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.