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.