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.