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.