There is only one scenario where an NFL team can play a home playoff game without winning their division. And its about as unlikely as the Miami Dolphins winning a game this season. It involves the fifth and sixth seeded teams playing in a conference championship game which would take place at the home of the fifth seeded team. Win your division - and there are eight of them - and you will have a home playoff game. Make the playoffs as a wild card team and you will be on the road for all of your playoff games (except as mentioned above). The New England Patriots have enjoyed what seems like a perpetual stranglehold on the AFC East since Tom Brady began his career as their quarterback in 2001. Over that almost 20 year period, the Patriots have won the division every season except for two. The Buffalo Bills last home playoff game was in December, 1996, back when fewer teams made the playoffs and each conference's two wild card teams met in the first round. The Bills lost that game, the last of Jim Kelly's career, to Jacksonville.
Yesterday in Orchard Park, the Bills had their best opportunity in more than 20 years to lay the foundation for their first division title since 1995. But they couldn't quite get it done. A blocked punt which was returned for a touchdown was the difference in the game which saw the Bills in position to steal the game as they drove for the winning touchdown before the Patriots ended the game with their fourth interception late in the fourth quarter. The loss came despite the Bills defence holding the Patriots to 11 first downs and 224 total yards and the offence managing to the score the first and only touchdown against the Patriots through a full quarter of the season. In a game dominated by defence, the Bills went toe-to toe with the Patriots but fell short again, sending their fans home disappointed but perhaps not as disillusioned as they have been after previous blow-out losses to the Patriots in Orchard Park over the last 20 years.
Micah Hyde said after the game that if one of his teammates had hit Tom Brady the way that Jonathan Jones hit Josh Allen early in the fourth quarter (sending him into the league's concussion protocol where he would remain for the rest of the game) they would have been ejected from the game. Head Coach Sean McDermott said after the game that "there is no room in football for a hit like that" and also suggested that Jones should have been ejected for the hit. The NFL's senior vice-president of officiating Al Riveron, reached by Buffalo News reporter Vic Carucci after the game, disagreed. He said "we looked at it and in this situation, we didn't feel that contact rose to the level of ejection.......we have standards for ejection and this did not rise to that standard". Jones, for his part explained that "there is never intent to hurt anyone. We were running around playing football." And maybe that's the problem.
During the CBS broadcast, Dan Fouts commented after Allen's injury that they are trying to coach helmet-to-helmet hits out of football. Well, I'm skeptical. It just might not be possible to remove these hits from tackle football, regardless of instructional changes in junior football or the severity of penalties handed out to the offenders at the college or NFL level. It's part of football and always has been. Legendary ABC college football play-by-play broadcaster Keith Jackson used to look forward to teams "cracking some heads" when previewing an important rivalry game. If Josh Allen had been playing in the NFL 20 or 30 years ago, he probably would have missed one play after the hit he took yesterday. "You had your bell rung; get back out there" the coaches might have said to him. After the play which laid him out, Allen jogged to the locker room after being evaluated under the blue tent by an independent neurologist and was seen walking around and talking with team officials after the game. It is too early to say but I predict that he will play next week.
Rob Gronkowski retired from the NFL in March and is now promoting his new CBD product line which he says has helped him become pain free for the first time in many years. At a promotional press conference earlier this month, Gronkowski explained (presumably to give context to the efficacy of his CBD products) that in his football career he had nine surgeries and 20 concussions, including five black-out incidents. He also suggested that any injury, including CTE, the affliction which can result from repeated head trauma, can be fixed and that the CBD product which he now promotes (as an investor and a consumer) has cured his headaches and "fixed" his issues with head trauma. After Gronkowski made this claim, a prominent behavioural neurologist publicly called him out, saying that neurodegenerative diseases like CTE or Alzheimers can not be fixed and will eventually win.
I like throwing and catching a football but I never played the sport in an organized setting. I do enjoy the game as a spectator and the fact that it is dangerous for those who play has not changed that, even as we learn more about just how dangerous it might be in the long term. For now anyway. So, on to next week where the Bills travel to Nashville, the scene of Homerun Throwback, one of the most infamous and devastating plays in Bills playoff history.
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