Bills 44, Buccaneers 32

Anyone who has worked in or been associated with any organization of any size knows that one of the most common and enduring issues which besets them is the curse of meetings. The wasted time, the unnecessary blathering on of those whose opinions really don’t matter, the inability of participants to decide anything beyond the date and time of the next meeting – yes time spent in meetings is easily the most unproductive portion of the average person’s work effort, week in and week out. Keon Coleman, at the ripe old age of 22, has apparently learned this lesson already and has decided to demonstrate, in a very public and open manner, his disdain for meetings. Reached for comment late yesterday in Orchard Park after his team’s big win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Coleman reminded everyone that in meetings he actually did attend last spring with his agent and with NFL scouts, he made it abundantly clear that meetings were not something he was interested in. He had nothing to add, he said, before he got up and left, to any meetings, except of course this particular one in which he described his unwillingness to attend meetings. He offered to read the minutes of meetings afterward if he had time, which he suggested that he probably would not. So, this business of Coleman repeatedly being late to meetings or blowing them off entirely should be no surprise to Bills head coach Sean McDermott or to offensive coordinator Joe Brady. It is therefore unconscionable for the team to have made him a healthy scratch yesterday for reasons which were explained as “not performance related”. They knew his position on meetings.

He has faced disciplinary team sanctions before for this issue but they were limited to being benched for the first offensive series. Yesterday’s “healthy scratch” was a first for him and hopefully the last time this needs to be addressed. It is truly astounding to think that this guy can not get himself to team meetings on time or, in some cases at all. As the 33^rd overall pick in last year’s NFL draft, Coleman signed a four-year $10 million+ rookie contract with a signing bonus of $4.2 million and over $9 million guaranteed. The opportunities for Coleman – personal, professional and financial – are truly massive compared to the average American and with effort, focus and hard work, he should easily be able to secure a coveted second NFL contract which would create long term financial security for himself and his family. His on-field results have been mixed through his first season-and-a-half but the potential to emerge as a solid NFL receiver is clear. I can not imagine how frustrated his agent must be with all of this. Does he need a new alarm clock? Was he just trying to get a jump on the Black Friday pre-sales? Maybe he’s renting an apartment in Fort Erie and was delayed at the border. I have no idea what personal demons Coleman may be battling – and if he suffers from any form of mental illness or has substance abuse issues (neither of which has been reported) help is available for these. He can obviously afford the help if he needs it. Joshua Palmer, Mecole Hardman and Tyrell Shavers dressed and contributed yesterday in Coleman’s absence with Shavers probably being the odd man out if and when Coleman decides to show up on time for team meetings. Too bad because Shavers had a strong game with a nice touchdown catch.   

The game yesterday featured the partial return of the reckless 2018 Josh Allen. Fortunately, the much-improved version of Josh Allen of the last few years carried the day in the end as he accounted for six touchdowns on the day – three running and three passing. His two-handed chest pass attempt near his own goal-line early in the game, which was easily intercepted, was the worst example of the young Josh Allen, with his second interception on a ball he tried to force to Dawson Knox who was double-covered being the less egregious example. Otherwise, he has a fantastic game and looked like the MVP from a year ago.

The main problem for the Bills this season – and last season as well – is their inability to stop the run. As a fan watching, it is so frustrating – almost demoralizing – to watch the defence get gashed repeatedly on the ground series after series. The front seven just aren’t big enough or fast enough to shut down the run and force their opponent to throw. Without Josh Allen and his high-powered offence to save the day, the Bills wouldn’t be where they are which is in a playoff position and only a game-and-a-half behind the Patriots for the division lead. Ed Oliver, how’s your bicep feeling these days?

I managed to catch most of the second half of the Grey Cup last night and was happy for the good folks of Regina who partied well into the night celebrating their team’s big win – only their fifth ever which seems incredible in a nine-team league. Montreal made it close but fell just short as quarterback Davis Alexander heroically battled a pulled hamstring to almost complete the comeback. The stands in Winnipeg looked full too.   

Up next for the Bills is a short week and a trip to Houston to face the Texans on Thursday night. The Bills are early 3.5-point favourites and the status of Texans first-string quarterback CJ Stroud is uncertain. The Texans narrowly beat the now 1-9 Titans yesterday on a late field goal.  If I were Keon Coleman, I would be in the team meeting room right now preparing slide decks, flip charts, brewing coffee and arranging pastry platters and fruit trays.    

Dolphins 30, Bills 13

One thing from yesterday which turned out better than I planned was the cabbage rolls. A labour-intensive endeavour they are with their 27 steps – with steps 22 through 27 being completed after the Bills game kicked off in south Florida. My inattention, especially at the beginning of the game, may have cost the Bills the win they needed yesterday but the pundits say that there were other factors at play……and who am I to question them anyway?

Chief among the long list of reasons why the Bills lost badly to the Dolphins yesterday (apart from my not starting my cabbage roll odyssey earlier than I did) is the now quite obvious fact that the Bills have one of the weakest wide-receiver rooms in the NFL. For a consensus Superbowl-contending team as the season began, the lack of talent on the outside has become quite shocking. It has managed to turn Josh Allen into a reincarnation of Trent Edwards, also known as Captain Check-down, throwing most of his passes along the line of scrimmage rather than down the field. With one of the best throwing arms we’ve seen suit up in an NFL uniform, to see him reduced to repeated attempted hitch passes to Khalil Shakir feels sad on some level and frustrating on most others. Keon Coleman made one good contested catch for a touchdown after the dye was cast but otherwise, the Bills offence is sorely lacking in the kind of explosiveness its quarterback, the defending MVP of the league (no risk of a repeat this season), requires and deserves.

It was widely reported that at last week’s trade deadline, Bills General Manager Brandon Beane offered the Dolphins a package of draft picks, including the Bills first-rounder next year, in exchange for talented receiver Jaylen Waddle, who Miami picked sixth overall in the 2021 draft. We know that teams are generally loathe to trade within their division but the Dolphins didn’t trade Waddle to another team at the deadline; in fact, he hauled in five passes yesterday for 84 yards and a touchdown, averaging 17 yards per catch. Whoever is in the interim GM’s chair in Miami probably made the right move by hanging on to Waddle. Time will tell. Were he in a Bills uniform yesterday, would that have made enough of a difference to the game’s outcome? Not with the performance of Buffalo’s defence, that’s for sure. Beane was unable to complete a single transaction at the trade deadline, despite apparently being close on a couple. Market conditions were tough for contending teams looking to bolster their rosters: look no further than the Colts parting with two first-round picks to get Sauce Gardner from the Jets. That’s a steep price to pay and one that Beane was understandably unwilling to consider if it was even on the table for him. As had to be pointed out repeatedly on Buffalo sports talk radio, his job includes looking out for the team’s medium and longer-term prospects as well as adding to the roster for this season’s stretch run.

As I saw Dalton Kincaid hobbling off the field after suffering a hamstring injury, I realized that the Bills chances of a sixth straight AFC East division title (and a January home playoff game) were quite possibly slipping away. So I switched to the Patriots game in Tampa for a few minutes, hoping that the Bucs could hand them their third loss and keep the Bills only a half-game behind. Then Drake Maye hit former Buffalo fan-favourite Mack Hollins for a 54-yard completion on a third and 14 to the Bucs 8 in the fourth quarter and the Patriots did not look back from there. They are clearly in the driver’s seat for the division and have as good a shot at the first overall seed as either the Colts or the Broncos do. For Patriots fans, your time in the wilderness has been short – too short I’d say.

With the trade deadline now passed and with nine games down and eight to go, where do the Bills go from here? No roster moves are really possible, other than practice squad rotations or the unlikely chance of finding a hidden treasure among the ranks of retired receivers (John Brown, anyone?) so it seems clear that we’re stuck with what we have. Can Joe Brady somehow insert some element of a downfield threat to the offence with the personnel on hand? If he could, it seems safe to assume that he would have already. The best chance they have is probably to lean on the offensive line and harness James Cook to rack up 150 yards every game and play a ball-control kind of offence. Teams have won plenty of Superbowls with this approach but it usually includes a solid defence which the Bills don’t have at the moment either.

Up next is a rare 1pm home game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who make only their fourth trip ever to Orchard Park after joining the NFL in 1976. After losing at home to the Patriots yesterday, they now have a 6-3 record just like the Bills. The long-range forecast is calling for a temperature of 11 degrees with rain. Could be just what the Bills running game needs.    

The cabbage rolls were delicious and very much worth all the effort – in part because I made enough for at least three meals for the two of us and perhaps more. The most difficult of all of the tasks involved is peeling whole cabbage leaves off the head without tearing them. Blanching the entire cabbage head is the key to success with this part. I used ground beef, pork and lamb with brown and white rice for the filling. It’s a culinary challenge for sure and one I probably won’t attempt again on a Bills game-day.        

Bills 28, Chiefs 21

By 11.30pm on Saturday night, I had decided that I was pretty much sick of baseball. Sick of the stress and tension, sick of the blown opportunities, sick of the called strikes which were balls and the called balls which were strikes, sick of the sleep disruption from too many late nights in a short period and sick of the players, coaches and managers’ constant spitting of saliva or sunflower seed shells in and around the dugout steps. By the time Alejandro Kirk hit into the season-ending double play, it seemed like they could have just flipped a coin to see who would win the World Series.  It felt random and it felt genuinely unlucky - for Blue Jays fans anyway. After Bo Bichette’s three-run homer in the third inning, I thought we were on our way to a decisive win like the Kansas City Royals 11-0 game seven win in the 1985 World Series – the year that a wild-blown three-run Jim Sundberg triple off the top of the right-field wall of Excruciating Stadium, hit off Blue Jays ace Dave Stieb, clinched the ALCS for the Royals and thereby created the first playoff baseball nightmare for Toronto fans. Some forty years later, Saturday’s loss is worse, not just because of recency bias, but because it came in extra innings of game seven of the World Series. Considerable time was invested in this playoff run and it ended in bitter disappointment. I guess we’ll get ‘em next year. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training about 100 days from now.

Yesterday’s marquee matchup between the Chiefs and the Bills at Highmark Stadium probably drew a US television audience of about 30 million for CBS, based on the 2024 numbers for the same teams a couple of weeks later in the season. In preparation for the Blue Jays big game seven on Saturday, I looked at some historical viewing data for the World Series and there is no doubt that FOX would have been thrilled to have drawn 30 million for their game seven broadcast. Through five games, the World Series was averaging about 12.5 million viewers per game in the US. Even if that increased to 20 million for game seven, that’s still only two thirds of what yesterday’s regular season NFL game in Buffalo drew. World Series viewership peaked in 1978 at about 40 million US viewers per game but in the mid-80s, it began to decline and by 2023, had dropped to under ten million viewers per game. Baseball has become a “regional” sport in the US, with strong local support for teams in most markets in terms of gate, merchandise and local media but it seems like many Americans will only watch the World Series if their own rooting team is in it. The NFL commands the airwaves in this respect by drawing huge national audiences for games between teams (in yesterday’s case) in relatively small markets like Buffalo and Kansas City.

When Bills General Manager Brandon Beane realized that Utah Utes safety Cole Biship had dropped to the Bills in the second round of the 2024 draft, his facial expression was equal parts thrilled and surprised. Bishop’s rookie season was mixed as he battled injuries while learning the Bills defensive scheme and how to play safety in the NFL. Yesterday’s performance against the Chiefs was Bishop’s best game as a pro as he was prominent in multiple pass break-ups while delivering some big hits, including against Travis Kelce in the endzone at the end of the first half. As the Bills defensive backfield has battled through injuries this season, we are now seeing why Beane was so high on Bishop 18 months ago.

Now add Maxwell Hairston to the mix. The first-round pick in April’s draft saw the field for only the second time yesterday after missing almost all of training camp and the first six games of the season with an injury. He grabbed his first NFL interception and showed his speed and his ability to cover fast receivers down the field – something that wily veteran cornerback Tre White can no longer do nearly as well as he did a few years ago. The emergence of Bishop at safety and now Hairston at cornerback may save the Bills defence after all in 2025.

Yesterday unfortunately brought another devastating injury to the Bills defence with Michael Hoecht suffering a non-contact Achilles injury which will sideline him for the rest of the season. Hoecht was suspended by the league for the first six games of the season (for PED violation) but played very well last week and yesterday until he went out. Matt Milano and Terrel Bernard both returned to the lineup but Ed Oliver remains sidelined until the playoffs with a torn bicep. Evey team has injuries.  Although they sometimes seem trivial, the draft picks teams make in the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds and the undrafted free agents they sign each spring are critical to building depth as injuries often mean that these players will see the field, often in critical late-season situations. Michael Hoecht, we hardly knew you!

Yesterday’s game against the Chiefs produced another regular season win against their conference rival which was very important in terms of playoff seedings. The Chiefs are in tough now at 5-4, chasing both the Broncos and the Chargers in the AFC West. The Bills remain a half-game back of the Patriots who hold the tie-breaker by virtue of their win in Orchard Park a month ago. The week 15 game in Foxborough is looming large on the schedule and will likely determine the winner of the AFC East.

Up next for the Bills is a trip to south Florida to take on the reeling Dolphins who fired their General Manager last week and feel like a slow-motion train wreck at 2-7. The Patriots also play in Florida, taking on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who will travel to Orchard Park the following week. The baseball playoffs certainly took their emotional toll over the past three weeks but I’m happy to have it behind us now with the full focus now clearly on the NFL.        

Bills 40, Panthers 9

The timing may seem unusual but this week’s post begins with an injury report. Unfortunately, it is my own injury report:

There are nine steps from the small deck outside my wood-burning sauna down to the walkway leading to the water and the cold plunge which is such an essential part of the sauna experience. Over the course of the 1,500+ saunas I’ve had since we built it in 1994, I have descended these steps, usually (but not always) buck-naked and sometimes carrying a full bucket of warm water in each hand, more than 4,500 times (usually three times per sauna) without slipping or falling. That changed this past Wednesday at around 6pm. Generally, when the temperature is below plus ten, for my sauna ritual, I wear Keen sandals which have good treads and a solid platform but with the temperature that evening at plus nine, due solely to laziness (the sandals are stored for the summer in another cabin 25 metres away), I decided to proceed in bare feet. After my first session in the sauna, I began my descent down the steps in the usual way – rather quickly in order to preserve warmth before immersing in the cold water but with my right hand not-so-firmly on the hand rail - but when my right heel contacted the wet surface of the second step, it felt like a proverbial banana peel and down I went. All the way to bottom. And hard. I landed on the bottom three stair treads mostly on my left side, partly on my face and somehow also on my right shin. These parts of what’s left of my body have turned from a dull blue colour with a tinge of red, through various shades of purple, yellow and now they are starting to look (to continue the banana analogy) the way a banana does when it is relegated to the freezer to one day become banana bread. The worst contusion is on my left thigh which swelled grotesquely at first and has partly receded in the days since but is still extremely sore to the touch and induces sharp pain when I’m limping around the cottage. I think I have a hematoma in that spot and I’ll be seeking a medical opinion on it later today. Amazingly, I broke no bones. My energy level remains subdued as my body focuses on the long healing process which lies ahead. The experience and the mild post-traumatic replaying of the event in my mind over the last few days has been a poignant wake-up call for me about the perils of aging. And it was also a powerful reminder of the pummelling which my late mother, who fell repeatedly in her later years, took so stoically.

Since I’ve been so physically restricted over the last five days, there has been more than plenty of time to watch sports on television. Late October is by far the best time of year for those of us who follow professional (and college) sports with literally every major North American sport in full swing. From the Maple Leafs and Raptors, whose regular seasons are recently underway, to CFL, US college, Canadian University and NFL football all going full-tilt and then there’s the World Series which is a major focus this year for most Canadian viewers and some (although a steadily shrinking number) of American viewers, this time of year is almost too much to keep up with. The baseball over the past ten days has been spectacular for Blue Jays fans and the World Series games have taken centre-stage for good reason. Major League Baseball knows enough not to schedule World Series games on Sundays as this is the almost exclusive domain of the NFL – particularly on Sunday night where Sunday Night Football is the highest rated television program in the United States from September through January. After the Bills bye week last week, and despite over-dosing on televised sports in recent days, by yesterday, I was, to quote Hank Williams, Jr, definitely ready for some football. Some Buffalo Bills football. And the Bills did not disappoint.

A 40-9 drubbing of the Carolina Panthers may be just what the team needed to get back on track after two concerning losses. The Bills defensive performance, the takeaways, the special teams play – they were all encouragingly positive but if Sean McDermott had only one game-ball to give out in his post-game locker room speech, it would obviously have gone to running back James Cook. Cook had a game for the ages, scoring twice and rushing for 216 yards which is the highest in the league this season and the most for a Bills running back since OJ Simpson almost 50 years ago. And he accomplished all of this without playing a snap in the fourth quarter. The offensive line of course deserves plenty of the credit for James big day as well as it came against a Panthers run defence which had allowed only 131 rushing yards over its previous three games which were all victories. It all came at a perfect time because the Bills passing game continues to seem stalled with a clearly noticeable lack of separation being achieved by the receiving corps. Many of Josh Allen’s completed passes were short screen passes to Khalil Shakir who broke one for a score and made a nice move to evade the final defender on his way to the endzone. The need for a deep threat – a receiver who can “take the top off the defence”, as the saying goes, was never more evident than it was yesterday.

Up next for the Bills is a home date with the Kansas City Chiefs who play at home tonight against the Commanders. The Chiefs appear to be firing on all cylinders and are an early 1.5-point favourite on the road in Orchard Park next week. I would never suggest or predict a Bills loss in any game of any kind against any opponent but maybe this is the year that the Bills and Chiefs switch their recent head-to-head histories of regular season Bills wins and Chiefs playoff wins. But, obviously, if the Bills still want to secure that elusive first playoff seed in the AFC, winning next week will go a long way toward achieving that goal.

Falcons 24, Bills 14

There was a guy who lived in my building a few years ago who had grown up in Toronto but was a fully committed fan of the Atlanta Falcons. He had an uncle whose employer relocated him there in the 1970s and for Christmas one year, he sent my friend a Steve Bartkowski game jersey. This was at a time when genuine game jerseys were not nearly as popular as they are now and, adjusted for inflation, were considerably more expensive too. That was all it took for a ten-year old Toronto boy to create and maintain a rooting loyalty for an NFL team based a thousand miles away. I’m glad he moved out a while ago because I would have had to spend the next two weeks avoiding him and his gloating over last night’s game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

The Falcons now hold a two-game advantage over the Bills (8 wins against 6 losses) in the all-time series between these teams who face each other every four years. The Bills had won the last two meetings, including the teams’ last meeting in Atlanta in Sean McDermott’s first season as Bills head coach. The Bills also fell to the Falcons in overtime on December 1^st, 2013 in a game I attended at the Rogers Centre. It would be the final game in the ill-fated Bills “Toronto Series” and the only game where there would be no “papered house” – as in, no free tickets. The plan for this game was to see if the Toronto market could legitimately support NFL football unaided. The game drew 39,000 and the plug was finally and mercifully pulled on the experiment which Ralph Wilson and Ted Rogers cooked up in 2008.

I was hoping that the Blue Jays would have built a comfortable lead by 7.15pm last night to allow my full attention to be turned to the Bills. Turns out that they were comfortably trailing the Seattle Mariners and ended up getting smoked 10-3 to fall two games behind in their best-of-seven ALCS. Losing the first two games at home presents them with a monumental challenge as the series moves to the Pacific northwest for the next three games. There remains only a flicker of hope in this situation for Blue Jays fans: I am reminded of the 1977 Toronto Maple Leafs who faced the Philadelphia Flyers in the NHL quarter-finals after battling them for seven games (before losing) the previous year. The Leafs somehow managed to win the first two games of the series at the Spectrum before going on to lose the next four consecutively. Dave “Tiger” Williams famously said after game two that the Flyers were “done like dinner” and I was hoping that a member of the Mariners would say something similar last night but I have seen no reports of any such comment. Williams himself could not be reached for comment.

Standing in line outside Metlife Stadium on September 14^th before the Bills beat the Jets, we had a conversation with a guy who was one of the few New York Giants fans to express his disappointment that his team had moved on from quarterback Daniel Jones. He predicted that Jones would have great success in Indianapolis away from the intense media scrutiny of the New York market. After week six, the road to the Superbowl on the AFC side of the draw now goes through Indianapolis, thanks in large part to the solid play of Daniel Jones. The Steelers, having an early bye week, sit at 4-1 with a handful of teams at 4-2, including the Bills, Patriots (who now occupy top spot in the AFC East, holding the tie-breaker over Buffalo), Jaguars, Chargers and Broncos. Probably most surprising is that the Baltimore Ravens fell to 1-5 and look to be in a heap of trouble after being considered pre-season Superbowl contenders. The Jets, now 0-6, will likely be relegated to the CFL.

When the NFL schedule was released in May, Bills fans were not happy to see that their bye week would come quite early – in week seven. Usually, a later bye week is considered desirable as injuries pile up and fatigue sets in as the season grinds on into November and December. With injuries continuing to plague the Bills both on defence and now on offence too, a recovery week seems well-timed now, Last night Joshua Palmer went down with an ankle injury in the second quarter with Dalton Kincaid being ruled a no-go during warm-ups with an oblique injury. Most significantly, star linebacker Terrell Bernard left with an ankle injury late in the first half and did not return. Bring on the bye week!

Looking back to last season, we see a similar trajectory playing out in 2025. The 2024 Bills came out of the gate with three straight wins before stumbling badly in Baltimore and then again the following week in Houston to fall to 3-2. They did not lose again until a December 8^th shoot-out against the Rams. I see a similar pattern this year except that the Bills, now having lost their last two, have two weeks to regroup, rest and recover from injuries.

Up next, on October 26^th, is another NFC road game – this time in Charlotte against the Carolina Panthers who improved to 3-3 with a win over the Cowboys on Sunday. The Panthers have their own bye week coming up – sort of – with a trip to Metlife Stadium to play the doormat Jets. Much hand-wringing will ensue in Buffalo over the next two weeks but I expect the Bills to pull things together and get back in the win column against the Panthers before returning home to play the Kansas City Chiefs on November 2^nd.  

Patriots 23, Bills 20

Every football season since 1972, members of the only team to win every regular season and playoff game, including the Superbowl - the Miami Dolphins of that same year – have made a tradition of uncorking champagne when the last undefeated NFL team suffers its first loss. The furthest into any season that they had to wait for their uncorking was February 3, 2008 when the New England Patriots lost the Superbowl XLII 17-14 to the New York Giants after going 16-0 in the regular season and 2-0 in their two playoff games leading to the final game. Going into yesterday’s week five action, both the Philadelphia Eagles and the Buffalo Bills had won their first four games and were both playing at home as solid favourites. Surviving members of the 1972 Dolphins, most of them in now in their 80s, probably did not bother putting their champagne on ice yesterday but they should have as both the Eagles and the Bills fell, leaving Larry Czonka, Bob Grieise, Garo Yepremian and Paul Warfield’s 1972 team intact as still the only NFL team to register a perfect season.

For the Denver Broncos (who overcame a 14-point deficit in Philadelphia) and the New England Patriots, yesterday brought “signature” wins for their young quarterbacks and new head coaches – Sean Payton in his second year with the Broncos and Mike Vrabel in his first year with the Patriots. Despite their recent successes and upward trajectory, I suggest that neither of these teams is likely to represent the AFC in San Francisco in February but either could easily be Superbowl contenders next season and beyond.

As for the Bills, the turnover metric began to revert to the mean last night and, once again, their defence was suspect with key injuries continuing to plague them. But full credit must go to Patriots quarterback Drake Maye (whose name sounds like he’s from some 19^th century aristocracy) and to receiver Stefon Diggs who played his best game since leaving Buffalo after the 2023 season. Diggs was the X-factor last night, hauling in 10 catches for 146 yards and inspiring his teammates all evening on the sidelines. As was mentioned several times on the NBC broadcast, Maye looked like Josh Allen did six years ago – and I would add without the wild propensity for turnovers which Allen displayed then. The Patriots fully deserved their signature win, fair and square. Were they to play a best-of-seven series, I would take the Bills in five or perhaps six games.   

Please indulge me with the following commentary on the weather we’ve been having: I wouldn’t be saying this in mid-July but I’m actually getting quite tired of searing-hot sunny days. It’s like we live in Arizona now with each day a scorched carbon copy of the previous one. The Anthropocene is clearly upon us, despite apparently not yet meeting the strict geological criteria which would formally mark the beginning of a new epoch – a shift from the Holocene which began about 12,000 years ago. Hap Wilson, the well-known naturalist, outdoorsman and Temagami canoe route guru, posted a photo last week of a dry river bed somewhere in Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park, stating that water levels in the Temagami area have reached their lowest in at least 70 years. The quantity of rain required to restore ground and surface water levels in eastern North America to anywhere remotely close to their historical averages before freeze-up is several orders of magnitude more than what we’ll likely get over the next ten weeks. Our best hope at restoration of normal lake levels is another heavy dose of lake-effect snow like we experienced last year when central Ontario received more than a metre of snow over the first few days of December.

Buffalo, Orchard Park and the South-towns were clobbered with lake-effect snow in late autumn last year too but the timing of the snow dumps did not necessitate moving any Bills home games to Detroit which happened in 2014 and again in 2022. The new stadium will have high exterior walls and a rim around the top which will greatly reduce the amount of snow which will actually accumulate inside the facility but the challenge with clearing roadways and parking lots in the surrounding area – for emergency vehicles as well as for football fans – will remain, even of hundreds of shovelers are not needed to clear the seating rows and aisles inside. The most recent seasonal forecast for western New York calls for another heavy lake-effect snow season coming up, fueled by much-warmer-than-usual water temperatures in Lake Erie. The Bills have home games scheduled for December 7^th and 28^th along with a week 18 game on either January 3^rd or 4^th. Chances seem good that at least one of these games could be moved or postponed on account of snow. Seems hard to imagine that scenario right now as we are in store for yet another blistering, sunny October day with humidex readings still registering in southern Ontario and western New York. Good thing last night’s game against the Patriots kicked off well after dark. Last week’s 1pm game against the Saints was absolutely sweltering inside the stadium. I’m definitely ready for some cool wet weather – if it ever comes.

On account of a family event in downtown Toronto yesterday afternoon, I took in almost the entire Blue Jays game-two win over the Yankees on the car radio. By far the most uninterrupted radio baseball for me since the days of Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth and it was fantastic – partly because of the game’s importance and way it played out but also because of the play-by-play by Ben Shulman whose call seemed almost as good as his dad Dan’s probably was on television. Not sure who the colour-man is but the radio broadcast was excellent overall.   

Up next for the Bills is yet another prime-time game next Monday night in Atlanta (where my niece now lives and refers to it as Hot-lanta) against a Falcons team coming off its early bye week. Look for the Bills to get back in the win column before their own bye week.  

Bills 31, Saints 19

The largest point spread of the 2025 NFL season through four weeks opened early in the week at 16.5, floated down to 14.5 on Thursday and settled in at 15.5 early yesterday morning as I was packing my sauerkraut, Dijon mustard, vegetable tray, beer and Italian sausages into my cooler. The Buffalo Bills were playing the league doormat New Orleans Saints and some of the pundits on the radio early yesterday were saying take the points and the Saints. If I was to have wagered against the spread on this game, I probably would have too. And it would have been the winning call as the Saints lost by 12 and covered the spread. I had a feeling that it would be a closer game than was expected. A spread of more than two converted touchdowns is almost unheard of in the parity-driven NFL and proved to be too high yesterday at a sun-baked Highmark Stadium. And the brutalist slab of concrete bult in 1973 now features (from my seats 23 rows behind the visitor bench) a clear view of the top of the new, much taller Highmark Stadium just across Abbot Road which will open ten months from now. I’m looking forward to it for football and for traffic reasons.  

For Toronto sports fans, the Blue Jays 162^nd game of the season was top of mind, even for those of us attending the game in Orchard Park. Would they blow the division lead they had held for most of the summer? Would the Yankees finally stumble after seven straight wins? Would they both win or both lose? I like the MLB’s scheduling plan starting every game on the season’s final day at 3pm or shortly after as every team with something to play for would have to field their best line-ups. We dialed up the game on the car radio with the Jays leading 5-4 and listened as they pounded out eight more runs and sealed the deal on their first division title in ten years, earning the top seed in the American League playoff draw and a valuable first-round bye. Quite an accomplishment.           

My first experience entering the United States after the President’s re-election came a couple of weeks ago (At Toronto Pearson) and was quite smooth as was yesterday’s encounter at the Queenston-Lewiston crossing. It almost felt as if a memo had been circulated by the Department of Homeland Security to the border agents suggesting that they might be a bit more welcoming of low-risk Canadians as they pass through border checkpoints. Travel by Canadians to the US is down 30% since the winter and businesses in American border communities have suffered accordingly. With all the tough talk from the White House in the administration’s first few months, local and state Chambers of Commerce have carefully and quietly expressed their concerns and, after all, business is business. Rather than asking questions requiring detailed answers, the pleasant mid-thirties border agent woman asked – pleasantly - if we were going to the Bills game and if we would be returning to Canada later the same day. “Yes” to both of those I answered as she ran our passports through the scanner and we were on our way. Easily the friendliest, fastest and most relaxed border agent experience I’ve had at least since 9/11. After early reports last winter of phones being scanned and occasionally even an uncomfortable question or two about the President being asked of Canadian travellers, despite the admittedly small sample size of two, for what it’s worth, both of my recent experiences have been good.

As for the Bills who, along with the Eagles, now sit atop the NFL at 4-0, have plenty to work on in preparation for the Patriots next Sunday night as they close-out their three-game homestand. Starting with tackling. The Saints running game racked up almost 200 yards by breaking easily through to the second and third levels of Buffalo’s defence far too many times. The ageless Alvin Kamara, now in his ninth season with the Saints, gained 70 yards on 15 carries while Kendre Miller ran for 65 and quarterback Spencer Rattler added 49 yards, making some impressive open-field moves along the way. Getting DT Ed Oliver back will help to shore up the line play but even with him, the Bills defensive front is soft and seems to operate, like it did last year, in “bend but don’t break” mode which often just looks too easy for opposing offenses to move the ball at will. Josh Allen through an interception – the Bills first turnover since before Christmas - but James Cook continues to justify his new contract by running for over 100 yards once again and reaching the endzone for the eighth straight game.   

Another key division game is up next for the Bills as the New England Patriots, fresh off a routing of the Carolina Panthers and now sitting at 2-2, come to Orchard Park Sunday night. My game tickets remain available but here’s something which explains the scarcity of parking at Highmark Stadium in 2025: My Lot 7 parking pass, for which I paid $40, sold for $175 (all USD) online the other day. I mean Lot 7 is certainly well-located if you’re sitting on the visitor side of Highmark and is right in the thick one of the best tailgating experiences in the NFL but I just can’t see paying $175 for the privilege. You have to park somewhere I guess as there is no public transit option that I’ve ever seen. For over 50 years now, eight Sundays every fall and winter, 70,000 people drive to Orchard Park, consume alcohol (some more than others of course) then, a few hours later, drive home.  

Bills 31, Dolphins 21

Call it JP Losman disease or maybe Ryan Fitzpatrick disease. The symptoms are easy to recognize:  play a good game through 55 minutes, make good passes, inspire the confidence of your teammates, drive your team to a position to tie or take the lead late in the game – then throw a crucial and baffling interception to seal the game in your opponent’s favour. Tua Tagovailoa presented with a textbook case of this ailment last Thursday night in Orchard Park which left his team at 0-3 and cruising for a high pick in the 2026 NFL draft.

The close-up replay showed Tua’s eyes looking only to his right and Bills linebacker Terrell Bernard locked in on where the pass was going and he made what looked like the easiest interception he’s ever made. Tua couldn’t have telegraphed the play better if he had arranged to have it shown on the video screen at Highmark Stadium. It wasn’t a deflected pass (although one angle did show that a Bills defender's hand grazed the ball without changing its trajectory); wind didn’t effect it; it wasn’t overthrown or underthrown. Bernard knew where it was going and he effortlessly stepped in and grabbed it. One more first down by Elijah Moore and the Bills were 3-0 with the early inside track on the AFC’s number one seed four months from now.

The Miami Dolphins impressed me with their effort and execution on Thursday and, without a key special teams penalty and the aforementioned crushing interception, they played more than well enough to have won the game, salvaged their season, lowered the temperature on their coach’s seat and given their fan base some hope. But now they will have 11 days to regroup and prepare for the Jets at home on next week’s early game on Monday Night Football. Even at 1-3, it will be a tough but not impossible road to regain respectability. The problem will probably continue to be their quarterback and his propensity to hand games away. One analyst commented that the Dolphins probably played their best game on Thursday but it still wasn’t good enough. If they lose to the Jets a week from tonight, look for Mike McDaniel to be the first coaching casualty of 2025 with a key player or two like Tyreek Hill being traded for draft picks.

As for the Bills, they won the game the way that good teams do – without playing their best game but still finding a way. Their defence has been sporadic through three games although its seemingly solid performance against the New York Jets in week two may prove to have been an aberration because of the utter ineptitude of the opponent. Still, at 3-0, the Bills are well-positioned to achieve their regular season objective – the number one seed in the AFC and the bye through the first playoff round which it carries.

Through week three, only six NFL teams are sporting perfect 3-0 records – three in each conference. Along with the Bills, the Colts and Chargers lead the AFC with undefeated records while the Eagles, Bucs and 49ers sit atop the NFC. The Chargers appear to be the most likely to challenge Buffalo for the top seed in the AFC but with 14 games to go, it’s obviously too early to really say. The Bills and Chargers do not face each other this season. In the NFC, it would be foolish to bet against the defending champion Eagles.

When the Jets blocked a field goal and returned it for a touchdown late in yesterday’s game in Tampa to take a one-point lead, I was pulling for them not to give up the game-losing drive but in typical Jets fashion, that’s exactly what they did and they remain winless along with the Dolphins, Texans and Titans. In the NFC, only the Giants and Saints are still winless. The Patriots found a way to lose again, this time to the Steelers at home, to slip to 1-2. The Bills do have a clear advantage in the AFC with six division games against three weak teams, something that they share with the Colts but not with the Chargers.

Up next, the New Orleans Saints, widely considered to be “on the clock” for the first overall pick in the 2026 NFL draft, make their once-every-eight-years trip to Orchard Park. The Saints lead the all-time series 7-5 with the Bills winning the most recent match-up in the Big Easy four years ago. But, their last trip to western New York, in a game I attended in Sean McDermott’s first year as Buffalo’s head coach in 2017, is a game he would like to forget as Drew Brees and the Saints delivered the Bills a 47-10 drubbing. This will be the sixth time that the Saints have ever played in Buffalo and by strange happenstance, I will have personally attended three of them with the first being a December 1989 loss to the Bobby Hebert led Saints – a game and a time I remember for being just a few days after the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal massacre.

With the new stadium construction in full-swing, parking is scarce and egress from the parking lots is reportedly the worst it has ever been. After each of the two games I attended last season, we were pinned for over an hour either in the parking lot or on a stadium exit road overrun by pedestrians streaming out with what looked like no effort on the part of Erie County Sheriffs to manage traffic flow – like they had just given up and were using the Lord of the Flies approach and were just hoping no one was hurt or killed. Promises have been made about greatly improved traffic flow with an emphasis on the latest in traffic engineering when the new stadium opens. So, for this week, we’re hoping for a comfortable Bills lead early in the fourth quarter, an early exit and a smooth trip home.   

Bills 30, Jets 10

I’m not sure if my sense of smell has been heightened now that I’m in my early 60s but since I’ve been walking around Manhattan for the past three days, aside from the carnival-like atmosphere which permeates every square inch of real estate in this the smallest (geographically) of the five boroughs which make up New York City, a myriad of aromas, odours and fragrances is omnipresent on every street and around every corner. Everything from cheap perfume to sewer gas to deep fryer exhaust has met my nostrils head-on with every step I’ve taken – and I’ve averaged about 18,000 steps each day. The principle of creating scent-free spaces is yet to reach this densely crowded island or the throngs of tourists, hucksters and presumably those who try their best to live their lives here. Every scantily-clad woman seems to be wearing enough sweet fragrance to reach the Jersey shore and beyond. Sometimes it’s overwhelming and sometimes it’s downright seductive but it’s impossible to ignore and it adds another thick layer to the sensory overload which makes this place like no other I have ever experienced, except for Kathmandu.

When the NFL schedule was released in May, I circled this weekend as the one which would include my first trip to the Big Apple. A tour of the main branch of the New York Public Library, a Broadway show, a two-and-a-half-hour boat cruise around the entirety of Manhattan, a patio dinner in the East Village and many miles of walking were the opening acts for a trip to the Meadowlands of New Jersey yesterday to see the Bills v. Jets at Metlife Stadium. Getting there by public transit from mid-town Manhattan is easy and fast: a round trip ticket from Penn Station on New Jersey transit to the stadium costs about six bucks and even with a change of trains in Seacaucus takes just over 30 minutes. The stadium itself seats 82,000 and has fantastic sight-lines even from the upper level. After careful consideration, I decided to wear my Bills colours and was a bit surprised to see that about 30% of those in attendance made the same decision. Our section was at least three quarters Bills fans but featured an enthusiastic, entertaining and very loud Jets fan whose mood began with abounding optimism which quickly turned to bitter disappointment, anger which included colourful cursing of his team and its coaching staff then finally, brooding silence. It’s tough to be part of “Gang-Green” these days and has been for many years now. 

The Bills were in full control of the game from the opening drive. Even without their week-one star DT Ed Oliver, the Bills defence smothered the Jets who could muster only a paltry 154 total yards of offence on the day. Jets quarterback Justin Fields was knocked out of the game and into the league’s concussion protocol by Joey Bosa’s fourth quarter sack but managed only one impactful play before that – 27-yard scamper in the second quarter. As we exited the stadium with about ten minutes remaining in the game, we heard the Jets radio play-by-play broadcaster ask his colour-man if this was the kind of game where you just burn the tape and move on or if there was something to be learned for the team and its coaching staff. He replied that there was definitely something to be learned but seemed usure about exactly what that might be. 

Taking into account that the Jets are in rough shape and have been in the wilderness since Rex Ryan left, the level of support and enthusiasm (except for the aforementioned guy in our section) seemed surprisingly weak compared to what Buffalo fans offer their team. Even throughout the 17-year playoff drought which ended in 2017, Bills fans showed up on time and were always loud even when there wasn’t much to cheer for. Early on in the game, before it was out of reach, on defensive third downs, Jets fans cheered tepidly at best (despite encouragement from the four massive video screens) and generally seemed disconnected from the beginning. Joe Klecko’s pre-game leading of the signature cheer of “J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets” created little excitement and generated only passive participation. Bills scoring drives produced almost as much noise. Aaron Glenn may be the right coach for the Jets but this will be another long season for them and bumbling owner Woody Johnson may run out of patience with him too early – as he always does.

Today, we will see the 9/11 Memorial and take a look around Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan before heading to LaGuardia. Older Jets fans will remember the days of defensive stalwarts Joe Klecko and Mark Gastineau who became known as the New York Sack Exchange. That must seem like several lifetimes ago for them. 

Up next for the Bills is a short week and a Thursday night home game against the Miami Dolphins whose fortunes entering week three seem about as bleak as those of the Jets. Tyrek Hill is frustrated and Tua is regressing week by week and season by season. Head coach Mike McDaniel, known equally for his supposed offensive genius and his irreverent and unorthodox style of conducting press conferences, may not last the season in Miami either. The New England Patriots appear now to be the second-best team in the AFC East and with four winnable division games, could challenge for a wild-card playoff spot – something which seemed unthinkable a year ago. 

I’m hoping to make this New York weekend an annual one and I’m also hoping that the schedule makers can make it a little later in the fall when the weather is cooler. There are of course more Broadway shows to take in, more museums to see, many more Manhattan miles to walk and, hopefully, more easy Bills wins against the Jets in New Jersey.            

   

Bills 41, Ravens 40

When the NFL schedule was released in the spring, the Buffalo Bills week one match-up with the Ravens brought my memory of the January 19^th Divisional Round playoff game, and its one critical and decisive play, back to the surface of my consciousness. Having just scored a touchdown to narrow the margin to two points with a minute and a half remaining, the Ravens needed a two-point convert to tie and send the game to overtime on that wintry Orchard Park night. Along with the entirety of Bills Mafia, I was worried about this prospect as the Ravens had momentum in their favour and the Bills defence, having benefitted from three turnovers already, looked spent. Tension in the stadium was palpable as the Ravens lined up for their attempt and as the well-crafted play developed, leaving tight-end Mark Andrews open in the front right corner of the endzone, I had already begun to foresee how the overtime might play out. Lamar Jackson’s pass was perfect – not too high, not too low and placed squarely into Andrews’ breadbasket. As the pass reached him, I think I may have looked away for a split second in disappointment, perhaps to process the unfortunate turn of events and to contemplate the ensuing risk and stress of overtime. The next thing I remember seeing was the eruption of Bills fans on the goal-line behind Andrews as he had somehow let the ball slip out of his hands and onto the thin layer of snow beside him. An easy recovery of an onside kick, one more first down and it was time for victory formation for Buffalo.

For the Baltimore Ravens, for Mark Andrews and Lamar Jackson personally, for John Harbaugh and his coaching staff, the 232 days which have passed since that cold January night surely included reliving that particular play over and over. The schedule-maker’s gift of the earliest possible chance at redemption in the first game of the new season in the very same stadium provided the Ravens the ultimate motivation as last night approached. Add in the kick-off of the 20^th season of Sunday Night Football (the top-rated television show in the US), a huge national audience and arguably the best week-one match-up on the slate, and the Ravens could not have asked for a better-scripted opportunity to once again establish themselves as the team with the best chance at securing the AFC’s top seed. A week one match-up with playoff and potential tie-breaker implications made this a pretty compelling game all around.

A clear pattern has taken shape over the past five years when the Bills face the Kansas City Chiefs with Buffalo winning the regular season games and the Chiefs winning the playoff games regardless of which team plays at home. Last season, the Bills lost badly in Baltimore early on in the regular season but held on for a 27-25 home playoff win four months later. Will the same pattern emerge with the Ravens? With last night’s incredible and unlikely one-point win, Bills fan obviously hope not. I’d say that the Bills would prefer not to see the Ravens again at all but another home playoff game against them in January seems likely.

Josh Allen said after the game to NBC’s Melissa Stark that those fans who left in the fourth quarter with the team down by 15 points should “have some faith next time”. Well, as was pointed out on the broadcast, the last time that the Bills came from behind after being down by 15 points in the fourth quarter was in 1967 – some six years before Rich Stadium opened. Sixty years later, the Bills treated their fans (those who stayed) to a thrilling comeback in the stadium’s final home opener after being shredded by Derrick Henry and Lamar Jackson for most of the game.

Speaking of Henry, the Ravens dominant and powerful running back racked up 169 yards on 18 carries (it seemed like more) with two touchdowns (also seemed like more) for an average of 9.4 yards per carry (seems about right) and was a terror for the Bills undersized front. For his part, Bills DT Ed Oliver did his own terrorizing (as Chris Collinsworth mentioned more than once on the broadcast) with a brilliant sack and another key tackle-for-loss of Henry. He also generated the game’s only turnover at a key time in the fourth quarter by knocking the ball from Henry’s hands and setting up what would have been the game’s tying touchdown drive had the Bills not failed on their third two-point conversion attempt of the night. Then and only then did the Bills defence find a way to get a key three-and-out which set up the game winning drive, culminating with 58-year-old Matt Prater hitting a short field goal as time expired.

Ok, Prater is 41 years old and Buffalo is his seventh NFL team. Before Thursday, he was not on any team’s roster or practice squad but continued to hone his craft at a high school somewhere in Arizona. After a red-eye flight to Buffalo Thursday night, he now finds himself the toast of the town after a perfect night, hitting three field goals and two extra points.

After their thrilling opening week win, the Bills now travel to the Meadowlands of New Jersey to face the New York Jets who came up short in their own home opener yesterday against the Steelers. It’s been 35 years since I took in a Bills road game which was a 34-30 playoff loss to the Browns at Cleveland’s ancient Municipal Stadium in January of 1990. Ronnie Harmon dropped the winning touchdown pass from Jim Kelly on the game’s second-last play. I’m hoping for a better result next week against the Jets and I’m looking forward to visiting NYC. In addition to Sunday’s game, we’re seeing Wicked on Broadway, touring the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, taking a boat cruise around Manhattan Island, museums etc. Fireman Ed, I’m coming!

Happy Tommy Douglas Day Weekend

Happy Victoria Day! A friend of mine is an emergency room nurse in a small but busy hospital which serves a large hinterland of cottage country in eastern Ontario. He tells me that the Victoria Day long weekend is always the busiest three-day period of the year as his hospital is inundated with injured patrons who have been in car or boat accidents, chopped or cut themselves with axes or chainsaws, fallen off ladders or roofs or otherwise maimed themselves often with alcohol-fueled carelessness. 

We stopped marking Queen Victoria's birthday on the 24^th of May in 1952 (although we still do every seven years) in favour of observing it on the Monday closest to but not after the 24^th. Victoria ruled the British Empire for 64 years, ending with her death in 1901. At the risk of offending Monarchists or United Empire Loyalists, Queen Victoria’s relevance to most Canadians has pretty much disappeared. Sure, she was an important figure in British history but maybe it’s time to change the name of our spring holiday long weekend, which marks the unofficial start to the summer season, to something more Canadian. I suggest that we call it Tommy Douglas Day. Douglas clearly deserves recognition as the driving force behind Canada's publicly funded healthcare system. It seems entirely appropriate to name this long weekend after him so that when dangerous drivers, drunken boaters and over-zealous weekend-warriors end up in the hospital over the next few days as a result of their letting loose on this long weekend, they can thank Tommy Douglas for bringing us the universal, single-payer healthcare insurance system we value so much. Have a great (and hopefully safe) Tommy Douglas Day long weekend!

Easter Greetings

Easter certainly has a lot of moving parts: the rabbits (which do not lay eggs), the eggs, the chocolate, the egg-shaped chocolates, the rabbit-shaped chocolates, the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus two days later, the traffic and shopping mayhem on Bad Thursday because everything imaginable is closed for the next four days…..and when we mix all of these unrelated elements together and then, as a final wildcard, throw in the fact that it can take place any time between the Superbowl and Victoria Day, based on the whims of  the lunar cycle in strange combination with with the randomness of the Gregorian calendar, Easter truly is the most incomprehensible annual event we still observe. That's why everything is closed for four days - to give us a chance to try to make some sense of it. One question I do often hear leading up to Easter is about what traditional festive meal is most appropriate to mark this unique occasion. The answer, for obvious reasons, is rabbit with eggs. Happy Easter!  

A New Take on Changing Our Clocks

 

Standard Time or DST: Must it be an “Either/Or” Choice?

Some of us will be a bit bleary-eyed this coming Monday morning from the hour of sleep snatched away from us on the weekend on account of our switch to Daylight Saving Time. We’ll hear plenty of griping about it too. Questions about why exactly it is that we change our clocks twice yearly, as most of us in North America have been doing since the early 20^th century, have grown over the past decade or two.  

A construct of the World War 1 period, Daylight Saving Time (DST) was initially created to save energy. Proponents also point to certain safety benefits and to some economic advantages related to tourism and recreation. Before the advent of DST, we remained on Standard Time year-round.

A Private Member’s bill called the “Time Amendment Act” was passed in the Ontario Legislature five years ago. The bill proposed that Ontario abolish Standard Time and remain on DST year-round. This has not yet been implemented because the bill also requires (quite appropriately) that Ontario’s bordering jurisdictions of Quebec, Manitoba, Minnesota, Michigan and New York State also do the same before we proceed with it. And none has done so – yet.

We tend to hear more complaining about the twice annual switching when we “spring forward” and lose an hour’s sleep than we do in November when we gain that hour back. It’s a nuisance they say - adjusting our clocks and our circadian rhythms twice annually - and the idea of scrapping the current practice does seem to have a good measure of popular support. As with many seemingly simple and logical ideas, the devil is very much in the details so before we all proclaim our agreement to scrap Standard Time altogether, let’s look at what it would actually mean.

Under Standard Time, in Toronto, on December 21^st, the sun rises at 7.50am and sets at 4.43pm – leaving us with less than nine hours of daylight and more than 15 hours of darkness. Most of us who travel to work each day in December do so in morning daylight and return home in late afternoon darkness. Children making their way to and from school enjoy daylight for each leg of their journey.

Were we to remain on DST through the dark winter months, as the Time Amendment Act proposes, morning daylight would then come an hour later. In Toronto, between November and March, that would mean darkness until almost 9am with most commuters and students completing their morning journeys before daybreak. Yes, evening darkness would also come an hour later with the December 21^st sunset coming at 5.43pm – still well before most commuters have arrived home.

I am an early riser. I like morning daylight and would prefer not to wait until 9am before I can see it. In my view, Standard Time offers the most judicious and sensible allocation of our less than nine hours of daylight during this dark five-month period. It allows for safe and well-lit travel to and from school for children even if the afternoon commute home for most workers is done mostly in darkness.

If we were to remain on Standard Time year-round as has also been suggested, in June, early dawn light in Toronto would arrive around 4am with the actual sunrise just after 4.30am. Sunset would be just after 8pm. Do we really want daylight at 4am?

A third possibility – one that has not been widely discussed, if at all – is to scrap both Standard Time and DST and settle half-way between the two - 30 minutes earlier than DST and 30 minutes later than Standard Time. Had we decided on this solution before this weekend which is now upon us, we would be preparing to set our clocks ahead on Saturday night by 30 minutes. Then we would never have to worry - or complain - about ever having to change them again. 

We could call it “Half-Baked Time” (HBT). Under HBT, in December in Toronto, sunrise would be at 8.20am and sunset at 5.13pm. In June, sunrise would be at 5am and sunset at 8.30pm. If we are determined to do away with the twice-yearly time changes, why must it be an “either/or” choice between DST and Standard Time?

In my view, Standard Time is best for the short days of winter and DST is best for the rest of the year. I don’t mind the current twice-yearly clock changing practice (which for many of us includes changing the batteries in our smoke and CO2 detectors) but if we, along with our neighbouring jurisdictions, really are determined to scrap the practice, I say let’s go with HBT.  

 

Adult-Onset Recreational Hockey

I never played organized hockey as a kid. Oddly, swimming was my winter sport from grade 6 through high school and in university, I mostly played squash in the winter. I cannot remember where or how I learned to skate but I do remember my mother taking my sister and me to Bob Patrick’s Sports in St. Catharines, Ontario to get “new” skates every couple of years at something called the “skate exchange”. I had hockey sticks for road hockey and somehow came to own a very stiff pair of 60’s style hockey gloves at some point in my childhood but I had never owned any real hockey equipment until the fall of 1991 when a friend named Wilson finally convinced me to try playing outdoor hockey - once. I agreed to come out only once, partly because I didn’t think I would enjoy it and mostly because I wanted him off my back about it. He had started organizing weekly shinny games at various City of Toronto outdoor rinks which required an extensive and persistent working of phone lines every week to pester those of us in his rolodex.

I think we played at Jimmie Simpson rink on Queen Street East that first time. I was awful and I struggled mightily but it was an epic workout and I survived. I had no helmet, no shin pads and no jock. My feet were cold and uncomfortable in my ancient skates. I lurched around the ice trying not to get in the way. But somehow it was ok and Wilson praised my courage in coming out and I think it was then that I realized that he was never going to let me slip out of his circle of weekly hockey phone calls. I was either going to have to avoid him completely or accept the fact that I had unwittingly become a hockey player of sorts. I got some used shin pads, an old helmet and a jock at Play it Again Sports in December of 1991 and played with Wilson and the others each week through the rest of the winter without any serious injury. My skating improved a bit too.  

A few weeks into the 1992-1993 season, I decided that a skate upgrade would probably make a big difference so I purchased the first pair of new skates I had ever owned at National Sports just after Christmas. After a painful period of working them in, my skating and my confidence improved. Wilson was able to book ice consistently on Thursday nights but at a different rink and at a different time each week. He dutifully called each of us every Thursday with the where and when. We carried on that same way through the 1995-1996 season. By the fall of 1996, Wilson had married, had a baby on the way and had moved to Oakville. He made it known that he would be stepping back from his hockey organizing duties but was still happy to play if someone else made the bookings and the phone calls (which soon transitioned to emails).

In the fall of 1996, I decided to step up and contact the City of Toronto permit office to ask when the rinks were opening and to inquire about possibly making the first booking. The permit officer asked me offhandedly if I had considered a seasonal weekly permit instead of a series of one-time reservations. There is an outdoor rink called Otter Creek about 800 metres from where I live but it had never been one of the 15 or so rinks Wilson had booked over the years. I said “how about Otter Creek on Thursday nights?” He said “Would 7.15 to 8.30pm work? That slot is available.” So I booked it, contingent on filing a permit application with all of our names, addresses and ages along with a certification of sorts that 80% of our group lived in the north Toronto area. The application asked for the name of the league or organization so I wrote “The Wilson Hockey League”. The permit was issued a week later. As of this writing (February, 2025), the Wilson Hockey League is now nearing the end of its 29th season at Otter Creek. The permit cost has increased from zero in the first couple of seasons to almost $2,700 this year. We play with goalies (usually) and full equipment. People watch us play every week. For many of us, Thursday night outdoor hockey is the highlight of every Toronto winter.

I would characterize the hockey played in the Wilson Hockey League as Serious Shinny. It is, above all else, friendly and we don’t keep score (the goalies say that they do) but our games are fast and competitive. Every year, as some in the group retire or move away, we add new players who are usually younger, faster and more fit that those they replace. Those of us who are the league’s founding members are now in our early sixties and most of us have learned to play smarter than we did twenty years ago as the youngsters whirl and stick-handle around us. But we run the league so they show the requisite respect and deference to us. Such is the culture of hockey.

What I really wanted to write about - and I’m just getting to it now - is the degree of pleasure that our outdoor hockey brings us. The group, even as it changes from year to year, offers a wonderful camaraderie - but not in the macho male “locker room” sense; we share a good-spirited bonding which occasionally leads to what our parents may have called “horsing-around”. But some of us now bring our progeny who are impressionable adolescents or teenagers and we don’t have to adjust our conduct for them. We’re mature and self-censored. That’s what happens when you’re sixty.

As for what happens on the ice, at various times throughout each season we battle wind, bitter cold, snow squalls and sometimes even rain but we still enjoy our share of perfect winter evenings with no wind and temperatures somewhere between minus 5 and plus 5 (the rink is artificially cooled). We have 20 non-goalie paying members signed up for the 16-week season but never do they all show up. Goalies, who must develop an intuitive sense of their position in the net as the creases are not marked, are the most difficult to recruit. In accordance with long-standing hockey tradition, our goalies do not pay fees. Rather, we go out of our way to accommodate them by picking them up, dropping them off and generally treating them like royalty. Ideally, we will have eight skaters on each side – five on the ice and three on the bench - but there are times when vacations, challenging weather conditions or the demands of a busy city life reduce our numbers to five or six or seven. These are the times when we invite anyone else around the rink to join in, be they fast-skating teenagers, girls, boys, children or parents. The game adjusts itself to the varying skill levels of the participants, allowing even the slowest and least skilled players (like I was in 1991) to be part of the game.

The joy that our outdoor hockey brings us feels difficult to describe. When most of the city’s population is engaged in sedentary indoor activity, there we are on a cold winter night playing a game for fun, getting great exercise and enjoying a collective sense of friendship and solidarity. As long as the City of Toronto continues to offer me a permit each year, the Wilson Hockey League will endure.   

 

 

Chiefs 32, Bills 29

In the Superbowl era (post 1967), the Buffalo Bills have played in the AFC Championship Game seven times and, thanks to four consecutive wins from 1991 through 1994, they still maintain a winning record of four wins and three losses. The first of those three losses came in January, 1989 in Cincinnati after posting a 12-4 1988 break-out season which began their great run under Marv Levy and Jim Kelly. The Bills were clearly punching above their weight that year after beating the Houston Oilers at home in the Divisional round. The Bengals won the game 21-10 and went on to lose the Superbowl to the 49ers. After the four consecutive wins, the next AFC title game for Buffalo was four years ago – in the COVID season of 2020. After narrowly beating the Colts in the Wildcard round, then the Ravens in the Divisional round, the Bills, again probably punching well above their weight, took a 9-0 lead against the Chiefs in Kansas City before falling 38-24. That loss set their record in conference title games back to 4-2.

Entering last night’s contest at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills were two-point underdogs but a plurality of pundits whose prognostications I came across thought that their time had finally come and that the Chiefs drive for an unprecedented third straight Superbowl title would fall short and the Bills would go to their first Superbowl in 31 years. It was not to be as we know on this sobering Monday morning. A 32-29 loss has broken the hearts of Bills Mafia and will cause me to perform my annual ritual of putting away my Bills hats, shirts, jackets and pins until late July when training camp begins. The difference this time, compared to the two other title game losses, is that I really did feel that they would win the game last night. I was feeling pretty good all day long – a magnificent cross-country ski in powdery fluffy snow under blue Muskoka skies followed by a relaxing and rejuvenating sauna, a few dunks in the lake, a couple of beers, lasagna, coleslaw and a cheery pie for dinner. But they lost.

Over the past week, after the Bills beat the Ravens, my thoughts naturally turned to the possibility of the Bills making it to the Superbowl in New Orleans. Had they been successful last night, as a season ticket holder, I presumably would have been offered the option to enter a lottery of sorts for a shot at a pair of the block of tickets which the NFL allocates to each participating team. How many tickets would Bills fans be allocated? How would the lottery work? Would it be based on subscription seniority or on the quality of currently held season tickets or would it just simply be a “luck-of-the-draw” lottery? What would our chances be? When would we learn any of these details? These questions swirled in my mind over the past week as I looked with mild amusement and some trepidation at the possibility of camping on Lake Pontchartrain. Thankfully, there’s no reason now to fret about accommodations in Louisiana or the answers to any of these other questions. I still know none of them except that my friend Steve whose seats are next to mine in section 111 managed to get to three of the four Superbowls 30 years ago by way of the lottery. He only missed the first one against the Giants. His dad has been a season ticket holder since the 1960s and he was pretty sure that their very high level of seniority helped them in the lotteries. As for finding accommodations in Minneapolis, Pasadena and Atlanta 30 years ago, they booked hotels in places which were a couple of hours drive from the Superbowl venues, rented vehicles and drove in the to host cities for the games. I do obviously hope to learn the answers to the lottery questions one day. Maybe I’ll know a year from now.

The countdown to the opening of the new Highmark Stadium is now well underway. Only one season remains to be played at what I will now call by its original name, Rich Stadium, the brutalist concrete slab built in 1973 about 20 miles south of Buffalo in the sleepy town of Orchard Park. Its staggering 80,000 seats almost doubled the capacity of the Bills previous home, War Memorial Stadium which opened in 1937. Its nickname was “the Rockpile” so perhaps we should use “the Slab” to describe Rich Stadium as it now enters its final year as an NFL venue. I didn’t attend my first game there until 1988 – a 9-6 Bills win over the Jets which featured a blocked field goal attempt by Fred Smerlas and fans running onto the field and tearing down the goalposts to celebrate a division win. I have many other fond memories of great games and great wins there and some not-so-fond memories of ridiculously boorish fan behaviour and epic traffic jams. The boorish fan behaviour has moderated considerably as the league’s efforts to make the stadium experience more family-friendly have paid off and the “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere thankfully is no more. As for the traffic exiting the parking lots, it’s as bad as ever and I really do hope that it is improved at the new stadium. I also really wish that Dalton Kincaid had caught that fourth down pass. If he had, I’d probably be packing up my tent for some Louisiana camping.         

Bills 27, Ravens 25

Event tickets now exist only electronically in our Apple Wallets, Google Wallets or any other phone-based wallet apps which may exist. It’s quite straightforward really – you just open the ticket on your phone and scan it on the reader at the gate. It’s much more secure than any form of paper tickets they tell us and I am sure they’re right about that. During the tailgate festivities outside Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park yesterday afternoon, I was catastrophizing about the chaos which would ensue should the wallet / scanner system go down for any length of time before the game. Tens of thousands of fans would either be late or might decide to crash the gates. What a nightmare something like that would be, I mused. Then shortly after 5.30pm, once through security, I scanned my phone several times and received not the reassuring beep of a successful scan but a series of incomprehensible error messages - not what you want to see on your phone with 70,000 well-lubricated Bills fans lined up behind you. This attracted the attention of a stadium staff member with a tablet in hand who pulled me aside and offered to help. There was a major issue today she explained with a Google Wallet update which had not reached many Samsung phones, obviously including mine. She could not have been more helpful and said several times that this was not my fault and that we would sort it all out. After verifying my identity (she had my season ticket account details on her tablet) she sent me a text message with a security code for me to re-type into an email and send somewhere. Helpless without reading glasses as I was, I handed her my phone and asked her to drive. She obliged and a couple of minutes later I was able to “scan in” on her tablet and I was finally on my way. I was worried enough about containing Derrick Henry and didn’t need that kind of stress as game-time approached. These electronic app-based systems work just fine – until they don’t.

I started on my journey as a fan of the Buffalo Bills in 1978 and 1979 and by 1980 I was fully committed. In January 1981, still on Christmas break from university, I was picking up some hours as a dishwasher at the Crock and Block restaurant in St. Catharines, Ont. In the bowels of the kitchen there, on Saturday January 3^rd I was able to catch the great Van Miller’s radio play-by-play call of the Bills first playoff game since 1974 as they fell in the Wildcard Round to the Chargers in San Diego. A year later they won a Wildcard game at Shea Stadium against the Jets then lost a heart-breaker at Cincinnati in the Divisional Round where on the potential game-tying touchdown drive, Joe Ferguson’s fourth down pass to Lou Piccone for a first down deep in Bengals territory was called back on a delay of game penalty. The Bengals then faced the Chargers a week later in the AFC Championship Game in what became known as the Freezer Bowl. The game-time temperature was minus 23C with sustained winds of 40kmh making for a windchill of minus 50C. I watched the game in London, Ont and I can clearly recall wondering why Americans choose to make football a winter sport. I’ve been wondering the same thing on-and-off ever since.

Weather forecasts in the days before last night’s NFL Divisional Round playoff game in Orchard Park portended the coldest weather to be experienced in this part of the world since the retreat of the glaciers some 10,000 years ago. No amount of insulated clothing or charcoal or electrified heated socks could keep us warm for six hours in conditions this harsh, we were warned. Turns out that the actual extreme cold weather is set to begin today and had not arrived by game-time yesterday or even by the time the game ended. Was it cold? Sure. Minus 8 or so which was fine with proper clothing which we certainly had. The game-changer was the battery-powered heated socks which performed and lasted as advertised. They seemed like a bit of a frivolous investment at $250 but the thought of them keeping my feet warm through many more January Bills home playoff games in the years to come actually makes my feet feel warmer even sitting here at my desk in north Toronto on this Buffalo Football Victory Monday.

What a game it was to be at: an electric crowd (maybe partly from the socks), a high stakes playoff game with light snow falling throughout and, in the end, a Bills win. The breaks certainly went their way as the Ravens turned the ball over three times to the Bills none and their long-tenured and reliable tight end Mark Andrews could not close the deal on a two-point conversion with a minute and thirty seconds remaining as the Bills hung on for a two-point win. Overtime seemed likely as I watched Lamar Jackson’s pass appear to land in his breadbasket but when the Bills fans in the section behind him erupted in joy, I knew he had dropped it. An easy recovery of an onside kick then one first down and it was time for victory formation. Now another January trip to Kansas City – this time for a berth in the Superbowl – is next week’s assignment for the Bills.

I got to bed just before 3am and I can say that I definitely haven’t been up that late since last year’s Divisional Round game against the Chiefs. Sitting in the parking lot for a solid hour after the game was much more enjoyable this time around as the Bills had won and the callers into WGR were happy. It took so long to finally get moving that as we inched along Southwestern Blvd toward to the 219, a convoy of sheriff’s vehicles escorted a group of buses around us and the traffic jam. We assumed that it was the Ravens players and staff enroute to the Buffalo airport for their miserable flight back to BWI. 30 minutes at the Peace Bridge then a series of lake-effect snow squalls were the last hurdles of the long but ultimately successful and enjoyable day and night.

“The right to play another week; another chance to go 1-0” is how Josh Allen described what his team accomplished last night. The Chiefs, with an extra day to prepare and playing at home will be ready. Can the Bills finally reverse the trend of playoff losses to the Chiefs? That’s why they play the games.  

Bills 31, Broncos 7

I found myself worrying more about the Ravens than the Broncos as the morning unfolded yesterday and I was hoping that wouldn’t jinx the Bills with the matter at hand – the matter of the Denver Broncos and their fearsome pass-rush, poised rookie quarterback and highly respected head coach. When the Broncos went up early with a long touchdown it seemed like my ill-advised foresight might cost us but it didn’t of course as the Bills cruised to a comfortable 31-7 win for the home fans in weather quite decent for mid-January in Orchard Park. But this morning I am more and more worried about these Ravens who come to town on Sunday night as the third seed in the AFC – the same as the Kansas City Chiefs were a year ago. Same time slot, same broadcast crew and the same seeding match-up with the third seed at the second seed. The main difference is that Taylor Swift will not be in the house.

Marv Levy, who turns 100 in August, famously said a few decades ago that to win in the NFL you must do two things: run the ball and stop the run. The game has evolved and that mantra doesn’t often apply in these times of high-flying passing offences and 41-38 games but sometimes it holds just as true as it did in the 1950s when Marv started coaching football. Yesterday was one of those times. The Bills dominated the Broncos in time of possession by more than a two-to-one margin mostly by running the ball very effectively. James Cook carried 23 times for 120 yards – an average of 5.2 yards per carry. In contrast, the Broncos featured back, Javonte Williams carried seven times for a paltry 29 yards. Marv would probably say that those two statistical measures – time of possession and rushing yards for and against – told the story of the game just like they would have in any decade in the history of the NFL.

I store my small Weber barbecue and my folding table - yes, the kind that I could jump off a van and land on, probably seriously injuring myself in the process – in an out-building at my cottage. I use it exclusively in Lot 7 at Highmark Stadium. On Friday, I went to get a snow shovel from that building and when I looked at the barbecue and table, I wondered if I would be loading them in my car before I left the cottage this time around. I figured that I would jinx things for sure were I to move them to the car before yesterday’s game was played but I did so within 30 minutes of the end of the game, along with a large bag of charcoal, lighter fluid and my heavy-duty Sorel boots. We are off to Orchard Park on Sunday for another winter evening playoff game and, while I really am worried about the Ravens, I am excited to be going once again to a football game which will be watched on television by tens of millions. Thankfully, I am past the point where I would or could jump on my folding table but I look forward to seeing other foolhardy Bills fans giving it a try. Not with my table of course.

With all but one of the Divisional round teams determined, pending tonight’s game between the Vikings and the Rams, the league announced the time slots for the four games after the Commanders win over the Bucs in Tampa. With then exception of the Bills v. Ravens, the match-ups are not as deliciously interesting as we might have hoped. The Houston Texans at Kansas City Chiefs kicks off the Divisional round at 4.30pm Saturday with the Chiefs listed now as 7.5-point favourites. That line opened at nine points and obviously some significant early money came in on the Texans who with an unlikely win over the Chiefs would give the Bills something more to play for the following evening – a chance to host the AFC Championship Game. It’s very difficult to imagine the Texans pulling off an upset of this magnitude but that’s why they play the games. Then on Saturday night, Washington plays the Lions in Detroit with the home team currently an 8.5-point favourite. Sunday at 3pm sees the winner of the Rams v. Vikings game play at Philadelphia.  

The Bills are favoured by one point against the Ravens. They say that home field is worth three points on the betting line so at a neutral site, the Ravens would be two-point favourites and if the game were to be played in Baltimore, they would be favoured by five. That line seems about right to me as Lamar Jackson, who has been spectacular recently, combined with the powerful running of Derek Henry, will present a huge challenge for the Bills “bend but don’t break” defence. Last time these teams met in the playoffs was four years ago in an empty Highmark Stadium when Taron Johnson intercepted Lamar Jackson in his own endzone and returned it more than 100 yards for a touchdown as the Bills went on to win 17-3. They will probably need a key turnover once again to win on Sunday night.

The game will feature the two top contenders for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award. The statistical edge does go Lamar Jackson but the intangible edge – maybe within the true meaning of “most valuable to his team” – edge probably goes to Josh Allen. There is no wrong choice here as in my view they are both fully deserving of the award. I would of course love to see Josh play his best game and lead the Bills to the AFC Championship Game and (easy for me to say), I would gladly trade that for Jackson winning the MVP.  

Patriots 23, Bills 16

I don’t think the lack of familiarity with the Buffalo Bills upcoming playoff opponent is any advantage to them but I really was not feeling good about the prospects of facing either the Dolphins or the Bengals in the upcoming Wildcard playoff game. Instead, the Denver Broncos, fresh off their 38-0 drubbing of the Chiefs back-ups yesterday at Mile High, come to Orchard Park on Sunday. I hope my slight sense of optimism doesn’t turn out to prove the “devil you know” proverb but I sense that there’s a certain satisfaction within Bills Mafia in these two particular devils being eliminated from contention for the seventh AFC playoff spot yesterday.

The Bills and Broncos have met only once in the playoffs in a game I remember very well: a tense, low-scoring AFC Championship Game played under sunny, calm and unseasonably mild conditions in Orchard Park 33 years ago. After a scoreless first half, Bills linebacker Carleton Bailey intercepted John Elway deep in Broncos territory and romped easily into the endzone for the Bills only touchdown of the day enroute to a 10-7 win. The Bills would then be crushed by Washington two weeks later in Minneapolis. The Broncos last visit to Buffalo is one that Bills fans would rather forget: a 24-22 loss in November, 2023. Wil Lutz made his second attempt at a game-winning field goal attempt count after he initially missed but was afforded a second chance on account of the Bills having 12 men on the field first time around.

This Broncos team comes to Buffalo with one of the best head coaches in the league in Sean Payton and an outstanding rookie quarterback in Bo Nix who is the first rookie quarterback to earn the Broncos starting job out of training camp since the team’s current General Manager John Elway did the same thing some 41 years earlier. The Broncos defence has been very good all season as it leads the NFL with 63 sacks but the offence under Nix is improving every week. This may be wishful thinking but I got the sense watching them shred the Chiefs back-ups yesterday and clinching the team’s first playoff berth since winning the Superbowl nine years ago that this was the peak of success for them – in the 2024 season anyway. They are clearly in an ascendency but my hunch is that their rookie quarterback might be overwhelmed by the hostile crowd, the weather, the situation and that their climb will end on Sunday with a loss to the Bills.

I won’t be attending the game on Sunday, although the 1pm start time is tempting. I’m using the same methodology as I did last year in terms of which playoff game(s) to attend. Winter football games in Buffalo are a big effort: Practically speaking in terms of potentially stressful and slow winter driving, clothing choices, the need for headlamps and hot food planning; psychologically speaking in terms of approach, attitude and mindset. Being outside for six or seven hours running only whatever heat your body can generate by standing is certainly a challenge and depending on exactly how cold it is, can be uncomfortable no matter how warmly you dress. Could be the year to finally invest in heated socks.

The plan, like last year, is to skip the Wildcard Round game and attend the Divisional Round game in two weeks time. The thinking is as follows: the Divisional Round - call it the conference semi-finals - is more important than the Wildcard Round in terms of being only two games away from the Superbowl. The plan is obviously conditional on the Bills winning this game against the Broncos. If they lose, then there will be no game to attend and the possibly flawed logic I’m using is that if they do lose the Wildcard game, then I wouldn’t have wanted to be there for a playoff loss anyway. I used the same logic last year by passing on the Pittsburgh Wildcard game and attending the Chiefs Divisional game which the Bills lost. It was an entertaining game, watched by some 50 million on television, and I don’t regret having gone. I regret the three-point loss to the eventual Superbowl champions but the pre-game excitement, having Taylor Swift in the house and the gripping one-score game were all well worth it. Being stuck in the parking lot for a solid hour afterward without moving and the late and dark drive home, not so much. If the stars align and the Bills win their Wildcard and Divisional games and the Chiefs somehow manage to lose their Divisional game, then the AFC Championship Game will be played in Orchard Park and I will end up at winter games in two consecutive weeks. Let’s hope that’s how it plays out.

Yesterday’s full slate of games featured more coverage of certain specific player contract incentives than I can remember in the past. James Cook tied the Bills record for rushing touchdowns at 16 which was held by none other than OJ Simpson. Von Miller recorded his sixth sack, Sam Martin and Mack Hollins both reached incentives and earned bonuses accordingly. Bucs receiver Mike Evans caught a pass near the end of their game – when the team would have been in victory formation - to go over 1,000 receiving yards for the 11^th consecutive season, tying a record held by Jerry Rice. At one point, I wondered if some cheap owners may be tempted to order that certain players either not play or be pulled from games before they earn their incentives but someone pointed out that this would severely limit a team’s ability to attract free agents in the future. I wonder if these incentives should be quite so publicly known as they are. Players running around celebrating bonuses earned just doesn’t seem like a good look for the league.

So, an unusual 1pm Sunday game – the third of six games on the slate next weekend, including a Monday night game where the poor Vikings, having lost their chance at the one-seed last night in Detroit, must travel to the west coast to face the Rams. After 272 regular season games, there are 13 NFL playoff games remaining, including the Superbowl.