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.