Bills 40, Jets 14

Bit of a difficult day yesterday for us but not in any way related to the Bills decisive win over the Jets yesterday in Orchard Park. Awoke just before 4.30am to the sounds of our 14-year-old White Sheppard/Husky having a seizure, foaming at the mouth, legs flailing and barely able to breathe. This lasted about 10 minutes then we carried her to the car and headed south through thick fog to the Huronia Emergency Veterinary Clinic in Barrie where she took her last laboured breath around 9.30am. Amazingly – and thankfully – she settled comfortably for her last few minutes before the sedative and the final syringe took effect. This was an animal with whom I had spent a great deal of time and, although we knew her days were numbered, having received a devastating diagnosis of an aggressive and untreatable cancerous growth on her throat, she had been energetic and content for the last 10 days or so, thanks mostly to the miraculous effect of prednisone, a widely prescribed (to humans and animals alike) cortico-steroid. I thought I was prepared for this – and I mostly was – but it was still heartbreaking and intensely sad. Having been through this four times before, I know that the grief of the loss of a dog is severe but relatively short in duration (for me anyway), at least compared to the loss of someone close. Our Sophie is gone now but our Christmas present was her last week at the cottage running in the snow, eating everything in sight and giving us her unconditional love – as she always did.

But we were back at the cottage in time for the week 17 slate of NFL games and the Bills did not disappoint as they built a 40-0 lead with four second-half touchdowns, and cruised to a 40-14 win, sealing up the second seed in the AFC playoff bracket. Aaron Rodgers was understandably frustrated and although I usually pride myself on never rooting against specific teams or players, his failure yesterday - and all season long – did please me. This may have been his last trip to Buffalo in an NFL uniform. Time to kick him to the curb. The Jets will have a huge salary cap hit for the next two seasons if they release him but what choice do they really have? Will another owner choose to sign Rodgers to make some headlines and sell some tickets? Maybe but if I were a fan or a season ticket holder of the team that does that, I’d be pissed.

Week 18 in the NFL is always fascinating and fraught with challenges for book-makers and punters alike. Some teams are out of playoff contention and are playing for pride and draft positioning; some teams need to win to clinch division titles or playoff berths; some teams need to win and hope for others to lose; some teams (like the Bills and Chiefs) are locked in to their playoff seeds and can rest starters, call up deserving players from their practice squads and save their real game-plans for the playoffs. Setting gambling lines amidst all of this is a huge challenge and gamblers who invest time to do their research thoroughly can, in theory, profit more than they do in earlier weeks. Bills coach Sean McDermott mentioned yesterday after the game that there are back-up players who will earn starts next week and practice squad players who will get a chance to earn a real NFL game-cheque. Imagine how hard these men will play when they’re given this rare opportunity then imagine how hard their opponent - the Patriots at 3-13 – will play. The Patriots are in the interesting position of controlling their own destiny in terms of picking first overall in the 2025 NFL draft. All they need to do is lose to the Bills back-ups and subs and it is theirs. The league doesn’t like the idea of teams “tanking” for this purpose but Patriots management and coaches may design a game-plan and deploy personnel for this purpose while creating the appearance of trying to win.

By locking up the second seed, the Bills have effectively earned themselves a bye week and will probably turn their attention to their potential opponent in the Wildcard round. The most likely team to come to Orchard Park in two weeks is the Denver Broncos who need to beat the Chiefs back-ups to the clinch the seventh and last AFC playoff spot. If they lose, then the Miami Dolphins are the Bills next most likely opponent as they need a Broncos loss and a win over the Jets in the Meadowlands to get in. Still alive are the Cincinnati Bengals who need to win in Pittsburgh on Saturday night and hope for losses by the Broncos and the Dolphins. Who of these three would the Bills prefer to play?  They will of course never say but honestly, I’ll take the Broncos. If the Dolphins make it, the Bills would need to beat them for a third time this season and it just seems like they don’t match up well against the Bengals. The Broncos have a rookie quarterback while the Dolphins and Bengals both have seasoned veterans who have played in Buffalo in January before. But the Broncos have to hand the Chiefs what would be only their second loss of the season. And the Chiefs will be resting their starters. But the Chiefs second-stringers and practice squad crew are probably good players looking to make their mark. So, who knows what will happen in week 18. Denver is favoured by 9.5 points and they’re at home. I’ll take Denver then I’ll take the Bills to beat them the following week. That’s what Sophie would have wanted.

    

 

Bills 24, Patriots 21

Like local television stations track Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, yesterday I was tracking the movements of a friend of mine – let’s call him Paul F. – on his journey from Riverdale to Orchard Park in a large passenger van with his two sons and a group of 11 friends of theirs – 14 of them in total. Not much information on their travels was available in real time but as the day progressed, I was imagining where they might be along their way: stopping in St. Catharines to buy warm winter boots, in a line-up at the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, dealing with US border authorities, trying to find a suitable place to park near the stadium so as to not be too far away but far enough away to avoid being trapped in the insanity which is post-game traffic trying to exit the stadium lots and then Orchard Park. Would they be prepared for the cold, I wondered as yesterday’s game was one of the coldest home games in Buffalo Bills history – certainly the coldest one in recent years. And even colder with kick-off changed from 1pm to 4.25pm. Was their recently purchased small charcoal barbecue enough to feed 14 chilly Bills fans? They were certainly hoping for - even expecting – a comfortable Bills lead in the second half to permit a stress-free early exit, easy egress from wherever they managed to park and a manageable arrival time at home. I will request a full report in a few hours but for now the only thing I know for sure is that if they did leave the game early, they missed what was a closer finish than Bills fans – and sports books - were predicting.

“It’s hard to win in the NFL”, former Bills head coach Dick Jauron famously said 15 or so years ago as he was busy stringing up 7-9 seasons like Christmas lights on his house. Sean McDermott repeated that after yesterday’s game which the Bills won mostly because of an unsuccessful lateral pass attempted by Patriots quarterback Drake Maye under the shadow of his own goalposts. The fumbled lateral landed just inside the goal-line where Taron Johnson pounced on it for an easy touchdown. The Bills added a 50-yard Tyler Bass field goal which ended up being the margin of victory in a tense final few minutes which saw the Patriots score late then try an onside kick which the Bills actually fumbled then recovered.

It definitely is hard to win in the NFL especially late in the season when pitted against a 3-11 team with “nothing to play for” except pride, roster spots for next season, possible free agent dollars in the off-season and the development of a promising young quarterback who could become the foundation of the franchise going forward. Bill Parcells once said of these late-season games with teams who have been eliminated from playoff contention: “Anyone who says these games don’t mean anything doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” If I were a Patriots fan, the play of Drake Maye yesterday in a cold and hostile environment would have given me a strong measure of confidence going into the season’s last two games and hopefully many seasons beyond. His composure and throwing accuracy were impressive given the opponent and playing conditions. Even in a loss, the Patriots probably came away feeling pretty good about their effort and their future prospects. Given the last 20 years of history, maybe success shouldn’t come too quickly for them.

As for the Bills, they continue to give up yardage on the ground but this time, rather than hanging 40 or more points on their opponent as they’ve been doing in recent weeks, their passing offence sputtered as they found themselves down 14-0 in the second quarter. We learned that Josh Allen actually broke his left hand on the game-winning touchdown way back in week one against the Cardinals. Yesterday, he pranged the funny-bone on his right arm on another scramble and temporarily lost feeling in his hand which was evident on his next throw. He told CBS sideline reporter Evan Washburn after the game that everything was fine with his right arm and hand. Of course it was. Hopefully, it doesn’t evolve into another nagging injury for him.

The US college football bowl season and new playoff format are well underway now. The ever-changing names of the lesser bowl games invite ridicule in some circles but I just find them amusing. I may not catch all of the Potato Bowl this afternoon in Boise, ID between Northern Illinois and Fresno State but I’ll definitely be thinking about it when I’m cross-country skiing. As for the new 12-team playoff format, it seems to be off to a good start with the four home teams winning their games comfortably this past weekend, leaving eight teams going forward. The remaining seven games will be played at neutral sites with the National Championship Game set for Monday January 20^th. I have a niece who is currently residing in Athens, GA, home of the Georgia Bulldogs and for that reason (and since the Michigan Wolverines have been relegated to playing in the ReliaQuest Bowl on New Year’s Eve), I’ll be rooting for the Bulldogs when they play Notre Dame on New Year’s Day.

The Bills have another home game coming up next against the farcical New York Jets. It is set for 1pm on Sunday but, who knows, maybe it too will be flexed to the late afternoon slot. The Jets managed another loss yesterday, this time at home to the Rams. The Jets will come to Orchard Park with a 4-11 record and have been a dumpster fire / train wreck all season. They have one more win than the Patriots do but expectations going into the season were high – probably unrealistically high – and they have failed epically to deliver anything promising to their fan base. The meddling owner fired the head coach early on, then the general manager and we heard this past week that he vetoed a trade earlier this season because the player they were trading for had a “Madden Score” which wasn’t high enough for him. For the Bills, this represents another potentially dangerous opponent with “nothing to play for”. Let’s hope they are ready as the top seed in the AFC, although fading away, remains within reach.  

 

Bills 48, Lions 42

With three games remaining, the Chiefs schedule gets a little more difficult now:  home to the Texans, at the Steelers then at the Broncos. Conversely, the Bills schedule gets a little easier: home to the Patriots and Jets then at the Patriots. At 13-1, the Chiefs are well-positioned to earn the top seed in the AFC playoff bracket, two games ahead of the Bills. For the Bills to jump ahead of the Chiefs, they must sweep their remaining games and hope that the Chiefs lose two of three. This scenario is certainly possible but probably not likely.  

With another stellar performance yesterday in Detroit, Josh Allen took another step toward earning MVP honours for 2024. His likely closest competitor, running back Saquon Barkley of the Eagles, ran for a rather pedestrian 65 yards yesterday in a win against the Steelers. While Allen didn’t post numbers quite as eye-popping as Jared Goff did yesterday, he did manage 362 passing yards with two touchdown passes, two rushing touchdowns and, once again, no turnovers. Goff came within six yards of hitting 500 and had five touchdown passes in a loss. Allen’s quarterback rating of 122.4 was slightly better than Goff’s 118.9.  

Over the last two weeks, the Bills have played in the NFL’s two highest-scoring games this season. They have become the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s who seemed to win every game 8-5. The offensive juggernaut they clearly are led Lions coach Dan Campbell to try an onside kick early in the fourth quarter with his team down by 10 points. It backfired as Mack Hollins made an athletic play by recovering the kick and returning it deep into Lions territory setting up another touchdown – this time a five-yard pass to Ray Davis. One strange statistic from the game is that Bills receiver Amari Cooper had no touches on the day and no targets either. James Cook continued his strong play with 105 rushing yards and two touchdowns of his own.  

Recent polling of NFL fans clearly indicates that the preferred Superbowl match-up is Buffalo v. Detroit. Neither franchise has ever won a Superbowl and the Lions have never been to the big game although they came close last season, losing the NFC Championship Game to the 49ers after blowing a 17-point lead. Football fans have grown tired of seeing the Chiefs - just as they grew tired of the Patriots a decade earlier. If yesterday’s game was any indication, a Superbowl between Buffalo and Detroit might be one of the highest-scoring championship games ever, with two outstanding quarterbacks with weapons to match.

Lions head coach Dan Campbell is the face of Detroit’s franchise and his turnaround of the team which in 2008 lost every game to finish 0-16, has resulted in him being handed the keys to the City. On our satellite television service, US network affiliates originate from Detroit and Campbell can be seen all over the airwaves in local business television advertising, from law firms to car dealerships to retail stores. Every business in the state of Michigan would welcome his affiliation with their brand. He has endeared himself to the Lions fanbase by imparting his own physically imposing, gruff-voiced tough guy persona on to the identity and character of his football team. When he was first hired in 2021, he talked the talk as they say – referencing kicking opponents in the teeth and “knee-capping” them - and he has clearly now shown that he can also walk the walk. The team’s results speak for themselves, with the Lions now standing at 12-2 and remaining in position to earn the first seed in the NFC playoff bracket. But with yesterday’s loss, they are now tied atop the NFC with the Eagles with their division rival Vikings likely to join them in a three-way tie with a win at home over the Bears tonight. Last season’s implosion in the NFC Championship Game notwithstanding, the Lions haven’t enjoyed success like they have under Dan Campbell’s leadership – at least not in the Superbowl era. The team joined the NFL in 1930 and won four NFL Championships in the 1950s, most recently in 1957.

In a couple of hours, early on this Monday morning, I’ll be having what is, by my count, my seventh colonoscopy. Every three years since the age of 40 is what’s recommended for those like me with a strong family history. I stuck close to home yesterday and, yes, everything came out according to plan. By far, the best part of the entire preparation process and the procedure itself is deciding what to eat once its done. Thinking omelette or maybe a cinnamon roll.

The Bills return home next week for a game against the 3-11 Patriots. They are early 14-point favourites. I’m surprised to see that the Chiefs are two-point underdogs at home to the Texans on Saturday. Expect that line to tighten as the week goes on.

 

       

 

Rams 44, Bills 42

 A blocked punt, whether returned by the blocking/receiving team for a touchdown or not, does not count as a turnover in an NFL boxscore. But it should. I suppose we could differentiate partially blocked punts which do make it past the line of scrimmage from fully blocked punts which do not but a blocked punt is usually as negative a play for the punting team as any turnover is. And often worse like it was yesterday for the Bills who lost their game in Los Angeles yesterday because of one. It was clearly the difference in what was truly a spectacular game at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles.

If Roger Goodell could pick a game from the 2024 season to showcase the entertainment value of the National Football League, he would be hard-pressed to come up with a better one than yesterday’s heavy-weight tilt between the Bills and the Rams. No turnovers (except for a blocked punt), no quarterback sacks, 902 yards of total offence, brilliant quarterback play and offensive play-calling on both sides – this game was as thrilling to watch as any we’ve seen this season and with five weeks to go it’s hard to imagine another one topping it. It was a tough one to lose for Bills fans but being down 17 points then coming almost all the way back was perhaps not as painful as a back-and-forth game which stayed close the whole way might have been. Until yesterday, the Bills had not lost since October 6 ^thin Houston.

If Josh Allen wins the Most Valuable Player award this season, those who vote may look back on this game as the deciding factor. Allen went 22 for 37 for 342 yards with no interceptions, three passing touchdowns and three rushing touchdowns (I say “rushing” but they were more like “pushing” – as in pushing his butt over the goal line). Either way, these six touchdowns – three passing and three rushing set an NFL record. He added 82 rushing yards on ten carries which was four times what James Cook was able to generate as the Bills abandoned the running game early on.  

I still can’t decide if I like Tom Brady as an analyst or not. His insight is solid – how could it not be? – but his comments sometimes seem forced and a little too long. Maybe he needs a full season under his belt to be as smooth, comfortable and unscripted as Troy Aikman or Tony Romo are and that’s why colour analysts, no matter how successful their playing careers were, don’t usually start out on a network’s number one team. FOX obviously recognized Brady’s star power when they parachuted him into the chair beside Kevin Burkhardt - and maybe he would not have agreed to anything less – but for me his broadcasting chops aren’t quite there yet. It isn’t usually the kind of job where you start at the top then learn as you go.

In the early hours of the WGR pregame show yesterday – around noon or about an hour before the early games kicked-off – they were looking on StubHub at the price of tickets for the Jaguars v. Titans game at Nissan Stadium in Nashville. There were apparently tickets available for as little as $3.00 although those sold during their discussion and the lowest priced ticket shot up to $5.00. After losing their one-time promising quarterback Trevor Lawrence to injury last week (on as dirty a hit as we’ve seen this season), the Jaguars came into the game sporting a 2-10 record and had been officially eliminated from playoff contention. The Titans were a game better at 3-9 and although this was a division match-up which usually carries some importance or intrigue for one of the teams, football fans in Nashville weren’t interested in taking in a game between two also-rans in dreary 50-degree weather. And why would they be?

This reminded me of my own difficulties in trying to find takers for some of my late-season Bills tickets during the drought years. When discussing ticket sales with interested parties before the season began, I’d hear “The Patriots game in mid-September looks good” to which I often replied “The Jaguars game in mid-December is the one I have my eye on for you”. The secondary market has been good to Bills subscribers since Josh Allen showed up but as much as the secondary ticket market can give, it can also taketh away. We know that the Bills will have at least one home playoff game in January but before that, they have home games against the Patriots and the Jets which, depending on the state of the race for playoff seeding, may offer some good value for those looking to buy tickets on the secondary market. Always best to wait as long as possible as prices drop to their lowest level in the hours before kick-off. The most profitable ticket investment I’ve ever made was in Lot 7 parking passes for this season which have consistently been selling for at least three times my cost this season. The construction of the new stadium – both the site itself and the materials and equipment staging area beside it – have made stadium parking a scarce commodity this season.

The schedule does not get any easier for the Bills as they travel next week to Detroit to face the 12-1 Lions in a possible preview of what I would consider to be a dream Superbowl match-up. Equally compelling would be if the Bills were to face the Minnesota Vikings in the big game with both teams sporting 0-4 Superbowl records. The Bills will need another MVP performance from Josh Allen next week  if they are to avoid their second two-game losing skid this season.

Please indulge me as I add one international affairs note here: When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won the 2021 Syrian presidential election and another seven-year term with more than 95% of the vote, I wondered if he said during the campaign “Ask yourselves good people of Syria, are you better off than you were seven years ago?”. The Economist magazine publishes a Democracy Index every year and Syria has finished at or near the bottom of it for a long time. Good riddance to Assad and let’s hope that whichever group fills the Syrian power vacuum doesn’t take it right back to a different form of authoritarian rule.

Bills 35, 49ers 10

In grade six geography we learned about orographic precipitation where moisture-laden air rises as it meets mountainous terrain, then cools, then dumps its moisture in elevated areas often in the form of snow. This is why alpine areas can receive epic amounts of snow, often within a short time-frame. In the Kootenay Mountains of the southern interior of British Columbia – an area I am quite familiar with – daily dumps of 60 to 80cm which continue for several days make for fantastic skiing and can deliver up to ten metres of snow in the high alpine by spring. I don’t recall learning about a comparable phenomenon which can impact areas to the lee of the Great Lakes, at least early in the winter season. Lake effect snow is the reason why Collingwood, Ontario and Ellicottville, New York have traditionally been good ski areas with massive early season dumps of snow which create a deep base which usually lasts until April. This past weekend, lake effect snow made headlines in Ontario, western New York and northeast Pennsylvania. I experienced it first-hand in one of the worst-hit areas.

No, I didn’t make the drive into the snow bomb which hit the “South Towns” of western New York. That only delivered around two feet of snow to Orchard Park and Highmark Stadium. Just a dusting compared to what we got in the Muskoka area of central Ontario where between Thursday afternoon and Sunday close to a metre of snow fell over that period, stranding motorists, closing highways and knocking power out to more than 150,000 Hydro One customers, me among them. Power is still out on our lake on this Monday morning as crews work to re-connect the last 40,000 customers. The latest official estimate of our re-connection time is 2pm today. It could and probably will take longer than that. I heat my cottage with an airtight woodstove anyway so warmth is not a problem and I do have a stand-by generator which, unfortunately for me, is not working properly, delivering power to only a few circuits. With some creativity and a few extension cords, I was able to power my television and satellite receiver to watch football yesterday and my internet to publish this blog today – although later than usual.

A metre of snow sounds nice enough in terms of setting up the skiing season and creating a stunning looking winter wonderland made even more striking against the backdrop of an unfrozen lake. But it can also lead to an uneasy feeling where you’re sort of trapped with no access to the outside world – at least until the plow comes through, then comes through again, then two more times after that. Before football started yesterday, I made my way down to the dock through hip-deep snow to the buried satellite dish to clear it and trim some snow-laden limbs overhanging it. That took about 30 minutes and was more exhausting than I would have expected. Two neighbours on the far side of the lake - both recently widowed women in their early 80s - experienced generator failures and would have been in real trouble but for our snow-plow guy who doubles as a general handyman and is everyone’s first call for help. He was able to clear snow from the air intakes of each generator and get them going again, saving the day. If he wasn’t around or if he had an accident, fell ill or had some other emergency, some folks who have chosen to live at the cottage would be well-advised to re-think that plan. Sections of Highway 11 remain closed this morning and the Town of Gravenhurst has declared a State of Emergency which the mayor expects will last well into Tuesday.

As I gradually turned my attention from the snow to the Bills v. 49ers game, reports of the possibility of several feet of snow in Orchard Park led to speculation about postponing or moving the game as has happened twice in the past 10 years – in 2014 and again two years ago when these two Bills home games were moved to Detroit. The logistics of clearing roads, parking lots and the stadium itself of several feet of snow on 24 hours notice obviously presents challenges. While two feet of snow is considerable and had it amounted to much more than that, the NFL would have had a scheduling nightmare if last night’s game could not go ahead. But go ahead it did in light but continuous snow.

Josh Allen became the first quarterback in NFL history to score touchdowns running, passing and receiving. The running and passing ones were nothing new to Bills fans but the receiving one was quite remarkable as Amari Cooper channeled his inner Travis Kelce, making a very difficult catch at the five-yard line then in an unscripted move, flipped the ball to Allen who lunged to the pylon and scored. The Bills certainly earned the win but the 49ers started the game with a strong running game but were touched by bad luck once again as fullback Josh Juszczyk had the ball punched from his hands on his way into the endzone on their first drive of the second half. A touchdown there would have made the score 21-10 but the Bills scored next to extend their lead to 28-3 putting the game out of reach. The Bills seemed to handle the slippery conditions relatively well while the NBC broadcast repeatedly showed 49ers players losing their footing at critical moments.

The Bills are AFC East champions for the fifth consecutive season. At least one home playoff game will be played in Orchard Park in January. The first overall seed in the AFC remains within reach but depends on the Chiefs losing at least one more time. They squeaked out another win on Friday as the Raiders managed to implode on their final and potentially game-winning drive. Up next for the Bills is a trip to the west coast to face the Los Angeles Rams at Sofi Stadium next Sunday at 4.25pm.