Bills 27, Jets 17

Seems like 2020 has been tough for just about everyone. My dad died in the early hours of March 7th and before that, I had been focused on matters related to his illness and hospitalization and, in the days after his death, on comforting my grieving mother. I was driving somewhere in St. Catharines on Wednesday March 11th when I heard the news that the NCAA had announced that its men's and women's basketball tournaments would proceed but without fans in attendance. It was the moment when I finally realized the potential reach of the pandemic which we were all about to experience. No fans in the stands for one of the biggest North American sports events on the calendar? I couldn't imagine it. Since the three games of the men's Final Four are played in a domed football stadium, viewers would see a backdrop of 70,000 empty seats? It sounded surreal. 

The very next day, the tournaments were cancelled completely. And then the NHL and NBA seasons along with MLB training camps were suspended as well. The WHO had officially declared a pandemic and professional sports around the world ground to a halt. I didn't make sourdough like I was supposed to but I did isolate at the cottage through the spring, making weekly trips to St. Catharines on luxuriously empty roads. We got an internet dish at the cottage and, to replace the sports we would have watched, we binged all five seasons of Breaking Bad and all three seasons of Ozark. To change things up, we have now seen almost all of the first season of Fleabag. I did slowly come back to hockey and basketball when they resumed "bubble" play and got fully engaged with the Raptors seven game series against the Celtics which ended last week. The Blue Jays are having success too and I've been watching a bit.

But I was not terribly confident that the NFL would be able to pull off a season. With the sheer number of people needed to support an NFL team - multiplied by 32 - it seemed very likely that infections would sabotage the season before it even began. That's why the most impressive statistic I heard on the weekend was that of the more than 5,000 Covid tests administered to NFL players, team personnel and game-day stadium staff on Saturday, there were exactly zero positive tests. With 16 weeks of play plus playoffs still to come, there is plenty of opportunity for the NFL season to find its way off the rails but with week one almost complete as of this Monday morning, I am encouraged. 

If this were a "normal" year, I would have been so fired up about the Bills prospects for the upcoming season that I would have needed a sleep aid on Saturday night. About six weeks ago, the Bills offered season ticket holders a full refund on 2020 tickets which were paid for (in my case) in March. We were of course urged to leave the funds on account with the Bills for 2021 and if we did, we would qualify for extra swag, free subscriptions to I'm not sure what and, maybe most importantly, an option on game tickets in the event that a limited number of fans could attend home games later in the 2020 season. So that's what I did. If fans are permitted for later home games and if I am offered tickets and if the border is opened, I still might not go. We'll see. Before the game yesterday, a reporter tweeted that there were "plenty of good seats still available". Indeed.

As for yesterday's game, I thought that it looked good on TV. Pretty close to normal. The actual play between the lines looked just as competitive as ever with the stands at Bills Stadium empty. Same for the bits of live action and highlights from other games around the league. Some stadiums are allowing fans but most are not. My sense is that this will end up making less difference than I would have predicted. The rules around piped-in noise in stadiums seem odd with a decibel cap of 70 which is well below normal noise levels in places like Buffalo, Seattle and New Orleans. 

The Bills were in complete control of the game yesterday despite the relatively close looking score. Next week, they will play before about 15,000 fans in Miami. Why the City of Miami and/or the State of Florida is allowing fans at all is a bit of a mystery to me but the same number were allowed in Kansas City on Thursday.