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.
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