Titans 34, Bills 31

For the second consecutive year, the Buffalo Bills enter their bye week after a tough last-second loss in game they could have won - and probably should have won. Last year, Kyler Murray's Hail Mary in Phoenix before the break gave the team enough motivation to run the table for the rest of the regular season. The bye week came much later last season but last night's aggressive decision to go for a first down, followed  by a very conservative play call which failed, will loom large over the next two weeks for Sean McDermott and Josh Allen. The sneak attempt fell short due in large part to the push that the right side of the Titans defensive line made and in small part because Allen's foot slipped as he tried to gain the last few inches needed for a first down in the game's dying seconds. 

The decision to try to win the game rather than play for overtime will probably not be one which Bills Nation will question for long. A more creative play call at that moment would have been better in retrospect but with only inches needed, Allen is probably able to gain those inches 95% of the time or more. The decision to go for it rather than kicking an easy field goal then going to overtime is easy to question on this Tuesday morning but, based on their performance in the second half, Sean McDermott couldn't have been all that confident in his defence as overtime loomed. Problem for the Bills is that, with last night's loss, the Tennessee Titans are now tied with them at 4-2 and now hold the tie-breaker in the AFC playoff seedings.

After the break, the Bills welcome the Dolphins to Orchard Park on October 31st. This will be last home game before the US-Canada land border crossings are set to open on November 8th. The first opportunity for Canadian fans to cheer on the Bills in person will be November 21st against the Colts. If the Canadian government continues to require a negative PCR COVID test for re-entry to Canada, we can tack another $200 on to the cost of the trip. The Bills are now only half-way through their 2021 prime time schedule with remaining games at New Orleans on Thanksgiving night and another Monday night game in New England on December 6th.  

In other NFL news, after 10 months of work, including interviews with dozens of witnesses and the review of some 650,000 emails, the NFL's investigation into the "workplace conditions" around the Washington Football Team (WFT) has produced one scapegoat far. And, last week we learned that his name is Jon Gruden, the now former coach of the Las Vegas Raiders whose racist and sexist emails, written to then WFT general manager Bruce Allen, from several years ago were "leaked" to the media. They were discovered, the league claims, as part of the WFT investigation and were deemed, six weeks into the NFL regular season, to be important enough to be brought to the attention of Raiders ownership and management and then made public. They of course led to Gruden's resignation early last week which a cynical observation would conclude is a classic bait and switch engineered by the NFL to protect WFT owner Daniel Snyder, at whose feet the problems with the WFT's workplace culture lie. Ironically, the Raiders, under their late founding owner Al Davis, were the first NFL team to hire a black head coach (Art Shell), the first to hire a Latino head coach (Tom Flores) and the first team to name a female as CEO (Amy Trask).  

Snyder became the youngest CEO of a NYSE traded company at age 32 and completed a leveraged purchase of the WFT from the estate of Jack Kent Cooke in 1999. The workplace culture of the team has been described as pervasively mysogynistic and toxic to female employees and, after an avalanche of allegations and legal action by a group of 40 former female employees of the WFT, the NFL struck its investigation. After the Gruden emails were released, calls for further release of emails reviewed as part of the investigation have been met with refusal by the league on the grounds of confidentiality. Seems like that's all we're going to get. Jon Gruden goes down and Daniel Snyder is protected. The NFL looks after its owners; always has and always will. And in the long run, this latest apparent public relations disaster won't put even a minor dent in the league's juggernaut of popularity. Nothing ever does. Whether it's repeated incidents of spousal abuse by star players, concern about player health in the form of concussions and CTE, limited upward mobility for black managers and coaches, the extortion of public funding for new stadiums - whatever seemingly bad news there is, it never really tarnishes "the shield" as Roger Goodell refers to it. The appeal of NFL football endures.   

  

  

Bills 38, Chiefs 20

As the second quarter ended last night, I got up, went outside and wandered around a bit in order to help digest the excellent Thanksgiving dinner enjoyed by a group of nine at our cottage earlier in the evening. I must have missed the first mention of a lightening-related delay in Kansas City because when I re-assumed my prone position, Mike Tirico, Tony Dungee and Drew Brees were going over highlights from the day's action in the NFL - but in a level of detail that seemed far too much for the tail-end of a 15 minute break. The studio team and the rest of the NBC broadcast crew did a pretty good job of filling an additional hour before the third quarter finally kicked off. I watched right to the end because I wanted to see the mid-field hand-shake between Andy Reid and Sean McDermott. It's the latest I've been awake in a long time. 

If an NFL coach enjoys a long tenure in what Bill Parcells described as "the most competitive business there is", he will unwittingly build his own "coaching tree". Those who have coached on his staff and have gone on to their own measures of success are the branches of the tree. Some of the branches grow strong enough to become trees themselves while others never really rise the level of the tree from which they originated.

While Bill Belichick is a good example of a coach whose tree branches have generally fallen short of the expectations associated with their originating tree, Andy Reid is probably the best example of one whose descendants have flourished. The list of successful NFL head coaches whose careers started or were jump-started under the tutelage of Reid is extensive and impressive. Topping the list would probably be John Harbaugh, now in his 14th season as Baltimore Ravens head coach and with one head-coaching Superbowl championship under his belt, who served as an assistant under Reid in Philadelphia for nine seasons. Next might be Doug Pederson who also won a title as Philadelphia Eagles head coach in 2017 after five seasons as an Eagles assistant under Reid. Current Washington head coach Ron Rivera, former Vikings head coach Brad Childress, current Bears head coach Matt Nagy and former head coaches now serving as assistants Todd Bowles, Pat Shurmur, Steve Spagnuolo and current Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier are all members of the prestigious Andy Reid coaching tree.

That takes us to Sean McDermott, the 19th head coach in Buffalo Bills history, who served under Reid in Philadelphia for 10 seasons before moving to Carolina under fellow Reid coaching tree member Ron Rivera for five seasons as defensive coordinator. Now in his fifth season as Bills head coach, McDermott has guided the Bills to the playoffs in three of his first four seasons after the team went without a post-season appearance for 17 consecutive years before his hiring. If Brian Daboll lands a head-coaching job next year, McDermott will have germinated his own coaching sapling.

In comparison, Bill Belichik, arguably the most successful coach in NFL history, has seen many an assistant coach achieve a head-coaching position only to fall flat and revert to assistant or coordinator jobs. This list includes Josh McDaniels, Matt Patricia, Eric Mangini, Romeo Crennel, Bill O'Brien and Todd Bowles. 

Entering last night's game at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills under McDermott were 1-2 against the Chiefs under Reid, including last season's AFC championship game. For the Bills, although they were up a game on the Chiefs in the AFC standings, a loss would not only have closed that gap but it would have given the Chiefs the tie-breaker over the Bills just as they enjoyed last year. That dragon is now slayed. After signing his massive contract extension a couple of months ago, Bills fans were looking to Allen for a signature road win and last night they got it. His first touchdown pass to Emmanuel Sanders was as perfect a pass as I've seen a quarterback throw this season. 

If the league office wants more penalties called, they would have been very pleased with last night's flag-fest. Most of the calls were valid I suppose but there were two in succession on the Bills last touchdown drive which were both phantom calls - and critically important ones. Josh Allen's scramble for a first down to the right sideline was negated by a holding call on centre Mitch Morse which was undetectable to me on replay. Then the Chiefs were flagged for a highly questionable roughing the passer call on a play where they intercepted Allen around mid-field. The two calls cancelled each other out I guess but neither should have been made.

Next up for the Bills is another prime time match-up with a team they lost to last season as they travel to Nashville next Monday night. I'll probably still be eating left-over turkey and then trying to stay awake. Let's hope for clear weather.    

Bills 40, Texans 0

Now in their 20th NFL season, the Houston Texans are the youngest team in the NFL. When the Oilers left town for Memphis TN after the 1996 season, Bob McNair, who had become an energy industry titan (founding Cogen Technologies in 1984 which he sold to Enron in 1999), was determined to bring NFL football back to his home town and, at a cost of $1 billion, was awarded the rights to an expansion team which began play in 2002. The team has enjoyed some success over the past two decades winning six AFC South division titles starting since 2011 but the franchise remains the only one of the league's 32 teams never to have played in a conference championship game. 

McNair died in November, 2018, leaving his wife Janice as majority owner. Son Cal McNair is the team's general manager. After the 2019 regular season, the Bills played their second playoff game of the Sean McDermott era in Houston and lost by a field goal in overtime. The Texans went on to lose to the eventual Superbowl champion Chiefs in the next round. Since then, the team has sunk to the lowest competitive level in the NFL. Bill O'Brien served, mostly successfully, as head coach of the Texans from 2014 to 2020 but was disliked by players. The title of general manager was added to his responsibilities in early 2020 and his first move was to trade Pro Bowl receiver DeAndre Hopkins away for a running back, some draft picks and bag of footballs. This was a move from which he would never recover and he was fired from the team early in the 2020 season. 

This past off-season, Deshaun Watson, the team's star quarterback, officially requested a trade from the Texans (which he never got) and refused to report to any of the team's spring workouts. Before training camp began this summer, Watson was accused by several women in the Houston area (and the number is now approaching 20) of sexual misconduct. The disgraced former 12th overall pick has not dressed for the Texans this season and may never take another NFL snap. 

NFL team fortunes can change quickly as rosters turn over year-to-year more than in any other sport and for some players, one calendar year can make the difference between being a serviceable player and finding themselves out of the league. The Texans fall from the top tier of teams to the bottom has been as fast as any I can remember. The formula was simple: take an unpopular coach, make him general manager, have him trade away a top player, fire him, appoint your son as general manager and have your star quarterback's personal life derail his career. The Texans entered the game with a deceptive 1-2 record but their win came in week one against their division cousins and fellow basement dwellers, the Jacksonville Jaguars who are now playing better each week. I predict that will turn out to be the only win they register and that the Texans will finish the season 1-16. All of which is why yesterday's contest in Orchard Park looked more like a football practice for the Bills than an actual game.  

The box score is as lopsided as any I can recall. The Bills posted 26 first downs to the Texans 6. Buffalo racked up 450 yards of offence to the Texans 109. 109 yards of total offence. Add 4 interceptions, a lost fumble and pelting rain to the mix and you have a laugher. I felt sorry for Texans quarterback Davis Mills (whose name sounds like he should be Commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club) who was drafted in the third round this year to serve as a third stringer behind Watson and Tyrod Taylor who Bills fans will remember well. Mills looked overwhelmed and, at times, terrified and rightly so. On offence, both Singletary and Moss ran well for the Bills who had no need to dig very deeply into their playbook.

They will probably need everything they've got in the playbook this week as the Kansas City Chiefs are up next at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday Night Football. The Bills lost twice last season to the Chiefs - once in October at home and then in the AFC Championship Game. Defensively, they are much better this year but will it prove to be enough to slow down Patrick Mahomes? That's why they play the games.  

Bills 43, Washington 21

Speculation has been rampant about a new stadium for the Bills. Although no formal or official negotiations between the team's owners, Terry and Kim Pegula, and state or local governments have taken place yet, the Pegulas have made some of their demands known to the public in considerable detail by way of what seem to be carefully orchestrated media leaks. The Bills play at the oldest stadium in the NFL which opened in 1973 and was known as Rich stadium for most of its existence. The new stadium is also expected to be in Orchard Park and an obvious site is the tract of land directly to the west of the current stadium, on the southwest corner of Abbott Road and Southwestern Boulevard.

The Buffalo News reported last week that the stadium financing plan will include the sale of Personal Seat Licences (PSLs). The paper spoke to Ron Raccuia, EVP of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, who explained that the the goal will to be to sell 50,000 PSLs which would likely start at $1,000 each and go up from there. PSLs have been associated with all new NFL stadiums built since 2009 and they can generate significant revenue to fund construction. The revenue from PSLs if often referred to as the "owner's contribution" but the funding really comes from the fans who decide to subscribe. The Pegulas are also looking for significant public funding - to cover at least half of the stadium's costs - and they will probably get it. After all, the Governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, is a Buffalo native and she will want to be able to count on strong support from her home base in the western part of the state.

I've been thinking about my own situation with my seats at the 45 yard line 20 rows up from the field in the current stadium. The PSLs associated with seats in a similar location in a new stadium are surely to be among the most expensive there are (other than for the private suites). PSLs can be sold for a fixed term - like 10 years - or they can be sold as "perpetual" which really means for as long as the team plays in the venue. In the world of life insurance, it is sort of like the difference between term insurance and whole life. Raccuia said that any PSLs sold will be both perpetual and transferrable. The Bills will have played for 50 years in the current stadium by the time any new one is ready so if I were to buy a perpetual PSL, it would likely last longer than I do.  

The actual pricing for a PSL in the best seats in this yet-to-be-built stadium is obviously unknown. When the Dallas Cowboys built their new stadium a few years ago, the most expensive PSLs cost upwards of $150,000 each. The Buffalo market will command much lower pricing than that but my best guess is that I will be facing a cost of between at least $10,000 and $15,000 USD per seat - perhaps more. If the PSLs are perpetual, then they will have a value on the secondary market and could be a good long-term investment. The NFL is the most popular sports league in the US and should continue to be for some time. But, for how long? 20 more years? 50? I know my way around a net present value (NPV) calculation and the PSL analysis is is similar to stock valuation where the price of a share is just the NPV of all of the issuer's future profits. Leaving aside the fact that the purchase of PSLs will be required in order to buy Buffalo Bills tickets at the 45 yard line, would I want to add a couple of perpetual PSLs to my investment portfolio? Its hard to say right now but I find the question an interesting one to consider. Plus I could leave them to someone in my will.

On to the actual football from yesterday which saw Josh Allen return to his 2020 form. After giving up a couple of touchdowns in the second quarter, the Bills first drive of the second half set the tone for the win. Allen took the team 93 yards in 17 plays and chewed up more than eight minutes before he found Emmanuel "Larry" Sanders for his second touchdown of the game. The Bills cruised from there as Washington quarterback Taylor Heinicke struggled through his first road start. The Bills now have one of the best receiving corps in the NFL with Sanders, Diggs, Beasley and Davis as well as tight-end Dawson Knox who also made a great catch for a touchdown. 

Up next: the Houston Texans, who have managed to turn themselves into a near-disaster of a franchise, come to Orchard Park on Sunday. The Bills will need to avoid looking ahead to week five when they travel to Kansas City for a prime time re-do of last season's AFC Championship Game.  

    

Bills 35, Dolphins 0

The way that the NFL allocates broadcast rights to CBS and FOX for the early and late afternoon Sunday time slots is a bit of a mystery to me. Prior to a couple of years ago, CBS exclusively carried games between AFC teams while FOX had the NFC. For inter-conference games, the network which covered the visiting team got to carry the game. That's why a FOX broadcast team would come to Orchard Park twice (and only twice) each year - for the two Bills home games against NFC opponents. While the network allocations are still made mostly according to this formula, there are now "cross-over" games where some all-AFC match-ups, like yesterday's game in steamy south Florida, are carried by FOX. CBS also gets a few all-NFC games each year. I'm not sure why the league and the networks made this change but it means that some Bills games are broadcast by crews which Bills fans rarely, if ever, have seen or heard before. 

The NFL produces a "broadcast map" for both afternoon time slots each Sunday, showing the regions where each game is shown. Every NFL game is a "national network" game but some are carried by more network affiliates than others. Yesterday's game in Miami was shown only in south Florida and western New York (and eastern Pennsylvania) and, with a relatively small regional viewership, the broadcast crew which FOX assigned to the game was possibly the lowest one on their depth chart (with the team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman occupying its top spot). The play-by-play yesterday in Miami was handled by someone named Brandon Gaudin who was joined by the much better known former NFL linebacker and team executive Matt Millen.

Millen is a somewhat controversial figure in NFL circles. As a player, through 12 NFL seasons, he won four Superbowls with three different teams - two with the Raiders, one with the 49ers and one with Washington. As an executive, his record couldn't be more diametrically opposed. From 2001 to 2008, Millen was President and CEO of the Detroit Lions who posted a 31-84 record over that period. The 2008 Lions became the first NFL team to lose all 16 regular season games (a record later matched by the 2017 Browns) but Millen was fired in September of that year after an 0-3 start. He has been a broadcaster since 2009. I guess FOX encourages him to make "controversial" statements and yesterday, Gaudin, his partner in the booth, egged him on. I just found his commentary to be generally poor. After he described a particular player as "one of the best out there" for about the sixth time, I said "too bad Matt Millen isn't one of the best colour commentators out there". There is a reason why FOX has relegated him to the bottom of its NFL broadcast depth chart and I hope not to have to listen to him again any time soon.

The fact that the Bills cruised to an easy 35-0 win obviously gave me more time focus on the shortcomings of the broadcast crew. Although the Bills offence, and Josh Allen in particular, still haven't matched their quality of play from last season through two weeks in 2021, a few key plays were all they needed yesterday. Last season, the Bills pass rush was probably the area most in need of improvement and yesterday, first round pick and south Florida native Greg "Jean-Jacques" Rousseau and the rest of the Bills front seven had a strong game with six sacks including one by AJ Epenesa which bounced Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagavialoa from the game early in the first quarter. 

Although Devin Singletary had more rushing yards, gained mostly on a long touchdown run on the first possession, running back Zach Moss, another south Florida native, had a strong game after being a healthy scratch in week one. He scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter and earned another key first down with strong second and third efforts on each run. The Bills have now beaten the Dolphins six straight times. No wonder so many Bills fans travel to Miami every year.

Up next: Washington, the team that only dropped its offensive name after a threat from its major sponsor, FedEx, to either drop the name or lose their sponsorship, comes to Orchard Park on Sunday. 

In Canada, we apparently have a federal election today. Most voters cast their ballots by mail, voted in the advance polls last weekend or have lost interest entirely. Tonight, I'll mostly be watching the Blue Jays who open an important series in Tampa.  

    

Steelers 23, Bills 16

I had a conversation on Saturday with a cottage neighbour who lives in West Virginia. He said that the COVID situation there has worsened considerably in recent weeks (and he is headed back there shortly) so I looked up some of the numbers. With a population of 1.8 million, the state recorded 1,800 new cases on Saturday alone and 8,000 over the past week. That would be like Ontario, with a population of 14.5 million, seeing more than 65,000 new cases in a week. Republican Governor Jim Justice has refused calls for a new indoor mask mandate and is likely to join other GOP Governors in a court challenge of President Biden's recent vaccine mandate for businesses and organizations in the US with more than 100 employees.

There were more than 50,000 unmasked fans on hand at Milan Pusker Stadium in Morgantown for the Mountaineers 66-0 win on Saturday over the apparently toothless Long Island University Sharks. The Horseshoe in Columbus, Ohio and the Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan both saw mostly unmasked crowds of more than 100,000 on Saturday - nothing out of the ordinary in non-pandemic times but I can't help but wonder if these football games will turn out to be "super-spreader" events.   

With US land border crossings still closed to Canadians travelling for "non-essential" purposes, the Bills have offered (and I have accepted) refunds for the first four home games of the season, obviously including yesterday's game against the Steelers. It's sort of a blessing in disguise as I'm not sure I would have been comfortable being in close quarters with 70,000 vaccine-status-unknown Bills fans whose pent-up desires for screaming have been building for nearly two years. So, the earliest game I'll attend is October 31st against the Dolphins but I'm not optimistic about the border opening by then anyway.

With all the pre-season hype about the Bills being legitimate Superbowl contenders (which I believe they still are), the scope of the letdown for Bills fans yesterday was massive. Although the boxscore reads as if  Buffalo was the better team - in terms of some key metrics like yards gained, first downs and time of possession - their play did not live up to what fans were expecting and the team posted its first opening game loss since the Nathan Peterman debacle in Baltimore in 2018. 

A couple of key plays made for the Bills undoing: A questionable 4th down play call which had quarterback Josh Allen fake the keeper then throw a backward pass to Matt Breida (who dressed in place of Zack Moss, a surprising healthy scratch yesterday) which resulted in a seven yard loss and a disastrous special teams play in the form of a blocked punt which the Steelers returned for a touchdown, giving them a 10 point lead with less than 10 minutes to go. 

One of the most disappointing areas for the Bills yesterday was the play of the offensive line. They were flagged for no less than six holding calls, four of then enforced. Dion Dawkins, who spent most of training camp rebuilding his strength after a serious case of COVID was responsible for three of the holding penalties. The Steelers rushed only four lineman most of the game and successfully thwarted the Bills passing game with tight coverage and some inaccurate passing by Josh Allen, fresh off the signing of a new $258 million contract extension. Looking more like he did in his rookie year than last season when he was in the running for league MVP, Allen also fumbled the ball twice, losing one of them. 

So, at 0-1, the Bills travel this week to the heat, humidity and COVID of South Florida to play the Dolphins who squeaked out a 17-16 win yesterday against the Patriots. I look for the Bills to be much better. I wonder if tight end Dawson Knox will wear his shiny red gloves in the Florida heat. I'd love to get me a pair of those. For washing dishes.     

Chiefs 38, Bills 24

I’ll admit to listening to far too much of WGR’s eight-day pre-game show which started immediately following the Bills win over the Ravens. One of the more interesting segments on One Bills Live last week was on the subject of superstitions – both the ones followed by NFL players, as described in some detail by Steve Tasker, and those practiced by fans who were invited to call in and share their strategies. All of them could be considered manifestations of obsessive compulsive disorder. A common theme is the idea that if the team wins, then the various actions and steps (in a specific order) employed before or during games which yielded the win must continue to be followed, in every detail.  It follows then that players and fans of winning teams feel that their ridiculous and well-tested superstitions are provably successful.  

Tasker explained that the most superstitious team-mate he ever had was Jim Kelly. Tasker himself claims to have had no superstitions as a player and if he was noticed to have donned his equipment in a certain order more than once, it was the product not of superstition but simply of finding an efficient way to dress. Kelly, on the other hand, created numerous elaborate superstitious routines with his team-mates which would start on Wednesdays and carry through to kick-off. Tasker remembers thinking (but not saying) that if the team were to win on Sunday, the win would not come about because Jim Kelly had come to him and tapped his helmet three times with his left index finger after the Saturday walk-through practice. And it also seemed like a lot to remember, in addition to the play-book.

Going into last night’s game in Kansas City, the Bills were 2-0 in this year’s playoffs with Siobhan and Sophie in attendance at my north Toronto apartment and with me wearing the same clothing each time. And with my three Bills-branded winter hats laid out with the logos showing. So, to assist the team in achieving a 5^th Superbowl birth, we of course repeated all of this. Believe me, it wasn’t anywhere near the effort put in by the fanatics who called in to WGR to describe their rituals. Watching in the same location with the same group (or alone) while wearing the same clothing are all popular strategies but many of the more committed Bills fans employ in-game adjustment moves such as switching seats, turning hats inside out or backwards, changing clothing or beer glasses – whatever it takes to get the team going. But sometimes, as was confirmed last night, nothing works and your team loses.

So now I can retire my Bills gear for a few months. It was a great run through the 2020 season and I retire it with great optimism for the future. As every team has, the Bills have some difficult personnel decisions to make with the extension of Josh Allen chief among them. Despite a rough first half last night where Allen’s throwing accuracy escaped him a little, the team needs to give him the contract he deserves which should make him among the highest paid players in the league. Among others, Boston College product Matt Milano will also need a new contract. With the league’s salary cap expected to decline after the loss of gate revenue this season, the decisions will become even more difficult. Successful teams retain their key players and hope to find late-round gems in the draft and role players in free agency to fill out their rosters.

Tom Brady will play in his 10^th Superbowl in a couple of weeks. I was hoping for a Buffalo v. Green Bay game which would have matched-up two of the league’s smallest markets. The Buccaneers now become the first team in the game’s 55 year history to play “at home” in the Superbowl. With the number of fans limited to 22,000 (including 7,500 vaccinated front health care workers invited to attend the game, courtesy of the NFL), it will probably not be the home field advantage it would be in any other year. I’ll be rooting for the Chiefs.