Bills 27, Chargers 17

Chargers coach Anthony Lynn, former Bills quarterback coach and one of the contenders to replace Rex Ryan after the 2016 season, faced heavy criticism for calling a running play on the goal-line with 25 seconds remaining in yesterday's game. With no time-outs remaining and trailing by 10 points, the Chargers needed a score on that play and the Bills run defence denied them by stopping Austin Ekeler at the one yard line. As the offence scrambled to the line, the clock ticked all the way down to six seconds before the next snap, an incomplete pass which removed another three seconds from the clock,  The game then ended with quarterback Justin Herbert tackled on a keeper which may have been a broken play. How could Lynn be so incompetent as to call a run play up the middle in that situation? "Inexplicable" said CBS colour man Rich Gannon. "He should be fired for that decision alone" said another talking head later in the day. Well, had it worked and resulted in a touchdown, Lynn would have been praised for his innovative and gutsy play calling. Isn't one of the most important elements in offensive play calling to do what the defence isn't expecting? Sure it is but when the risk of the play being unsuccessful could easily foreclose any chances, however slim, that the Chargers had, it was tough for Lynn to defend afterward. I still compliment Lynn, whose team fell to 3-8, for taking the kind of risk that only a long-established head coach whose job isn't in jeopardy might take. He may not last the week and if this was his last game, I hope that he can sleep peacefully knowing that he truly believed Ekeler would score on that running play.

The Bills found a way to hang on for the win in a game which, for much of the second half, felt closer than the score made it look. After turning the ball over on three consecutive fourth quarter possessions, Tre'Davious White intercepted Herbert which led to a Tyler Bass field goal and a ten point lead. Shaking off the two week hangover from the "Hail Murray" loss in Phoenix to improve to 8-3, the Bills, amazingly, gave up another Hail Mary style pass which took the Chargers inside the five with a chance for a quick score and an onside kick attempt. We, and Anthony Lynn, know what happened after that. 

The Bills looked good in the first half with a re-established running attack and better run defence too. Although neither Devin Simgletary nor Zack Moss went over 100 yards rushing, together, they helped the team rack up 172 yards on the ground. And they needed it too as Josh Allen played on of his weaker games of the season, throwing erratically at times and personally causing two turnovers which could have been costly. I'll still take him over Baker Mayfield or Sam Darnold any day. 

The Bills next game, a Monday Night Football contest against the San Francisco 49ers, is just as likely to be played at Lawrence Park High School in North Toronto as it is anywhere else. In an effort to curb the rapid spread of COVID, on Saturday, Santa Clara County, California (where the 49ers Levi's Stadium is located) imposed a temporary ban on all contact sports within its boundaries. In addition to the MNF game against Buffalo, the 49ers have another scheduled home game the following week. The team will also have to find another facility in which to practice. According to The Sporting News, the most likely places for the 49ers to play their next two games are State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ (home of the Cardinals and the site of last week's Hail Murray game), the Oakland Coliseum (former home of the Raiders) which is in Alameda County or California Memorial Stadium (home of the PAC 10's Golden Bears) which is also in Alameda County. If Alameda County follows the lead of Santa Clara County with a similar ban on contact sports, that leaves only the Cardinals home field as a viable option right now. So, the Bills will be travelling somewhere, probably westward, next Sunday to play the 49ers on Monday Night. 

Although the NFL has managed to navigate almost all of the COVID roadblocks so far this season and has executed its schedule in full, yesterday featured the Denver Broncos having to resort to their 5th string option at quarterback after all four quarterbacks on the active roster were ruled out for either testing positive or having been in close, unmasked contact with a player who did. That meant that practice squad receiver and sometimes college quarterback Kendall Hinton got the nod under centre against the Saints yesterday. Hinton won't be hearing from his agent this morning about interest from other teams in his quarterbacking as he went one for nine, passing for 13 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. The Broncos pulled out a 1930's era NFL playbook and ran the ball on almost every snap in a 31-3 home loss. Tomorrow's game between the Ravens and Steelers, originally scheduled to be the Thanksgiving night game, is still a go.   

Cardinals 32, Bills 30

The term "Hail Mary" pass came into the popular NFL vernacular after a playoff game which took place on December 28, 1975 in Minneapolis, MN. With his team trailing 14-10 in the game's dying seconds, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach launched a desperation pass toward the endzone which was caught by Drew Pearson at the two yard line as a Minnesota Vikings defender fell to the ground, allowing Pearson to walk into the endzone for the winning score. After the game, Staubach, a Catholic, told a reporter "I just closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary". The term had apparently been used as early as the 1930s by coaches and players at Notre Dame University and other Catholic schools to describe a low probability long passing play which would require Devine intervention to succeed. Although there are many examples of successful Hail Mary passes in recent NFL history (Aaron Rodgers has had a couple of them in his career), probably the most famous one comes from a college game the day after Thanksgiving in 1984. It was thrown by Doug Flutie of Boston College against the Miami Hurricanes and became known as "Hail Flutie". I can not recall a successful Hail Mary pass in Buffalo Bills history - either for or against - until yesterday.  

A successful Hail Mary pass requires Devine intervention. Or DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins, one of the top receivers in the league and playing his first season with the Cardinals, leaped high in the air on the left side of the endzone and somehow plucked the ball away from three Buffalo defenders who surrounded him. It gave quarterback Kyler Murray and the Cardinals a miraculous win and crushed the spirit of Bills Nation after Buffalo had scored what looked to be the winning touchdown to take a four point lead with 34 seconds left in the game. Lost in the aftermath of the Hail Mary will be the drive which Josh Allen engineered, including the 21 yard touchdown pass which was an excellent throw by Allen and a spectacular catch by Stefon Diggs. Allen and the Bills played poorly at times over the course of the game but appeared to have pulled it out at the end as the team heads into the bye week after 10 games. Instead of an 8-2 record, the Bills sit at 7-3, with the 6-3 Dolphins in hot pursuit. As the weeks roll by, the Dolphins week 17 game in Orchard Park looms larger and larger. 

The bye week for the Bills comes with six games remaining. Three of the those games will be in prime time - at San Francisco, home to the undefeated Steelers and at New England. The other games see the Chargers come to Buffalo in two weeks and the Bills travel to Denver before Christmas before the week 17 Dolphins game on January 3rd. Through 10 games, the offense had generally been very good with the addition of Diggs and the defence has been disappointing overall. Special teams have been surprisingly good: Cory Bojorquez (yesterday's shank notwithstanding) has punted well if not infrequently, place kicker Tyler Bass has settled in very well with another strong game yesterday and return specialist Andre Roberts has been nothing short of outstanding. Recognizing that this may be a result of recency bias, I would still say that he is the Bills best kick-off and punt returner I can remember. He has sure hands, good speed and usually chooses the right return path.

I gave up a long time ago trying to understand the political strategy of Donald Trump. His continued delusional claim of massive electoral fraud which he surely knows will not succeed is just the latest inexplicable tactic. But it is the most destructive one yet. As President Obama said on 60 Minutes last night, Trump's ego and refusal to accept legitimate defeat by a clear (but certainly not overwhelming) majority of American voters is understandable to those who know him but the ongoing complicity of most other senior Republicans who "should know better" is not. They obviously fear retribution from him if they break ranks but as the transition to the Biden Administration moves forward and Trump's voice recedes to the far-right shadows of the internet, they will have to recognize reality sooner or later. History will not look kindly on them. Or on Donald Trump. I guess I would say that if American democracy can survive this, it can survive anything.   

  

  

Bills 44, Seahawks 34

I felt old when we heard that Josh Allen's grandmother died on Saturday as the last of my grandparents have been gone more that 25 years. Coach McDermott offered him the chance to sit out yesterday's game at Bills Stadium but he chose to play. And play he did. After four weeks of relative mediocrity, both Allen and the Bills reverted to the form they showed through the season's first four weeks, posting a convincing win over what was thought to be one of the league's best teams. It is certainly possible that the Seahawks, who had the NFL's worst defence statistically entering the game, actually aren't as good as advertised but the Bills played well in all three phases of the game and were deserving winners. The game plan was solid too: virtually no running attack on offence and aggressive pass rushing on defence. Jerry Sullivan, ever the glass-half-empty Buffalo-based sports writer, even called it Sean McDermott's signature win in his three and a half seasons as Bills head coach. I would point to last season's Thanksgiving Day win in Dallas for that but sure, it was a big one indeed.

The Dolphins continue to impress and surprise too. They won yesterday in Phoenix - the site of the Bills game next Sunday and the last one before their bye week. The Cardinals will be highly motivated not to lose a second consecutive home game to an AFC East opponent so it will present another big test in a season with a much tougher schedule than last year. But, with yesterday's statement win which improved their record to 7-2, the Bills held on to their claim of being one of the top teams in the AFC and could still challenge for a first round bye - something which they have not achieved since 1993. 

The song "Georgia on My Mind" was written in 1930 and popularized by native son Ray Charles in 1960. His version became the official state song of Georgia in 1979. Over the next 57 days, Georgia will be on the minds of the Republican and Democratic party machines, CNN, FOX News and everyone else who follows US politics. If the Dems can win both of the two run-off Senate races in Georgia on January 5, 2021, the parties would be deadlocked at 50 seats each. In the Senate, the Vice-President, who we now know will be Kamala Harris, holds the deciding vote in the event of a tie. Georgia voters will therefore play a key role in determining just how much of the Biden administration's agenda it can enact - until at least the next round of Senate seats (and the entire House) is up for election two years from now. The Republican message to Georgia voters will be that they and they alone can stop socialism in America. It will probably work. For the next eight weeks, we will all come to know more about every city, town, county and precinct in the Peach State than we could have imagined. Like it or not, the US election of 2020 rolls on. 

Even if the Democrats win both Georgia Senate seats to achieve an equal footing with the Republicans, with the Filibuster, which effectively makes a 60 seat majority necessary for passing bills without the other party's agreement, President Biden will have to find ways to make deals with the wily Mitch McConnell who has been his colleague across the aisle in the Senate for decades. Apparently, the two have a good relationship and have worked together effectively over the years. But that was back in the days of cooperation and bi-partisanship between the parties and between the Executive and Congressional branches - something which, in my view, ended in 2010 with the rise of the Tea Party. Biden has promised to begin the process of unifying the country and bridging its bitter partisan divide. He will have to navigate a split (and probably Republican controlled) Senate and a House of Representatives with a reduced Democratic majority if he is to succeed. I've heard no explanation from Trump or his surrogates as to how the perpetrators of the massive electoral fraud managed to engineer the defeat of Trump (while impressively growing his popular vote totals across the country) at the same time as the GOP (probably) held on to its majority in the Senate and cut in to the Dems House majority.      

A modest library could be filled with what I don't know about Snoop Dogg but I do know that he is from Long Beach, CA and is known to be a prolific marijuana smoker and huge professional sports fan. I also know that he - perhaps predictably - supported Barack Obama in 2008 and that he also - maybe less predictably - is known to have at one time supported Texas libertarian congressman Ron Paul. Here is the text of a very interesting Snoop Dogg tweet from last week:

"I get it, you hated him 4 years ago and you still hate him now, I’ve seen a lot of hate thrown his way, but this guy is a consistent winner and an overachiever. Call it jealously, call it envy, some people just can’t handle how successful he is and how much money he has, could even be jealous that he’s got a hot foreign model as his wife. That’s what the people who support him love about him. Yes there have been some scandals, yes there have been some lies, and maybe a few times he’s twisted the truth to make himself look better. He’s out there everyday proving those haters wrong time after time. You may not have wanted him in this role, but he’s there now and there is nothing you or I can do about it. I know its possibly going to get worse over the next several days, but like him or not, Tom Brady is turning things around in Tampa Bay."

I'll add that Snoop wrote this before last night's game against the Saints where Brady stopped "turning things around". 

Bills 24, Patriots 21

I've done some very rough calculations on the career football earnings of Bills defensive tackle Justin Zimmer. A native of the central Michigan town of Greenville, Zimmer, who played his college ball at Division II school Ferris State in Big Rapids, Michigan, was not drafted to the NFL when he left college in 2016. Since then, he has defined the role of fringe player, bouncing around the practice squads (with an occasional injury call-up to dress for an actual game) of the Saints, Montreal Alouettes, Falcons and Browns. 2020 represents his second stint with the Bills who first signed him as undrafted free agent in 2016 when Rex Ryan was coaching the Bills and Doug Whaley was the GM. The Bills signed him again on August 16th of this year, waived him on September 5th then, after having cleared waivers, signed to the practice squad - once again. He dressed for games this season in weeks one and six as well as yesterday against the Patriots. Entering the game, he had five career NFL tackles. I figure that, including his CFL earnings and four seasons mostly on various NFL practice squads, he has earned about $20 per hour - mostly for practicing football. Not exactly high paying work but more interesting and fulfilling than working at, say, an Amazon warehouse. 

With 16 seconds remaining in yesterday's game, the Bills appeared to have managed to play exactly well enough to lose the game 28-24 as Cam Newton had led his team into the red zone, and was surely about to complete the game's winning touchdown drive - or at least send the game into overtime if the drive stalled. But Newton wasn't ready for Justin Zimmer. Through his years of toiling in Division II, punching the clock on practice squads and even going north to the CFL for part of a season, Zimmer had been patiently biding his time, waiting for the opportunity to make his way to the headline of an NFL game recap - and into this blog. From behind, as Newton was about to be tackled, Zimmer punched the ball out of his hands and eventually into the hands of team-mate and fellow fringe player Dean Marlowe. It was the Patriots only turnover in a game where both teams were able to run the ball effectively at times on a windy and rainy day in Orchard Park. Maybe Zimmer will retire now that he has carved out his place in Bills history, delivering the key blow in the team's first home win against New England since 2011. But he probably won't. After all, he needs the money and with the economy the way it is.......

That last home win against the Patriots in 2011 also came as a result of a key and rare turnover in a game I attended. Tom Brady's 4th quarter pass was deflected at the line of scrimmage and landed easily in the hands of Bills cornerback Drayton Florence who ran it back for a touchdown. A few minutes later, Ryan Lindell then kicked the winning field goal as time expired as the Bills went to 3-0 on a warm September afternoon. Bills fans were giddy and sensed a magical season was at hand. After improving to 5-2 with win over Washington at the Rogers Centre in Toronto a month later, the Bills signed quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to a lucrative contract extension. He then slumped badly as the team would win only one more game for the remainder of the season, finishing 6-10.

But things are different this time. Josh Allen remains on his rookie contract so we don't have to worry about him - at least not until 2023 when he could become an unrestricted free agent if the Bills do not sign him to an extension beforehand. If he continues the season-to-season progression we've seen since 2018, he will command a top NFL quarterback salary which will probably be more than $40 million annually by then. Eat your heart out, Justin Zimmer. And the coach Sean McDermott, who yesterday earned his first win over legendary coach Bill Belichick in seven tries, is more likely to lead the team to the division title and a home playoff game than Chan Gailey ever was. Now that the Patriots have sunk to 2-5, the Bills will now need to worry more about the Dolphins as a division threat this season. And those Dolphins, predicted in the pre-season to be in the running for a very high draft pick, earned their first win yesterday with quarterback Tua Tagovailoa over the Rams to stay a game and a half behind the Bills at 4-3. Maybe their week 17 game in Orchard Park will be a big one after all.

Tomorrow (Tuesday November 3rd) is a big day for me for a few reasons. It marks the 10th anniversary of the death of a good friend, the 21st anniversary of the death of another good friend's father, the 94th birthday of yet another good friend's mother.....and the US election. The main hope I have for the election is that it be decided by the American voters and not by Amy Boney Carrot. I mean, she hasn't finished the SCOTUS orientation program yet, still needs the photo taken for her office pass and was seen on the weekend wandering around the east side of Capitol Hill looking for a washroom which wasn't locked. Let her settle in at least until the next abortion case reaches the court.