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.
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