolphins and Patriots have only two wins each. Even with the Bills leading the way, the AFC East is clearly the weakest division in the NFL this season. I did dial up a 12-minute highlight package from the Seattle game and saw the Bills offence moving and scoring seemingly at will. Josh Allen got the monkey off his back in terms of his first interception of 2024 but it didn’t cost the Bills as the defence stepped up when it needed to and when the outcome was still in question.

The problem for the AFC, as it seems to be every year, is the Chiefs and the fact that they just don’t lose. Now 7-0 after winning in Las Vegas yesterday, they are the class of the league. But we already knew that. As we work through the 2024 schedule and look for meaningful games ahead, the November 17^th match-up is looming large. The Chiefs come to Orchard Park that day for a 4.25pm kick-off - a game which CBS must be expecting will attract a huge audience for a regular season game. The Divisional playoff game in January was watched by some 50 million. Expect this one to come close to that.

The Bills can not afford to focus on the Chiefs game just yet. The Dolphins come to town next Sunday and the Bills travel to Indianapolis the following week. These could both be “look ahead” or “trap” games for the Bills if they let them. I’m expecting that Sean McDermott will have his team ready on Sunday. The Dolphins have a hope of salvaging something from this season with a win but a loss could make them sellers at the trade deadline set for Tuesday November 5^th which is also election day in the United States.  

 

Bills 34, Titans 10

The weather was perfect for a football game yesterday in Orchard Park, if not a little too warm for the third week of October but what else should we be expecting these days? From our vantage point on the visitors side, the sun was low over the south side of Highmark Stadium and the game took place in a small window between the brims of our ball caps and the head and shoulders of the folks sitting in front of us. For a 1pm game in October – a rarity for the Buffalo Bills these days - the low sun lasts for the entire game. Between the direct rays from above and the reflection off the shiny Field Turf, it almost felt like a sort of snow-blindness after three full hours. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve been to plenty of cold weather games with wind, sideways rain and snow. Those are coming in a few weeks but yesterday’s conditions required probably the last sun screen application of 2024. And the stadium was absolutely full and brimming with energy. Bills fans went home happy, however slow their journey probably was.

As good as the weather was and as well as the home team played (in the second half at least), the traffic yesterday was epically bad everywhere. As dawn broke and as I naively made my way down Yonge Street for a pick-up at Harbourfront, the traffic seemed to be building to weekday levels with throngs of pedestrians crossing at every intersection south of Bloor Street. Yes, I unknowingly picked the day of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon to execute what became almost impossible – getting all the way down to Bay and Queens Quay then on to the westbound Gardiner toward Niagara. Bottom line was that the multiple closures and the resulting traffic jam even at 7.30am cost us about 40 minutes and it would have been at least 20 minutes more had I not executed a brazen and highly illegal manoeuvre move involving streetcar tracks at Spadina and Lakeshore. The 40 minute delay could not have been the only reason that the Queenston-Lewiston bridge was backed up for an hour compared to the usual five to seven minutes we’re accustomed to early on a Sunday morning. Maybe cross-border shopping is in vogue once again; maybe the spectacular weather caused everyone to bolt out of bed and drive to Western New York; maybe it was something else but we didn’t get parked in Lot 7 until just before 11.30am – around two hours behind our usual schedule. But we tailgated, cooked our lunch and somehow got to our seats a few minutes before kick-off.

The game started very slowly for the Bills offence in particular with three straight three-and-outs and an Amari Cooper dropped pass on his first target, not to mention an anemic pass rush as the lowly Titans built themselves an early 10-0 lead. Things certainly turned around for the home side in the second half as the Bills scored 34 unanswered points as they cruised to an easy win. Fans quickly took to the Amari Cooper cheer of “Coooo-per” as the new receiver started his Bills career with four catches and touchdown. Cooper does not fit the standard mold of star NFL wide receiver: he comes off as being quite thoughtful – even cerebral, calm, reserved and reflective. He is also an accomplished chess player, having finished second in a recent tournament of NFL players. Titans cornerback Chidobe Awuzie was the winner. Cooper appreciates that football and the routes he runs as a receiver is clearly analogous with chess. Who knew?

Yesterday was Josh Allen’s 100^th start as an NFL quarterback. His record now stands at 68-32 which ties him with Montana, Bradshaw, Favre and Aaron Rodgers for the most wins in his first 100 starts. Allen went a paltry 4 for 11 for 65 yards in the first half but finished 21 of 33 for 323 yards – his first 300 yard passing game this season. This against the Titians defence which came in ranked as the league’s best against the pass, having not given up even 200 passing yards in a game through their first six. The Bills receiving corps now seems well balanced with Cooper, Shakir and rookie Keon Coleman who finished with four catches for 125 yards and what we thought was a touchdown before it was overturned on replay review. Add in tight ends Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox and James Cook out of the backfield and Allen now has what looks like a nice variety of options in the passing game.

With a comfortable lead, we were able to leave early and would have easily engineered a speedy exit from Lot 7 had the Sheriff’s office not been asleep at the switch. We were stopped two vehicles from the main route onto Southwestern Blvd for about 30 minutes as pedestrians ignored barricades and streamed through the stopped traffic until the authorities finally showed up and instituted the usual alternation between pedestrians and vehicles. The new stadium, now fully rising from the site just west of Abbot Road, will purportedly have much better and safer pedestrian and vehicle separation and egress. After witnessing multiple near misses as we sat waiting, it was clear that the present situation is quite ridiculous and dangerous. Once finally out onto the roads, they were expectedly slow but the Peace Bridge was in surprisingly good shape and we were left only to deal with the QEW and the Gardiner which were stressful and slow at times. Yesterday’s traffic situation was probably the worst I’ve experienced in my 30+ years of attending games in Orchard Park. Finally got home just before 9pm, making it almost a 14 hour day.

Border Report: The surly guy we got after our hour-long wait at the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge asked me where we were going. “Orchard Park” I said, as I always do. “Going to the game?” he asked with an irritated tone. “Yes, sir” I replied. He came back with “making me fish for it?”, indicating that he would have found it helpful had I offered the "why" in addition to the "where" without the need for another question on his part. He wasn’t very nice about it. Upon further reflection, I see his point and I’ll expand my answer for next time. Yet another example of it always being something different at the border.

Up next for the Bills is a long trip to the Pacific Northwest next Sunday to face the Seattle Seahawks in what is considered probably the loudest stadium in the NFL.   

Bills 23, Jets 20

New York Jets owner Woody Johnson decided to fire his head coach Robert Saleh a week ago this morning. Saleh, in his fourth year, was escorted from the building without an opportunity to address his team. He later issued a statement thanking the Jets organization for the opportunity and wishing the players well etc etc. The NFL world, including Saleh himself and the legion of Jets beat reporters in New York, was taken entirely by surprise by this move and its timing. The morning sports talk shows, including WGR in Buffalo where I first heard the news, were abuzz with speculation about what drove Johnson to take this decision last Tuesday morning. Did Aaron Rodgers request or demand this? Was Johnson perhaps just extra distraught after his team’s loss to the Vikings two days earlier in London because he had invited many of his high-society London friends to his box at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the game? After all, Johnson had previously served as US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, someone mentioned. What? Is Woody Johnson a man who was able make the transition from the US Foreign Service to NFL owner - or was he somehow straddle both of these positions concurrently? I investigated a little and discovered that it was the latter and, yes, Johnson was indeed the US Ambassador to the UK from 2017 to 2021. Something about that timeline seemed curious and then I realized why: it exactly matched the period of the Trump presidency. A coincidence? Of course not.

Robert Wood Johnson IV, “Woody” as he is known, is the great grandson of one of the founding brothers of Johnson & Johnson, a massive pharmaceutical, biotech and consumer health products company which is ranked 40^th on the Forbes 500 and has long been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In addition to bearing a vague resemblance to Les Nessman of WKRP In Cincinnati, Woody Johnson is an heir to the family fortune – although now four generations removed from its origin, the fortune is really just passing through his hands although on the way through, he made sure to lop off $635 million to buy an NFL team in 2000. He is a long-time Republican Party donor and was a vocal Trump supporter before and during the 2016 presidential election campaign. As an industrialist and professional sports team owner, Johnson had always fancied himself as a diplomat (I’m making up this part) so as thanks for helping him in his successful run to the White House, Donald Trump appointed him to what is one of the most coveted positions in the United States Foreign Service. I’m sure that the many senior American career diplomats who would have, in normal circumstances, been considered candidates for the job, were duly impressed when Trump appointed Johnson Ambassador to the UK.

As a Bills fan, my team has faced its division rival New York Jets 128 times (including last night) going all the way back to 1960. Although the Bills now lead the all-time series 70-58, I wasn’t looking for another reason to dislike the Jets but their owner and his close connection to Donald Trump doesn’t exactly endear me to them. At least Terry Pegula’s fortune is self-made, even if it mainly came from selling large swaths of fracking rights to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion in 2010. Like it or not, fracking kept the Bills in Buffalo. Listerine and Band-Aids provided Woody Johnson with his fortune and ultimately cost Robert Saleh his job. How does the NFL manage to make every conceivable aspect of its existence so utterly fascinating?

Since 2000, 37 NFL head coaches have been fired mid-season. Average winning percentages for these teams increased from 27% before the firings to 39% afterward. Still not great but certainly better. In the next game following a mid-season firing, the “dead cat bounce” winning percentage is 47%. Maybe Woody Johnson figured that represented an improvement on the team’s chances to beat the Bills.  It may well have but the Bills and their 53% chance came through in the end but not before plenty of late-night nail-biting in the game’s final few minutes.

The score in the game should have been 27-19.  This assumes that four kicks - three missed field goals, including two “doinks” by Jets kicker Greg Zuerlein and a badly missed extra point by Tyler Bass – were made and that a Hail Mary at the end of the first half, the fourth by Aaron Rodgers in his long career, did not actually happen. The wind at the Meadowlands was difficult to be sure but the Bass extra point miss was, well, concerning. As for the Hail Mary, the Bills have been burned before this way, most recently in Arizona four years ago on a pass from Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray to win the game on a play which became known as Hail Murray.

With James Cook inactive with a toe injury, enter one Ray Davis. The rookie running back from Kentucky, selected 128^th overall in the 4^th round by the Bills, led the team in rushing with 97 yards on 20 carries and in receiving with three catches for 55 yards. Davis had a difficult childhood, as was mentioned on the broadcast, which included being homeless for a period as a teenager. On the Bills opening drive, I could sense that they were determined to run the ball and did so quite effectively with Davis leading the way, running with power between the tackles.

The game was a sloppy penalty-fest with each team flagged 11 times for a total of more than 200 yards. Most of the penalties were legitimate and were properly called – with two exceptions: each team was called for roughing the passer and neither call should have been made. I understand the desire to protect quarterbacks but I honestly don’t know how defenders are supposed to bring a quarterback to the ground without being called. Roughing the passer has become a farce and should be, and I expect will be, addressed by the league’s Competition Committee in the off-season. Both penalties came at critical points and extended drives which should not have been extended. In that sense it evened out, sort of the way hockey referees are sometimes inclined to make calls to balance things out in important playoff games. We don’t need it in football.

Going into week seven at 4-2 feels much better than it would have at 3-3. Now with a two-game lead on the Jets and holding the tie-breaker with them, the Bills find themselves in the AFC East driver’s seat. With conference losses to the Texans and Ravens already, they will need to crank out many more wins if they want more than one home playoff game in January. The Tennessee Titans, one of weaker teams in the NFL, come to Orchard Park this Sunday. The Bills should be 5-2 as they head to west coast to face the Seahawks the following week.  

Texans 23, Bills 20

Only three coaches in the NFL are longer tenured with their teams than Sean McDermott is with the Buffalo Bills (Tomlin, Harbaugh and Reid). No matter how disastrous this season ends up being – or next season or the one after that – his job is safe. So yesterday, he fell on his sword and took full responsibility for the puzzling play calling and clock management on his team’s final offensive possession yesterday in Houston, Texas. “It’s on me” is what he said.

Questions will continue this week about the decision to throw three times from the endzone – an area of the field fraught with risk late in a tied game. A sack or a holding penalty would have ended the game on a safety and any turnover would have obviously been lights out as well. The play of the game may have come from Texans punter (with a great name) Tommy Townsend who pinned the Bills inside their five yard line with less than a minute remaining. The obvious alternative to the plays that the Bills ran was to have run the ball and try to give their own punter a bit of breathing room or, better yet, grind out one first down to allow them to run out the clock after Houston had used their three second half time outs. Then take your chances in overtime. One of the most difficult tasks in football is to run when the defence knows that’s your plan so the Bills decided to try to let Josh Allen remedy the difficult situation himself. An offensive pass interference call on Keon Coleman pinned them further back before two incomplete passes set up Sam Martin’s punt from deep in his own endzone. His punt was pretty good but Robert Woods (a Bills draft pick from 11 years earlier) returned it 13 yards and after a short gain on one offensive play, Houston’s Hawaiian kicker (with another great name) Ka’imi Fairbairn ended the game on a 59 yard field goal.

So, why didn’t they run the ball? Surely they weren’t trying to score; the objective was to run out the clock and send the game to overtime. With the Texans holding their three time outs, short runs up the middle would not have used any more time than incomplete passes did but running was clearly what they should have tried to do. It’s not exactly Monday Morning Quarterbacking to say this; the entire football world landed on this consensus as soon as the game had ended. Unorthodox plays always seem great when they work: “What a brilliant call to pass in that situation” would have been the analysis had one of them worked. And on the third down pass, Allen’s arm was hit as he delivered the ball in the direction of Mack Hollins who was open for an easy first down. The pass bounced on the turf and, as they say, the rest is history.

The Bills were lucky to have come back in the second half at all. A key injury to receiver Nico Collins who had torched the Bills defence (and Cole Bishop in particular) in the first half and two turnovers by CJ Stroud allowed them to keep the game within reach but defensive weakness, especially on third down, and the worst statistical performance of Josh Allen’s career should have foreclosed any chances they had. The Texans are a good team, are well-coached and I predict will be a tough out for whoever they play in January.

I dug up some commentary from NFL analyst Mike Florio from a couple of years ago. He was talking about the Tua Tagovailoa concussion incident (in a game against the Bills) where he was cleared to return to a game after clearly wobbling around and needing assistance from one of his teammates following a hard helmet-to-turf hit. He then played in a Thursday game four days later. Florio explained then that the NFL had made a big deal of their establishing the deployment of UNC’s – Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultants – to “independently” evaluate players suspected of being concussed. The illusion of these neurotrauma specialists being “unaffiliated” or “independent” only means that they are independent from individual teams. They are hired and paid by the league which clearly has a vested interest in keeping its star players on the field. When Josh Allen’s head hit the turf yesterday, it certainly looked like a big enough impact, where he did not brace for it, that I said to my partner that he would not be returning to the game. Into the blue tent he went (he claimed afterward that it was initially to evaluate an ankle injury) for a short time, missed only one play and was back under centre to finish another unsuccessful drive. The UNC obviously was satisfied that he was fit to return and since injury from head trauma manifests itself very differently case to case, who am I to question the validity of the blue tent examination by the UNC? My guess is that he was asked what his annual salary is and who his girlfriend is. Easy for me to say (and apologies in advance for this) but if I were making $43 million and dating Hailee Steinfeld, I’d remember those things no matter how badly I’d been concussed. Allen also took a very hard hit on the failed trick play in Baltimore a week earlier. I hope he is ok. And I mean really ok and not just ok in the opinion of the not-so-independent evaluator in the blue tent.

The Bills three-game road trip continues next Monday night in the Meadowlands against the Jets - just when I had my circadian rhythm adjusted to a 1pm Sunday game. This will be another tough one as the Jets lost again yesterday, this time in London to the unbeaten Vikings. The Bills will return home to play the Titans after that and will either be 3-3 or 4-2. The AFC East is shaping up to be one of the weaker divisions in the NFL so if they can get their key injured players back and stay healthy down the stretch, the Bills still have a good shot at another division title and the home playoff game that goes with it.           

Ravens 35, Bills 10

Nothing like an old-fashioned butt-kicking to bring a 3-0 football team back to reality in a league where parity is the most consistent trend. I’m not sure how the Ravens lost their first two games earlier this month but based on last night’s dominating performance against the Bills, who looked truly over-matched in all three phases of the game, they probably won’t lose many more. They earned the top seed in the AFC last season for good reason and will again be relevant in January. The Bills haven’t suffered a blow-out loss since a home thrashing by the Colts three years ago.

Going into last night’s game, the Bills v Ravens all-time series counted only 11 games with the Ravens leading 6-5. This of course does not include the period before Art Modell moved his team from Cleveland to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Going into last night’s game, the Bills had won the last two, including a 17-3 playoff game in January of 2021 where Taron Johnson returned an interception over 100 yards to seal the win before a few thousand COVID-weary fans in Orchard Park.       

What follows here is not buyer’s remorse in any shape or form but my recent investment in Buffalo Bills seat licences - which is obviously a long position in the NFL itself - is not one without risks. The main risk is that the desire on the part of North American sports fans to watch live NFL games on TV may diminish over time. Television and the massive network broadcast deals which the league has been able to secure represents the main source of revenue for the NFL and its team owners. Over the past few years, fantasy teams and the ubiquity and popularity of legal gambling – through game-by-game results, individual player production and a myriad of propositions on which to bet have further boosted the NFL’s already massive TV ratings. Just when it seems like televised NFL games couldn’t possibly attract any more viewers, every year, including the first three weeks of the 2024 season, ratings somehow move ever higher. NFL Network operates year-round - not only during the actual five-month football season but attracts impressive viewership even during the seven-month off-season. The live games themselves together with pre-game and post-game analysis on the major networks dominate Sundays from mid-morning to midnight and the NFL on TV has a firm grip on Thursday nights and Monday nights too. Is there such a thing as too much football – a saturation point beyond which some fans may turn away from sheer exhaustion? So far, the answer seems clearly to be no. It isn’t clear how the NFL could possibly push it further - other than adding an 18^th regular season game for each team which feels like a done deal starting in the next couple of years – but if they can come up with a strategy to push the envelope further, they surely will. How far can it really go? The league came up with a tagline a few years which it doesn’t use much but I’m sure they paid consultants a fortune for it: “Forever Forward; Forever Football”. I would add “Forever Upward TV Ratings”.

I see another long-term risk on the horizon for the NFL in the form of a diminishing pool of players. While junior, high school and college football all remain very popular in the United States, the number of high schools which field football teams every year is declining. Maybe not by enough to make a difference quite yet but the trend seems clear. In 2016, I attended Homecoming Weekend - my class’s 35^th graduation anniversary - at Ridley College in St. Catharines. I had always enjoyed the Saturday afternoon of Homecoming Weekend in the field-side beer garden, catching up with old friends and cheering on the football team as they played UCC or SAC or TCS. But, unbeknownst to me, starting a couple of years before, the football program was cancelled. I ended up having a fairly long conversation that day with the relatively new Headmaster at the time and I asked him why the football program was no longer. He explained that there were several reasons: (1) injury liability / insurance costs: How many youth football players died in the US this fall? At least two or three that I saw reported. How many serious knee injuries and concussions were there? Too many to count. (2) declining interest on the part of students and probably more importantly, their parents. Remember when Justin Timberlake said a few years ago at his press conference the week before he was to take the stage at the Superbowl halftime show, in response to a reporter’s question about possibly seeing his son in an NFL uniform one day “my kid won’t be playing football, that’s for sure”? “Wrong answer” is what Roger Goodell undoubtedly said to himself as he watched Timberlake’s press conference. (3) cost: 50 or 60 sets of football equipment is pretty expensive compared to the equipment needed for just about any other sport. Coaches, trainers, doctors and managers suck up school resources which could be allocated elsewhere. He told me that it was a difficult decision but an inevitable one. I guess there was soccer game to watch that afternoon somewhere but no one seemed to care.

We already see that the majority of NFL players now come from mostly black, mostly low-income backgrounds in the southern states. High school football games in Texas and Georgia and Alabama still attract 10,000 or more fans on Friday nights and that will probably continue for a long time. But in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine, the number of high schools with football programs will continue to decrease over time – maybe quite slowly but eventually enough to reduce the talent pool which will continue on to play in college and then the NFL. We will still watch NFL football on television for the time being. But 20 or 30 years from now……..ok, we will probably still watch then too. And bet. And obsess over our fantasy teams. And that’s why I went long on the NFL.

Up next for the Bills is another tough road game, this time in Houston against Stefon Diggs and the Houston Texans. It’s a rare Sunday 1pm game.

Bills 47, Jaguars 10

The first game I attended in Orchard Park as a Buffalo Bills season ticket holder – opening day of the 2004 season – did not go down in the annals of NFL history as a classic. Quite the opposite actually as two of the league’s weaker teams generated less than 500 yards of total offence combined. With the Bills leading 10-6, Jacksonville got the ball one last time in the game’s final minutes. On a long fourth down pass, Bills cornerback Nate Clements could have easily swatted the ball to the ground to end the game but, on account of either a brain cramp or an attempt to pad his personal statistics, he instead tried for the interception which redirected the ball into the Jags receiver’s hands to prolong the drive. Then, on the last play of the game, another fourth down from the Bills seven-yard line, after three straight incomplete passes, Byron Leftwich found Ernest Wilford who was somehow able to make the catch in double coverage and get both feet down just inside the back of the endzone. Final score: Jags 13, Bills 10.

Going into last night’s tilt at Highmark Stadium, the Bills and Jags had played 19 times, including two playoff games, with the Jags leading the all-time series 10-9. To say that the Bills have underperformed against Jacksonville over the last 30 years would be like saying that Donald Trump isn’t always entirely truthful in his campaign speeches. Two separate debacles in London – the EJ Manuel interception clinic in 2015 and last year’s injury-fest, two excruciating playoff games – a 30-27 home loss in 1996 which would be the last game of Jim Kelly’s NFL career and then a profoundly frustrating 10-3 loss in January, 2018 which ended the 17-year playoff drought and would also be the final game of the Tyrod Taylor era. For no apparent reason, the Bills have had more than their share of bad luck, poor quarterback play, injuries and generally crushing disappointment against this small market team which at best enjoys tepid fan support in its college football crazy part of north Florida. I did attend one Bills v Jags game at Rich Stadium where things went well for the home side: a 1998 17-16 win where Doug Flutie scored the winning touchdown scampering untouched to the left side on a naked bootleg on the last play of the game.

I was in Williamsville last week at a nondescript plaza on Main Street just off the 290. That’s where the Bills have set up their Stadium Experience space to present renderings of the new Highmark Stadium, help season ticket holders select their new seats and most importantly to guide them through the process of opening their wallets to purchase seat licences. What I’ll say is that the new stadium will be a vast improvement over the current brutalist concrete bunker which opened in 1973. Much larger concourses, wider seating rows, better designed parking ingress and egress, much better separation of pedestrians and vehicles in and around the roadways and parking lots (there’s basically none now and people get hit regularly) and more entry gates are just a few of the improvements which Bills fans will notice at the new stadium. They will definitely be paying more for tickets – and undoubtedly for everything else too. One interesting difference is that there will be seating sections right at each 50 yard line as opposed to it being an aisle like in the current stadium. I was lucky enough to secure seats in one of these sections – on the visitor’s side at the 48 yard line, 22 rows up from the field. I’m pretty happy with that. My financial advisor isn’t convinced that the seat licences represent a sound investment but he’s never attended an NFL game and therefore has no business offering an opinion on it.

As many times as I have crossed the US border in a car, it amazes me how often the border guards can come up with a question I’ve never been asked before. After explaining where, why and for how long I was going, as he handed my passport back to me, he asked me “who owns this vehicle?”.  I said “I do”. That answer seemed satisfactory and I was on my way to the white-knuckle bridges of Grand Island. These bridges are quite steep and, if you look, you can see the Niagara River far below through the guardrails. It terrifies me but, like a typical Bills v Jags game, I just can’t look away.  

Although it didn’t fit the historical Bills v Jags pattern, I couldn’t – and didn’t – look away from last night’s game at all. An offensive clinic in the first half turned the whole second half into garbage time and the Bills coasted to an easy win. Although his first convert attempt was blocked, Tyler Bass was perfect on the next five converts and added two field goals as well. This should stop the work-outs of other kickers which did happen last week. I loved what the Elvis guy had on the back of his guitar: “Everybody eats when James Cooks”.

Next up is a very tough assignment: off a short week at Baltimore to face the Ravens on Sunday Night Football. They are coming off a big win in Dallas – amazingly, their first of the season. This is the first of three straight road games for the Bills who travel to Houston the following week then to the Meadowlands to face the Jets after that before returning home tom face the Titans. Baltimore is an early 2.5 point favourite.

Bills 31, Dolphins 10

A safe estimate of Tua Tagovailoa’s career earnings to date is in the range of $75 million, including $42 million already this year. Two months ago, the Miami Dolphins signed him to a four-year $212 million contract extension – one of the richest contracts in NFL history (although since surpassed, most recently by Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys), of which $167 million is “guaranteed” (with some caveats such as if he is “cleared to play” but chooses to retire, he forfeits the remainder of the contract). If he really is the wholesome family man he is purported to be, he surely still has plenty of that $75 million he’s earned. He probably doesn’t drive a Dodge Caravan but probably not a $350,000 McLaren 720 LS Coupe either, like his teammate Tyreek Hill does. He is said to be an evangelical Christian, dedicated to his wife and two children, popular with his teammates and is also known as good and decent person.

Tua suffered his third “official” NFL concussion (he had a fourth while playing college for Alabama) in Thursday’s loss to the Bills, as he extended his body to gain an extra yard or two after easily gaining a first down as the Dolphins tried to chip away at a 21-point deficit. His helmet collided with Damar Hamlin’s knee in a moderately innocent looking play but he was clearly injured in the process. I figured it was a neck stinger or a perhaps vertebra issue as the impact clearly cranked his head to his left. He was slow to stand and looked foggy as he made his way not to the blue tent but directly to the locker room where he was diagnosed and ruled out of the remainder of the game very quickly. Although he played all of last season without a head injury (as far as we know), in 2022, he was concussed officially twice but most observers agree that there was also a third one which was, at best not properly diagnosed and, at worst covered up by medical staff. One of them was severe enough that he was unable to stand afterward. Four concussions in a two-year span. I’d say that if he wants to be a functioning father for his children and have a chance at a long and healthy life (it may be too late already), he should retire from football. Will he? Dolphins fans may understandably feel conflicted about this because second-stringer Skylar Thompson, who finished the game under centre for the Dolphins, looked like he was barely qualified to play at the junior college level.  

I read what seemed like a credible account of the bodycam video from the Miami police officer who “interacted” with Tyreek Hill before the Dolphins week one game. Rather than showing any deference or cooperation to the officer, Hill insisted on keeping his tinted window closed after lowering it a couple of inches to hand over his licence and registration. When the officer tapped on the window to advise him to keep it rolled down, Hill could be heard saying several times “don’t tap on my window like that” and “just write up the ticket and let me go”.  The officer finally had enough of Hill’s insubordination and ordered him from the car and onto the ground where bystanders filmed the rest of the encounter. Another approach Hill could have taken, it seems to me, would have been to roll the window fully down and say “Hello officer, I’m Tyreek Hill. I’m on my way to the stadium for today’s season opener and I was going over the game plan in my mind and I guess I lost track of how fast I was going. Sorry about that. Can I autograph something for you?” This approach or one along those lines, I suggest, would likely have resulted in no ticket, no take-down and no story. But Hill chose to be a jerk about it and then later called for the officer to be fired. Apparently, this officer has a checkered history on the job but Hill has had more than his own share of unsavoury legal troubles related to domestic violence. Maybe he should try to hand around more with Tua Tagovailoa.

This past week, I finally received an invitation to the Bills Stadium Experience at a suburban mall in northeast Buffalo where the goal (from the team’s perspective) is to present to me a virtual overview of the new stadium (they ask that no photos be taken), help me select my new seats and try to close the deal on my purchase of two seat licences. It sort of feels like I’m going to hear a sales pitch for a time-share but we’ll see. I do know the cost of the licences but I won’t disclose it here. I’ve been asked to set aside 90 minutes of my time for this appointment. Probably more if I hesitate to subscribe. I’ve never been to Williamsville but I hear its beautiful this time of year.

Yesterday I watched parts of the Jets v. Titans game, hoping for a Titans win which did not happen. Also saw a lot of the Chiefs v. Bengals game, hoping for a Bengals win which also did not happen.

The Bills are now 2-0 and enjoying a 12 day break after Thursday’s strong performance in Miami. Injuries continue to pile up on the defensive side with Terrel Bernard now out for about four weeks with a pectoral strain – better than a tear which ended Daquan Jones’ season last year.  

Up next is a Monday Night home game against the Jacksonville Jaguars who, at 0-2, will be desperate to salvage their playoff prospects.

Bills 34, Cardinals 28

When the Bills traded Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans in the off-season, burdening the team with a massive “dead cap” number by so doing, the most enduring video clip over the ensuing months has been his dropped pass in the Divisional Playoff game in Orchard Park on January 21^st. With the Bills trailing the Chiefs 27-24 late in the fourth quarter, Josh Allen dropped a perfectly placed deep ball into Diggs breadbasket. From our vantage point, the play was to the far side of the field and as Diggs turned to his right to make the catch attempt, his back was turned to us, leaving us to see the ball sailing into his arms (and as we know through his arms) with the defender close behind. At the time, I thought he had made the catch but of course he had not. The Bills went on to punt and the Chiefs simply ground out the necessary first downs they needed to run the clock out, advance to the AFC Championship Game and go on to win the Superbowl. I have now seen that drop multiple times from every available angle and I still wonder how things may have played out had he made the catch. The team just may have been unveiling its first Superbowl banner yesterday in Orchard Park (it actually would have been this past Thursday as the defending champs open each NFL season with a week one Thursday home game), Diggs would probably still be wearing a Bills uniform and this season would be their own attempt to repeat as champions.

Through most of the first half of yesterday’s season opener in a blustery Orchard Park, it felt like 2024 might be the rebuilding year Bills fans hoped that it would not be. A healthy Kyler Murray was able to move the ball seemingly at will against the Bills still-depleted defence and a classic Josh Allen sack/fumble/turnover on the first drive created a sinking feeling and I had visions of an 8-9 season accompanied by thoughts of the benefits of greatly increased salary cap space and inventory of draft capital going into 2025. A loss to the lowly Cardinals, who drafted Marvin Harrison, Jr with the fourth overall pick in April, could cast a long shadow over what might end up being a lost season. A step back to absorb the dead cap hit, re-tool the receiving corps and defensive backfield might just be what we would have to endure as we prepare to move to a new stadium (and pay a lot more to see live NFL football) in 2026. But, as quickly as the prospect of a lost season loomed, the team gathered itself in the second half and squeaked out a win in a game not decided until the final minute. The fans went home happy. For now.

Yesterday was the first real exposure for most of us to the new and still somewhat incomprehensible kick-off format. As I understand the logic, there were two goals in mind which brought about the change: to create fewer touchbacks and more kick returns and to limit injuries from players colliding at full speed. I’d say that goal number two will be achieved because of the elimination of the running by the kicking team but in the limited sample I saw yesterday, in the Bills game and others I saw parts of, it seems like there are just as many touchbacks as there were under the old rules. We did see a few twists such as the Cardinals kicker failing to reach the landing zone giving the Bills the ball at their own 40 yard line, Tyler Bass kicking the ball out of bounds in an attempt to hit the landing zone kicking into a strong wind, also giving the Cardinals the ball at their 40 yard line and, most importantly, the Bills giving up a touchdown on a kick-off return. Take away the wind yesterday and it looked like we would see just as many touchbacks as before. The only real difference is that the receiving team gets the ball on its own 30 yard line on a touchback. I’m sure I’ll get used to the new kick-off format but seeing the kicker standing alone, 40 yards from any other player, is a strange look indeed. When punter Sam Martin came out to hold the ball on the tee for Tyler Bass (on account of wind), as was pointed out on the CBS broadcast, it was the first time in NFL history that a team legally fielded 12 players.  

We watched a bit of college football on Saturday. The Michigan game went the way the Bills game looked like it was going (for fans of the blue and maize), Notre Dame lost at home to Northern Illinois and the Deion Sanders coached Colorado Buffaloes lost to the Cornhuskers in Lincoln, NE. After seeing Deion Sanders (“Prime Time” or more commonly, “Prime”) wearing his trademark sunglasses throughout last season and again this season, I wondered what brand they were and how much they cost….maybe $2,000? Maybe more? They look like they’re gold-plated or something. Well, the answer is that they are made by Blenders and are called Prime 21. They come in white or black frames and retail for $89 USD. Over the last year, Sanders has made them one of the most popular brands of sunglasses. So, I ordered a pair to look as cool as possible on canoe trips. White frames.

Up next for the Bills is a very short week and a tough Thursday night game in the humidity of south Florida against the Dolphins who eked out a win yesterday against their northern Florida cousins, the Jacksonville Jaguars. Tyreek Hill will be taking an Uber to the stadium.       

Chiefs 27, Bills 24

The clouds parted in north Toronto just after 9am and I basked in the morning sunshine from the 12^th floor of my building as I drank my coffee and wondered how the traffic would be, where we would park and whether or not I should wear my huge arctic parka. We had tried one night game a few years ago – an 8.15pm start – which got me home just before 3am.  Little did I know that despite last night’s game kicking off almost two hours earlier than a regular night game, thanks to inexplicably and unbearably slow egress from the stadium parking lot and heavy traffic up to and including the Canada Customs line-up and the Peace bridge, I would arrive home once again at the aforesaid time of 3am.

A bit more on yesterday’s (and this morning’s) travel details: It was a tale of two driving trips. The drive to Queenston, the US border line-up and the rest of the drive to the stadium parking lot was clear and uneventful, even once we began to see the towering snow banks south of Buffalo and into Orchard Park. We were parked and ready to begin our seven-hour outdoor winter adventure shortly after the stadium parking lots opened four hours before kick-off. A couple of drinks, a good barbecue and smooth entry into the stadium brought us to our seats a full hour before kick-off. This allowed ample time to watch the Chiefs players’ wives gather, greet each other and mingle around in their fancy coats and boots during the warm-ups. The guy who sits next to me arrived a little later, sporting a photo of the back of Taylor Swift on her way in to the stadium a few minutes earlier. After the game, as one parking lot attendant commented, it was “the worst night ever”. He had heard that an ambulance had tried or was trying to access the area and that was apparently part of the reason why we moved about 10 metres in 75 minutes before actually starting to leave the stadium parking lot. As we sat wondering about the cause of the delay, Mike Schopp and the Bulldog on WGR waxed on about Wide Right 2.0 and whatever else had gone wrong with the game.

The elevated level of excitement and anticipation around this game was palpable as kick-off approached. Bills mafia were ready to finally slay the Chiefs dragon – the playoff version at least – in their house. But of course it wasn’t to be. A few key dropped passes on deep balls, the evaporation of the running game in the second half and a missed game-tying 44 yard field goal were certainly valid contributors to the crushing loss but, in my view, it was the inability of the Bills depleted defence to stop Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Isiah Pacheco which cost the Bills the game. Even if Tyler Bass had made the kick and tied the game at 27, it seemed highly likely to me that the Chiefs, with 104 seconds on the game clock and two time-outs still at their disposal, would have easily been able to drive far enough for Harrison Butker to kick the Chiefs into the AFC Championship Game anyway. But he missed the kick wide right and the Chiefs needed only one more first down to seal the game.

Despite the profound disappointment of another playoff loss to Kansas City – the third one in four years – and the salary cap and roster issues which General Manager Brandon Beane will be faced with starting this morning, optimism will continue to abound around the Bills and their fans as the off-season finally leads to the start of training camp in the late July heat. 2024 will be Josh Allen’s 7^th season as the Bills quarterback. He is clearly one of the best players in the league and he will continue to be as he is arguably only now entering the prime years of his career. Primarily for this reason, I will clean my barbecue grill and pack away my Bills gear not with a heavy heart but with anticipation of another successful Bills season to come. The injury pendulum may swing back in 2024; Dalton Kincaid could begin to earn the label as the NFL’s new Travis Kelce; James Cook might continue his journey to becoming one of the league’s offensive stars. I am confident that with a few luckier bounces here and there, a key fake punt play that actually works, a healthy defence and the continued and unwavering support of Bills fans, the team can easily surpass what they accomplished this season. That’s what being a real fan is all about – even on this gloomy sleep-deprived Monday morning.

The NFL season now only has three games remaining. The Chiefs go to Baltimore as 3.5 point underdogs. I’ll be cheering them on.   As I watched Kansas City’s star players up close last night and the commanding presence of Andy Reid lumbering (and slightly limping) around the sidelines, delivering short messages from time to time to certain players, gave me new respect for him and program he has built in Kansas City. He is rumoured to be contemplating retirement after this season and I would find it pleasing if he were to win another championship before he walks away. And maybe shoot some new State Farm commercials for the Superbowl.