Bills 31, Saints 6

So much football to go over. Let's start with the CFL which appears to have ceased releasing in-game attendance figures. After yesterday's conference semi-finals, I was interested in the actual attendance at the two games - in particular the game at Mosaic Stadium in Regina which went to double overtime. As I watched the last part of the game, I noticed swaths of empty seats in the 33,000 seat stadium which opened in 2012. The Saskatchewan Roughriders are the best supported team in the league and I would not have predicted that they couldn't come close to selling out a home playoff game. The next best CFL sell-out opportunity will be for the Western Final this Sunday at IG Field in Winnipeg which also holds 33,000. The Eastern Final between Hamilton and Toronto will be played at the 30,000 seat BMO Field but the crowd I expect to show up for it could probably just as easily fit into Lamport Stadium or maybe even Jaak Parn Memorial Field at Lawrence Park high school. 

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of what is now remembered as an iconic Canadian football game and a low point in Toronto Argonaut history. It is probably the first football game that I can personally remember watching. My dad was an Argos fan and we watched together as Leon "X-Ray" McQuay fumbled near the Calgary Stampeder goal-line with the Argos trailing 14-11 late in the fourth quarter of the 1971 Grey Cup. McQuay ran to his left, carrying the ball in his right hand, then slipped on the soggy astroturf, fumbling the ball - and the game - away in the process. It was the first Grey Cup ever played on turf and as pouring rain fell throughout the game, the flat surface at Vancouver's Empire Stadium did not drain at all. McQuay wasn't touched by a defender before he went down and the play stood as a fumble - one quite similar to Isaiah MacKenzie's fumble on a kick-off return a week ago in Buffalo. Argos coach Leo Cahill famously said afterward "When Leon slipped, I fell". 

The 1971 Argos featured a star-studded line-up (by CFL standards anyway) which included Jim Stillwagon, Jim Corrigal, "Tricky" Dick Thornton, Mel Profit and a star American quarterback from Notre Dame named Joe Theismann who was drafted by the Miami Dolphins in the 4th round of the 1971 NFL draft but decided to sign with the Argos for a whopping salary of $75,000. The Argos had not won the Grey Cup since 1952 and would not win another until 1983. Leaving the CFL after the 1973 season, McQuay went on to play for the Giants, Patriots and Saints before dying of a heart attack at age 45. 

The biggest game of the weekend was played in Ann Arbor, Michigan before more than 111,000 fans who witnessed only the second Wolverines win over arch-rival Ohio State since 2003. It was the 117th meeting between the two schools and one of the most important ones ever as Michigan has now taken the Buckeyes place on the inside track to a spot in the four-team college football playoff - Michigan's first if they can beat Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game on Saturday. The Wolverines have not won a National Championship since 1997.

In Canadian University football, Western clobbered St.F.X. 61-6 in the Mitchell Bowl and will face the Saskatchewan Huskies in the Vanier Cup on Saturday at Telus Stadium in Quebec City which holds more than 12,000. Let's see how close they can come to filling it. 

The week 13 Monday nigher a week from today in Orchard Park could easily determine the 2021 AFC East division winner. The Bills are early 3.5 point favourites over the visiting Patriots as both teams won their week 12 games - the Bills winning easily in New Orleans and the Patriots running away from the Titans and taking over the top seed in the AFC. The Patriots then have their bye week while the Bills travel to Tampa.  

The Bills won 31-6 on Thanksgiving night but they lost one of their best players in stud cornerback Tre'Davious White whose torn ACL required surgery on Friday. White is a native of Louisiana and was playing professionally in his home state for the first time on Thursday when his left knee flexed sideways on an innocent looking play. Bills fans feared the worst as the NBC broadcast showed White's pained and tearful facial expression as he left the field for the last time this season. Dane Jackson, the 2020 seventh rounder from Pittsburgh, entered the game and the Saints immediately went after him. Thankfully, Saints quarterback Trevor Siemian couldn't find much traction as the Bills defence held them to just six points. The Bills still have their two star safeties in Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde along with cornerback Levi Wallace and "nickel" cornerback Taron Johnson, all of whom have played very well this season. Dane Jackson better have a good week of practice because he will be busy next Monday night.       

Colts 41, Bills 15

I had a feeling that the Canadian government would announce the lifting of the costly PCR test requirement for Canadians returning from short trips to the United States within a few days of my electing to return all of my remaining Buffalo Bills tickets, including any option on home playoff games for this season, to the club for resale. The remaining home schedule - Patriots, Panthers, Falcons and Jets - doesn't hold great appeal anyway and the chances of a home playoff game, while still well within reach for the Bills, look much less likely than they did even a week ago. Unless I decide to buy tickets on the secondary market for one of those games or a playoff game, I will have missed two entire seasons of live NFL football. I'll survive.

Last night on the NBC's Football Night in America, Tony Dungee said that the Bills will need to be able to run the ball effectively in their remaining late season home games at least - and not with designed runs for Josh Allen every time. Drew Brees said that the team had no discernable identity at this point of the season. On CBS's NFL Today, Boomer Esiason was sticking with his prediction of the Bills earning a Superbowl birth but Bill Cowher now favours the Patriots and their surging defence to win the AFC East, thereby restoring normalcy to the division after last year's anomaly of the Bills winning it for the first time since 1995. 

Yesterday in Orchard Park, fans witnessed the phenomenon of Jonathan Taylor. The Colts second round pick last year from the Wisconsin Badgers shredded the Bills run defence and found the end zone no less than five times while racking up 185 yards on 32 carries. He is the best running back in the league at the moment - at least the best one who isn't on injured reserve (referring to Derrick Henry). While the run defence looked soft, the offence was inconsistent and uninspired with Josh Allen not looking much at all like an MVP candidate any more. Even Tyler Bass missed a couple of kicks. It was a mess all around.

Missing from the game yesterday were defensive lineman and run stuffer Star Lotulelei and perhaps the team's best offensive lineman in rookie Spencer Brown. Both were on the COVID reserve list. If Brown is unvaccinated, he will also miss this week's game four days from now under the league's rules. Talk is increasing in Buffalo media circles (and Jerry Sullivan has been leading the charge on this) that the Bills are one of the least vaccinated teams in the NFL with somewhere between five and ten players opting not to take the COVID vaccine. Secrecy around the actual number and around the specific reasons why individual players are placed on the COVID list prevents us from knowing the real story but with a relatively large cohort of unvaccinated players compared to other teams, this may be costly to the team in the last crucial weeks of the season. But we still don't know enough about the long term effects of these vaccines, do we?

How about some Canadian University football to cleanse the pallet? Well, my Western Mustangs won the 113th Yates Cup 29-0 over Queens on Saturday before a decent gathering in Kingston. They now move on to one of the two national semi-final games - the Mitchell Bowl - at home in London against the St. Francis Xavier X-Men next Saturday. The Uteck Bowl features the Saskatchewan Huskies and the Montreal Carrabins with the Vanier Cup set for Dec 4th in Quebec City. I caught some of the Mustangs game on Saturday and while the game had plenty of intensity, neither quarterback had a strong arm and the passing game was less than dynamic. But I like football enough that I'll watch pretty much any game anywhere. After all, I've had season tickets for my local high school team, the Lawrence Park Panthers, since the early nineties. Go Panthers!

For the second time in three years, the Bills will play on American Thanksgiving Day this Thursday night in New Orleans. Maybe a short week is what they need to move past yesterday's stinker. Josh Allen usually rises to the occasion for prime time national games as he showed two years ago in Dallas on Thanksgiving. After that, the team has a long break before another prime time game as the Patriots come to Orchard Park for a critical Monday Night match-up December 6th.   

Bills 45, Jets 17

Last Thursday afternoon on WGR 550,  Chris "The Bulldog" Parker made what sounded like a reasonable prediction about week 10 of the NFL season which was set to begin that evening in Miami. He declared that the phenomenon of one or two-win teams upsetting various contenders was going to come to an end and that it would begin that night with the Baltimore Ravens playing the Dolphins in south Florida. "The Ravens are a far superior team", he observed "and they will show that tonight. The cream will start to rise to the top in the NFL." Seemed logical to me and probably to other Bills fans as the hometown team was three days away from playing the lowly Jets and their flash-in-the-pan rookie quarterback who threw for over 400 yards in a Jets win over the Bengals a couple of weeks ago. A few hours later, the Bulldog's prediction would not come true as the Ravens fell to the Dolphins 22-10. Made me wonder if the Bills could fall victim, for the second week in a row, to a team they should beat easily or would Sean McDermott find a way to re-focus his team and not only get back in the win column but recover their status as a contender in the AFC. We got the answer yesterday and, for Bills fans, it was the one they were waiting for.

Despite a bit of a lull in the second quarter yesterday in the Meadowlands of New Jersey, the Bills dominated the game against the Jets and made Jets quarterback Mike White look every bit like the overwhelmed 5th round draft choice appearing in his third NFL game. Scoring 21 points in the third quarter, they extended their lead to 38-3 and allowed me to start closing up the cottage and prepare for snowy drive south. When the lead was pushed to 31-3, I reached into my bag of Van Miller quotes and declared that "the rout is on". 

Stefon Diggs has had a good season so far in 2021 but his performance yesterday was spectacular. He had eight catches for 132 yards and a touchdown on the second consecutive fade pass from Josh Allen, after making the catch on the first one but with his second foot not quite connecting in bounds. And the running game also returned. The Bills appear to have three viable options with Devin Singletary, Zack Moss and now Matt Brieda all contrbuting yesterday. Breida, inactive since week 2, had two touchdowns - one running and another on a pass from Allen on the first drive of the game. Even without Trumaine Edmonds, the defence was disruptive and Mike White and the Jets never really had a chance.

On Friday night, I watched soccer. I usually end up seeing the World Cup Final and I saw a bit of the European Championship Final this past summer because England made it that far. Canada was playing our arch-rival Costa Rica at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton as part of an eight-team World Cup qualifying tournament. The game started slowly with a decided lack of urgency on both sides which, in my view, characterizes soccer far too often. But the Canadian side turned it on in the second half and were finally rewarded with a rare "goal" and cruised to lopsided one-nil win. Fan support in Edmonton was impressive with more than 48,000 taking in the game. What made very little sense to me was the state of the playing surface. Football and baseball have long been played on artificial turf and most non-grass playing surfaces in North America now feature "field turf" which is much softer than the concrete-like astroturf from the 1970s and 80s. Commonwealth Stadium appears not to have installed new turf since Warren Moon came to town in 1978. And we could see the same partially erased yard-line markers as Moon must have played on when the stadium opened for the 1978 Commonwealth Games (which I attended). Soccer, I think its fair to say, needs to be played on grass. Did anyone consider BMO Field for this game or was it time to not be Toronto-centric and give the game to another city? I can't say and I'm happy that Canada won the game and now has a legitimate shot at making the World Cup Final for the first time since 1986. But the field looked terrible.

The Indianapolis Colts come to Orchard Park next Sunday as the Bills return to playing teams which have playoff aspirations. With the Canadian requirement for a negative (and costly) PCR test for travellers (including returning day travellers) still in place, I have accepted the Bills offer to take back the remainder of my tickets for this season. Looks like I won't see a live game until September of 2022.  

Jaguars 9, Bills 6

The last 9-6 game I can remember was played 33 years ago at Rich Stadium. I was one of more than 78,000 in attendance that day as Fred Smerlas blocked a field goal in the final seconds of regulation time to send the game to overtime where the Bills would win the game and clinch the AFC East division title. Delirious fans stormed the field, tore the goal posts down and gave birth to Van Miller's "fandemonium" catch-phrase. The rain-soaked game became a classic in Bills history and marked the beginning of the team's mini-dynasty which included four consecutive Superbowls. 

Yesterday's game in north Florida was one of the worst NFL games in recent memory - and not just because the Bills lost. The officiating crew, led by referee Land Clark, will probably not be at the top of the list for playoff game assignments after yesterday's highly questionable performance which included, ironically, far too many flags and some key missed calls. Josh Allen looked more like the Josh Allen from his 2018 rookie season with multiple turnovers and his offensive line had its worst game of the season. Much was made of the fact that the Jaguars have a defensive player also named Josh Allen who was the best player on the field for either team. If their names were Cornelius Bennett or Billy-Joe Hobart then it might have been more noteworthy. I wonder how many Josh Allens there are in the United States? 

The Aaron Rodgers story dominated the off-field NFL news last week as he contracted COVID and had to miss yesterday's game in Kansas City. Boomer Esiason made an excellent point on the NFL Today broadcast when he compared Rodgers' approach on the question of vaccination to that of Colts quarterback Carson Wentz. Wentz made no attempt to conceal the fact that he and his family have decided to forego the vaccine and he has, by all accounts, followed all of the NFL's protocols for unvaccinated players. It remains unclear if Rodgers has done this himself. Wentz's main reason for refusing the vaccine is that he thinks that there isn't "enough" known about its long-term effects. I would go a step further and point out to him (and to others who use this excuse) that the vaccines were developed within the last year and there is literally no data on their long-term effects. Taking into account the fact that side effects from vaccines are almost always evident in the very short term (usually days or weeks at most after vaccination), the decision is a matter of balancing risks and, in my view, its an easy choice. But Wentz has the right to his opinion and I do respect him for being transparent about it and accepting the conditions imposed by the league. The same can be said about Bills slot receiver Cole Beasley who has been outspoken on the issue but not misleading.

The problem for Rodgers is one of credibility as he clearly set out to mislead the public about his vaccination status. He used the word "immunized" to describe his status and we now know that means he has subscribed to some sort of homeopathic "immunization" regime rather than taking one of the approved vaccines. He decided to "do his own research" and says that he submitted some 500 pages of this research to the league or to his team or maybe to FOX News. Now that the US has reached a 70% vaccination rate among adults, it seems clear that he is on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue. It has already cost him as Wisconsin-based Prevea Health terminated a sponsorship deal with Rodgers which has been in place since 2012. State Farm Insurance also cut back on television spots featuring Rodgers during yesterday's NFL broadcasts from an average of about 25% of its spots over the course of the season to date to 1.5% yesterday. The insurer would not comment on what plans it has for future spots with Rodgers but it seems likely that the saturation of the "Rodgers Rate" spots which NFL viewers have seen in the past few seasons will not continue. Executives at GEICO, Liberty Mutual and Progressive are undoubtedly pleased. Jake from State Farm could not be reached for comment.

Josh Allen said after yesterday's game that his team "played like shit" and that they will be better for it in the long run. That may be true but the team has mailed in two clunkers so far after the bye week and really needs to get on the right track against the Jets on Sunday. The Jaguars probably played as well as they could yesterday and certainly played with a measure of intensity which the Bills did not match. These three games - against the Dolphins, Jags and Jets - looked like classic trap games to me and the team has fallen into the trap with the first two. I'm expecting things to turn around next week and the Jets will see it first-hand. The score will not be 9-6. 

       

Bills 26, Dolphins 11

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. "Off-year" elections aren't usually big new stories nationally with this year's main exception being the Virginia gubernatorial race between Democrat and former Governor Terry McAuliffe and Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin. Won by ten points by President Biden a year ago, if the Dems manage to lose Virginia tomorrow, shockwaves will rattle through Washington as the mid-term elections in a year's time could be disastrous for the party which currently holds the House, the Senate (just barely) and the White House.  

Citizens in several major American cities will elect mayors tomorrow and the race I'll be watching is for the mayoralty of the 90th largest city in the United States: Buffalo, New York. If we could see an election ballot in the Buffalo mayoralty race, it would carry the name of only one candidate: India Walton. The Republicans have not held the top job in Buffalo since Chester Kowal left office at the end of 1965 and the GOP did not even bother to nominate a candidate this time around. Incumbent mayor Byron Brown, seeking a fifth term since he was first elected in 2005, managed to lose the Democratic Primary to Ms. Walter and then failed in a court challenge to create his own party (the Buffalo Party) which would have allowed his name to appear on the ballot. He is now seeking re-election on a "write in" basis, using the campaign slogan "Write Down Byron Brown". 

Turnout at the Primary in June was very low and the result was close but Walton won it fair and square and the Buffalo mayoralty race has now taken on a national flavour as she has earned the endorsements of Democratic Party heavyweights like New York Senator Chuck Schumer and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Brown, the city's first black mayor, has marshalled the support of the Buffalo business community (including many Republicans) and has branded Walton as a socialist who would defund the police and bring chaos to what remains one of America's most segregated cities. Recent polling gives Brown a 17 point lead over Walton but he will need his supporters to first turn out tomorrow and then remember to "write in" his name on their ballots. To my knowledge, throughout the campaign, India Walton has not proclaimed her support for the Buffalo Bills and I hope this does not cost her. Her story, the subject of a recent long-form piece in the New Yorker, is quite compelling and, if I were a voter in tomorrow's Buffalo election, I would find it hard not to cast my vote her way. Plus, with hers as the only name on the ballot, I'd be more inclined to write in the name Josh Allen than I would Byron Brown. If his name were on the ballot, Allen would win in a landslide.

I guess I wasn't surprised to see that Terry and Kim Pegula did not invite India Walton to join them in the owner's box yesterday at Highmark Stadium. Could be that they knew she would have difficulty getting to Orchard Park on public transit. What she missed was hardly an NFL classic but her hometown team managed to make the plays they needed to make in the second half to pull away from the Dolphins who, at 1-7, are clearly in the hunt for the first overall pick in the 2022 NFL draft. The Bills defence looked fearsome in the second half as Tua Tagovailoa was overwhelmed at times and hardly looks like the franchise quarterback the Dolphins thought he was when they drafted him while leaving Justin Herbert on the board. Cole Beasley returned to form yesterday with 10 receptions for 110 yards.

Yesterday marked the first of three consecutive games against the league's lesser-lights with two road games coming up: at Jacksonville then at the Meadowlands against the Jets who earned their second win yesterday. The Bills, if they are still legitimate Superbowl contenders (and I think they are), will be heavily favoured in all three of these games. Favoured by a spread of 14 points yesterday, they struggled in the first half but won by 15. They are early 10.5 point favourites against the Jaguars in north Florida next Sunday. They can not afford to stumble in any of these games as they chase the Titans, who won again yesterday, for the coveted home-field advantage in the playoffs and a first round bye.