Bills quarterback Tyrod Taylor, the fifth year man out of Virginia Tech, has not thrown an interception in five consecutive games now - a new team record. And, looking at his body of work through the ten games he's started this season, his natural instinct to maintain attention to ball security has enabled him to consistently manage to avoid disastrous plays. Many a young and mobile quarterback in the NFL has suffered from a tendency to self-destruct in their first season or two before learning to protect the ball as it should be protected. I honestly think that spending four entire seasons as Joe Flacco's back-up (and never registering a regular season or playoff start) seasoned him to the point that when he did get his chance to be a franchise quarterback this season in Buffalo, he was truly ready. He's really played very well all season, including in yesterday's match-up with the Texans, winners of four straight coming into the game. In fact, both teams protected the ball yesterday as there were no turnovers by either team, until the game's very last play when Marcus Easley intercepted Brian Hoyer's pass in the end zone.
LeSean McCoy rushed for over 100 yards, Sammy Watkins caught three balls for over 100 yards and a touchdown and Taylor finished 11 for 21 with three touchdowns - just the kind of stats Greg Roman would have been hoping for as he drew up the game plan. When Rex Ryan hired Roman to be the team's offensive coordinator, he said that their offensive approach would emphasize the run over the pass. The Bills ran the ball 36 times yesterday and passed 21 times in their 57 plays from scrimmage.
So, at the three-quarter mark of the season, the Bills have posted a perfectly symmetrical record, now being 3-3 at home and 3-3 on the road with four games to go. The next three games come against NFC East teams: At Philadelphia next week, at Washington the following week and then home to the Cowboys two days after Christmas. The Jets visit on January 3rd to close out the regular season. With yesterday's win, the Bills remain squarely in the wildcard hunt, now with the same record as the Texans but holding the all-important tie breaker against them. A 10-6 record will very likely be enough to earn a post-season spot.
The New York Times published an editorial on its front page this past weekend, the first time it has done so since the 1920s. It wasn't exactly a revelation that the Times supports some measure of stricter gun control and the paper's publishers surely knew that the editorial would probably serve to strengthen the resolve of the NRA types so dedicated to closing down any debate at all on what they see as the spirit of the sacred Second Amendment. But, as long as the gun lobby helps to fund most Republican Congressional campaigns and as long as the Republicans control Congress (which they will at least for another year), then no action will be taken. The argument against any move toward tighter gun safety is the "slippery slope" theory which says that, while it is possible that any individual restriction, such as not allowing those on the terrorist "no fly" list to purchase firearms, may sound reasonable in isolation, it would represent the first step in a march toward the federal government taking away the guns of citizens. The other argument I've heard is that bad people will always be able to get guns if they want them. This was also the basis of the main objection to the now scrapped Canadian long gun registry. If we look at jurisdictions like the U.K. and Japan which have very restrictive gun ownership laws, these countries see gun deaths which are orders of magnitude lower than in the US. The San Bernardino couple who killed 14 people last week had an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons and ammunition in their home - all of which were legally purchased. As David Frum said last week, the NRA has established conditions where not only nothing can be done about this, but nothing can be said either.
No comments:
Post a Comment