Bills 23, Jets 20

New York Jets owner Woody Johnson decided to fire his head coach Robert Saleh a week ago this morning. Saleh, in his fourth year, was escorted from the building without an opportunity to address his team. He later issued a statement thanking the Jets organization for the opportunity and wishing the players well etc etc. The NFL world, including Saleh himself and the legion of Jets beat reporters in New York, was taken entirely by surprise by this move and its timing. The morning sports talk shows, including WGR in Buffalo where I first heard the news, were abuzz with speculation about what drove Johnson to take this decision last Tuesday morning. Did Aaron Rodgers request or demand this? Was Johnson perhaps just extra distraught after his team’s loss to the Vikings two days earlier in London because he had invited many of his high-society London friends to his box at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the game? After all, Johnson had previously served as US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, someone mentioned. What? Is Woody Johnson a man who was able make the transition from the US Foreign Service to NFL owner - or was he somehow straddle both of these positions concurrently? I investigated a little and discovered that it was the latter and, yes, Johnson was indeed the US Ambassador to the UK from 2017 to 2021. Something about that timeline seemed curious and then I realized why: it exactly matched the period of the Trump presidency. A coincidence? Of course not.

Robert Wood Johnson IV, “Woody” as he is known, is the great grandson of one of the founding brothers of Johnson & Johnson, a massive pharmaceutical, biotech and consumer health products company which is ranked 40^th on the Forbes 500 and has long been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In addition to bearing a vague resemblance to Les Nessman of WKRP In Cincinnati, Woody Johnson is an heir to the family fortune – although now four generations removed from its origin, the fortune is really just passing through his hands although on the way through, he made sure to lop off $635 million to buy an NFL team in 2000. He is a long-time Republican Party donor and was a vocal Trump supporter before and during the 2016 presidential election campaign. As an industrialist and professional sports team owner, Johnson had always fancied himself as a diplomat (I’m making up this part) so as thanks for helping him in his successful run to the White House, Donald Trump appointed him to what is one of the most coveted positions in the United States Foreign Service. I’m sure that the many senior American career diplomats who would have, in normal circumstances, been considered candidates for the job, were duly impressed when Trump appointed Johnson Ambassador to the UK.

As a Bills fan, my team has faced its division rival New York Jets 128 times (including last night) going all the way back to 1960. Although the Bills now lead the all-time series 70-58, I wasn’t looking for another reason to dislike the Jets but their owner and his close connection to Donald Trump doesn’t exactly endear me to them. At least Terry Pegula’s fortune is self-made, even if it mainly came from selling large swaths of fracking rights to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion in 2010. Like it or not, fracking kept the Bills in Buffalo. Listerine and Band-Aids provided Woody Johnson with his fortune and ultimately cost Robert Saleh his job. How does the NFL manage to make every conceivable aspect of its existence so utterly fascinating?

Since 2000, 37 NFL head coaches have been fired mid-season. Average winning percentages for these teams increased from 27% before the firings to 39% afterward. Still not great but certainly better. In the next game following a mid-season firing, the “dead cat bounce” winning percentage is 47%. Maybe Woody Johnson figured that represented an improvement on the team’s chances to beat the Bills.  It may well have but the Bills and their 53% chance came through in the end but not before plenty of late-night nail-biting in the game’s final few minutes.

The score in the game should have been 27-19.  This assumes that four kicks - three missed field goals, including two “doinks” by Jets kicker Greg Zuerlein and a badly missed extra point by Tyler Bass – were made and that a Hail Mary at the end of the first half, the fourth by Aaron Rodgers in his long career, did not actually happen. The wind at the Meadowlands was difficult to be sure but the Bass extra point miss was, well, concerning. As for the Hail Mary, the Bills have been burned before this way, most recently in Arizona four years ago on a pass from Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray to win the game on a play which became known as Hail Murray.

With James Cook inactive with a toe injury, enter one Ray Davis. The rookie running back from Kentucky, selected 128^th overall in the 4^th round by the Bills, led the team in rushing with 97 yards on 20 carries and in receiving with three catches for 55 yards. Davis had a difficult childhood, as was mentioned on the broadcast, which included being homeless for a period as a teenager. On the Bills opening drive, I could sense that they were determined to run the ball and did so quite effectively with Davis leading the way, running with power between the tackles.

The game was a sloppy penalty-fest with each team flagged 11 times for a total of more than 200 yards. Most of the penalties were legitimate and were properly called – with two exceptions: each team was called for roughing the passer and neither call should have been made. I understand the desire to protect quarterbacks but I honestly don’t know how defenders are supposed to bring a quarterback to the ground without being called. Roughing the passer has become a farce and should be, and I expect will be, addressed by the league’s Competition Committee in the off-season. Both penalties came at critical points and extended drives which should not have been extended. In that sense it evened out, sort of the way hockey referees are sometimes inclined to make calls to balance things out in important playoff games. We don’t need it in football.

Going into week seven at 4-2 feels much better than it would have at 3-3. Now with a two-game lead on the Jets and holding the tie-breaker with them, the Bills find themselves in the AFC East driver’s seat. With conference losses to the Texans and Ravens already, they will need to crank out many more wins if they want more than one home playoff game in January. The Tennessee Titans, one of weaker teams in the NFL, come to Orchard Park this Sunday. The Bills should be 5-2 as they head to west coast to face the Seahawks the following week.  

Texans 23, Bills 20

Only three coaches in the NFL are longer tenured with their teams than Sean McDermott is with the Buffalo Bills (Tomlin, Harbaugh and Reid). No matter how disastrous this season ends up being – or next season or the one after that – his job is safe. So yesterday, he fell on his sword and took full responsibility for the puzzling play calling and clock management on his team’s final offensive possession yesterday in Houston, Texas. “It’s on me” is what he said.

Questions will continue this week about the decision to throw three times from the endzone – an area of the field fraught with risk late in a tied game. A sack or a holding penalty would have ended the game on a safety and any turnover would have obviously been lights out as well. The play of the game may have come from Texans punter (with a great name) Tommy Townsend who pinned the Bills inside their five yard line with less than a minute remaining. The obvious alternative to the plays that the Bills ran was to have run the ball and try to give their own punter a bit of breathing room or, better yet, grind out one first down to allow them to run out the clock after Houston had used their three second half time outs. Then take your chances in overtime. One of the most difficult tasks in football is to run when the defence knows that’s your plan so the Bills decided to try to let Josh Allen remedy the difficult situation himself. An offensive pass interference call on Keon Coleman pinned them further back before two incomplete passes set up Sam Martin’s punt from deep in his own endzone. His punt was pretty good but Robert Woods (a Bills draft pick from 11 years earlier) returned it 13 yards and after a short gain on one offensive play, Houston’s Hawaiian kicker (with another great name) Ka’imi Fairbairn ended the game on a 59 yard field goal.

So, why didn’t they run the ball? Surely they weren’t trying to score; the objective was to run out the clock and send the game to overtime. With the Texans holding their three time outs, short runs up the middle would not have used any more time than incomplete passes did but running was clearly what they should have tried to do. It’s not exactly Monday Morning Quarterbacking to say this; the entire football world landed on this consensus as soon as the game had ended. Unorthodox plays always seem great when they work: “What a brilliant call to pass in that situation” would have been the analysis had one of them worked. And on the third down pass, Allen’s arm was hit as he delivered the ball in the direction of Mack Hollins who was open for an easy first down. The pass bounced on the turf and, as they say, the rest is history.

The Bills were lucky to have come back in the second half at all. A key injury to receiver Nico Collins who had torched the Bills defence (and Cole Bishop in particular) in the first half and two turnovers by CJ Stroud allowed them to keep the game within reach but defensive weakness, especially on third down, and the worst statistical performance of Josh Allen’s career should have foreclosed any chances they had. The Texans are a good team, are well-coached and I predict will be a tough out for whoever they play in January.

I dug up some commentary from NFL analyst Mike Florio from a couple of years ago. He was talking about the Tua Tagovailoa concussion incident (in a game against the Bills) where he was cleared to return to a game after clearly wobbling around and needing assistance from one of his teammates following a hard helmet-to-turf hit. He then played in a Thursday game four days later. Florio explained then that the NFL had made a big deal of their establishing the deployment of UNC’s – Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultants – to “independently” evaluate players suspected of being concussed. The illusion of these neurotrauma specialists being “unaffiliated” or “independent” only means that they are independent from individual teams. They are hired and paid by the league which clearly has a vested interest in keeping its star players on the field. When Josh Allen’s head hit the turf yesterday, it certainly looked like a big enough impact, where he did not brace for it, that I said to my partner that he would not be returning to the game. Into the blue tent he went (he claimed afterward that it was initially to evaluate an ankle injury) for a short time, missed only one play and was back under centre to finish another unsuccessful drive. The UNC obviously was satisfied that he was fit to return and since injury from head trauma manifests itself very differently case to case, who am I to question the validity of the blue tent examination by the UNC? My guess is that he was asked what his annual salary is and who his girlfriend is. Easy for me to say (and apologies in advance for this) but if I were making $43 million and dating Hailee Steinfeld, I’d remember those things no matter how badly I’d been concussed. Allen also took a very hard hit on the failed trick play in Baltimore a week earlier. I hope he is ok. And I mean really ok and not just ok in the opinion of the not-so-independent evaluator in the blue tent.

The Bills three-game road trip continues next Monday night in the Meadowlands against the Jets - just when I had my circadian rhythm adjusted to a 1pm Sunday game. This will be another tough one as the Jets lost again yesterday, this time in London to the unbeaten Vikings. The Bills will return home to play the Titans after that and will either be 3-3 or 4-2. The AFC East is shaping up to be one of the weaker divisions in the NFL so if they can get their key injured players back and stay healthy down the stretch, the Bills still have a good shot at another division title and the home playoff game that goes with it.           

Ravens 35, Bills 10

Nothing like an old-fashioned butt-kicking to bring a 3-0 football team back to reality in a league where parity is the most consistent trend. I’m not sure how the Ravens lost their first two games earlier this month but based on last night’s dominating performance against the Bills, who looked truly over-matched in all three phases of the game, they probably won’t lose many more. They earned the top seed in the AFC last season for good reason and will again be relevant in January. The Bills haven’t suffered a blow-out loss since a home thrashing by the Colts three years ago.

Going into last night’s game, the Bills v Ravens all-time series counted only 11 games with the Ravens leading 6-5. This of course does not include the period before Art Modell moved his team from Cleveland to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Going into last night’s game, the Bills had won the last two, including a 17-3 playoff game in January of 2021 where Taron Johnson returned an interception over 100 yards to seal the win before a few thousand COVID-weary fans in Orchard Park.       

What follows here is not buyer’s remorse in any shape or form but my recent investment in Buffalo Bills seat licences - which is obviously a long position in the NFL itself - is not one without risks. The main risk is that the desire on the part of North American sports fans to watch live NFL games on TV may diminish over time. Television and the massive network broadcast deals which the league has been able to secure represents the main source of revenue for the NFL and its team owners. Over the past few years, fantasy teams and the ubiquity and popularity of legal gambling – through game-by-game results, individual player production and a myriad of propositions on which to bet have further boosted the NFL’s already massive TV ratings. Just when it seems like televised NFL games couldn’t possibly attract any more viewers, every year, including the first three weeks of the 2024 season, ratings somehow move ever higher. NFL Network operates year-round - not only during the actual five-month football season but attracts impressive viewership even during the seven-month off-season. The live games themselves together with pre-game and post-game analysis on the major networks dominate Sundays from mid-morning to midnight and the NFL on TV has a firm grip on Thursday nights and Monday nights too. Is there such a thing as too much football – a saturation point beyond which some fans may turn away from sheer exhaustion? So far, the answer seems clearly to be no. It isn’t clear how the NFL could possibly push it further - other than adding an 18^th regular season game for each team which feels like a done deal starting in the next couple of years – but if they can come up with a strategy to push the envelope further, they surely will. How far can it really go? The league came up with a tagline a few years which it doesn’t use much but I’m sure they paid consultants a fortune for it: “Forever Forward; Forever Football”. I would add “Forever Upward TV Ratings”.

I see another long-term risk on the horizon for the NFL in the form of a diminishing pool of players. While junior, high school and college football all remain very popular in the United States, the number of high schools which field football teams every year is declining. Maybe not by enough to make a difference quite yet but the trend seems clear. In 2016, I attended Homecoming Weekend - my class’s 35^th graduation anniversary - at Ridley College in St. Catharines. I had always enjoyed the Saturday afternoon of Homecoming Weekend in the field-side beer garden, catching up with old friends and cheering on the football team as they played UCC or SAC or TCS. But, unbeknownst to me, starting a couple of years before, the football program was cancelled. I ended up having a fairly long conversation that day with the relatively new Headmaster at the time and I asked him why the football program was no longer. He explained that there were several reasons: (1) injury liability / insurance costs: How many youth football players died in the US this fall? At least two or three that I saw reported. How many serious knee injuries and concussions were there? Too many to count. (2) declining interest on the part of students and probably more importantly, their parents. Remember when Justin Timberlake said a few years ago at his press conference the week before he was to take the stage at the Superbowl halftime show, in response to a reporter’s question about possibly seeing his son in an NFL uniform one day “my kid won’t be playing football, that’s for sure”? “Wrong answer” is what Roger Goodell undoubtedly said to himself as he watched Timberlake’s press conference. (3) cost: 50 or 60 sets of football equipment is pretty expensive compared to the equipment needed for just about any other sport. Coaches, trainers, doctors and managers suck up school resources which could be allocated elsewhere. He told me that it was a difficult decision but an inevitable one. I guess there was soccer game to watch that afternoon somewhere but no one seemed to care.

We already see that the majority of NFL players now come from mostly black, mostly low-income backgrounds in the southern states. High school football games in Texas and Georgia and Alabama still attract 10,000 or more fans on Friday nights and that will probably continue for a long time. But in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine, the number of high schools with football programs will continue to decrease over time – maybe quite slowly but eventually enough to reduce the talent pool which will continue on to play in college and then the NFL. We will still watch NFL football on television for the time being. But 20 or 30 years from now……..ok, we will probably still watch then too. And bet. And obsess over our fantasy teams. And that’s why I went long on the NFL.

Up next for the Bills is another tough road game, this time in Houston against Stefon Diggs and the Houston Texans. It’s a rare Sunday 1pm game.

Bills 47, Jaguars 10

The first game I attended in Orchard Park as a Buffalo Bills season ticket holder – opening day of the 2004 season – did not go down in the annals of NFL history as a classic. Quite the opposite actually as two of the league’s weaker teams generated less than 500 yards of total offence combined. With the Bills leading 10-6, Jacksonville got the ball one last time in the game’s final minutes. On a long fourth down pass, Bills cornerback Nate Clements could have easily swatted the ball to the ground to end the game but, on account of either a brain cramp or an attempt to pad his personal statistics, he instead tried for the interception which redirected the ball into the Jags receiver’s hands to prolong the drive. Then, on the last play of the game, another fourth down from the Bills seven-yard line, after three straight incomplete passes, Byron Leftwich found Ernest Wilford who was somehow able to make the catch in double coverage and get both feet down just inside the back of the endzone. Final score: Jags 13, Bills 10.

Going into last night’s tilt at Highmark Stadium, the Bills and Jags had played 19 times, including two playoff games, with the Jags leading the all-time series 10-9. To say that the Bills have underperformed against Jacksonville over the last 30 years would be like saying that Donald Trump isn’t always entirely truthful in his campaign speeches. Two separate debacles in London – the EJ Manuel interception clinic in 2015 and last year’s injury-fest, two excruciating playoff games – a 30-27 home loss in 1996 which would be the last game of Jim Kelly’s NFL career and then a profoundly frustrating 10-3 loss in January, 2018 which ended the 17-year playoff drought and would also be the final game of the Tyrod Taylor era. For no apparent reason, the Bills have had more than their share of bad luck, poor quarterback play, injuries and generally crushing disappointment against this small market team which at best enjoys tepid fan support in its college football crazy part of north Florida. I did attend one Bills v Jags game at Rich Stadium where things went well for the home side: a 1998 17-16 win where Doug Flutie scored the winning touchdown scampering untouched to the left side on a naked bootleg on the last play of the game.

I was in Williamsville last week at a nondescript plaza on Main Street just off the 290. That’s where the Bills have set up their Stadium Experience space to present renderings of the new Highmark Stadium, help season ticket holders select their new seats and most importantly to guide them through the process of opening their wallets to purchase seat licences. What I’ll say is that the new stadium will be a vast improvement over the current brutalist concrete bunker which opened in 1973. Much larger concourses, wider seating rows, better designed parking ingress and egress, much better separation of pedestrians and vehicles in and around the roadways and parking lots (there’s basically none now and people get hit regularly) and more entry gates are just a few of the improvements which Bills fans will notice at the new stadium. They will definitely be paying more for tickets – and undoubtedly for everything else too. One interesting difference is that there will be seating sections right at each 50 yard line as opposed to it being an aisle like in the current stadium. I was lucky enough to secure seats in one of these sections – on the visitor’s side at the 48 yard line, 22 rows up from the field. I’m pretty happy with that. My financial advisor isn’t convinced that the seat licences represent a sound investment but he’s never attended an NFL game and therefore has no business offering an opinion on it.

As many times as I have crossed the US border in a car, it amazes me how often the border guards can come up with a question I’ve never been asked before. After explaining where, why and for how long I was going, as he handed my passport back to me, he asked me “who owns this vehicle?”.  I said “I do”. That answer seemed satisfactory and I was on my way to the white-knuckle bridges of Grand Island. These bridges are quite steep and, if you look, you can see the Niagara River far below through the guardrails. It terrifies me but, like a typical Bills v Jags game, I just can’t look away.  

Although it didn’t fit the historical Bills v Jags pattern, I couldn’t – and didn’t – look away from last night’s game at all. An offensive clinic in the first half turned the whole second half into garbage time and the Bills coasted to an easy win. Although his first convert attempt was blocked, Tyler Bass was perfect on the next five converts and added two field goals as well. This should stop the work-outs of other kickers which did happen last week. I loved what the Elvis guy had on the back of his guitar: “Everybody eats when James Cooks”.

Next up is a very tough assignment: off a short week at Baltimore to face the Ravens on Sunday Night Football. They are coming off a big win in Dallas – amazingly, their first of the season. This is the first of three straight road games for the Bills who travel to Houston the following week then to the Meadowlands to face the Jets after that before returning home tom face the Titans. Baltimore is an early 2.5 point favourite.

Bills 31, Dolphins 10

A safe estimate of Tua Tagovailoa’s career earnings to date is in the range of $75 million, including $42 million already this year. Two months ago, the Miami Dolphins signed him to a four-year $212 million contract extension – one of the richest contracts in NFL history (although since surpassed, most recently by Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys), of which $167 million is “guaranteed” (with some caveats such as if he is “cleared to play” but chooses to retire, he forfeits the remainder of the contract). If he really is the wholesome family man he is purported to be, he surely still has plenty of that $75 million he’s earned. He probably doesn’t drive a Dodge Caravan but probably not a $350,000 McLaren 720 LS Coupe either, like his teammate Tyreek Hill does. He is said to be an evangelical Christian, dedicated to his wife and two children, popular with his teammates and is also known as good and decent person.

Tua suffered his third “official” NFL concussion (he had a fourth while playing college for Alabama) in Thursday’s loss to the Bills, as he extended his body to gain an extra yard or two after easily gaining a first down as the Dolphins tried to chip away at a 21-point deficit. His helmet collided with Damar Hamlin’s knee in a moderately innocent looking play but he was clearly injured in the process. I figured it was a neck stinger or a perhaps vertebra issue as the impact clearly cranked his head to his left. He was slow to stand and looked foggy as he made his way not to the blue tent but directly to the locker room where he was diagnosed and ruled out of the remainder of the game very quickly. Although he played all of last season without a head injury (as far as we know), in 2022, he was concussed officially twice but most observers agree that there was also a third one which was, at best not properly diagnosed and, at worst covered up by medical staff. One of them was severe enough that he was unable to stand afterward. Four concussions in a two-year span. I’d say that if he wants to be a functioning father for his children and have a chance at a long and healthy life (it may be too late already), he should retire from football. Will he? Dolphins fans may understandably feel conflicted about this because second-stringer Skylar Thompson, who finished the game under centre for the Dolphins, looked like he was barely qualified to play at the junior college level.  

I read what seemed like a credible account of the bodycam video from the Miami police officer who “interacted” with Tyreek Hill before the Dolphins week one game. Rather than showing any deference or cooperation to the officer, Hill insisted on keeping his tinted window closed after lowering it a couple of inches to hand over his licence and registration. When the officer tapped on the window to advise him to keep it rolled down, Hill could be heard saying several times “don’t tap on my window like that” and “just write up the ticket and let me go”.  The officer finally had enough of Hill’s insubordination and ordered him from the car and onto the ground where bystanders filmed the rest of the encounter. Another approach Hill could have taken, it seems to me, would have been to roll the window fully down and say “Hello officer, I’m Tyreek Hill. I’m on my way to the stadium for today’s season opener and I was going over the game plan in my mind and I guess I lost track of how fast I was going. Sorry about that. Can I autograph something for you?” This approach or one along those lines, I suggest, would likely have resulted in no ticket, no take-down and no story. But Hill chose to be a jerk about it and then later called for the officer to be fired. Apparently, this officer has a checkered history on the job but Hill has had more than his own share of unsavoury legal troubles related to domestic violence. Maybe he should try to hand around more with Tua Tagovailoa.

This past week, I finally received an invitation to the Bills Stadium Experience at a suburban mall in northeast Buffalo where the goal (from the team’s perspective) is to present to me a virtual overview of the new stadium (they ask that no photos be taken), help me select my new seats and try to close the deal on my purchase of two seat licences. It sort of feels like I’m going to hear a sales pitch for a time-share but we’ll see. I do know the cost of the licences but I won’t disclose it here. I’ve been asked to set aside 90 minutes of my time for this appointment. Probably more if I hesitate to subscribe. I’ve never been to Williamsville but I hear its beautiful this time of year.

Yesterday I watched parts of the Jets v. Titans game, hoping for a Titans win which did not happen. Also saw a lot of the Chiefs v. Bengals game, hoping for a Bengals win which also did not happen.

The Bills are now 2-0 and enjoying a 12 day break after Thursday’s strong performance in Miami. Injuries continue to pile up on the defensive side with Terrel Bernard now out for about four weeks with a pectoral strain – better than a tear which ended Daquan Jones’ season last year.  

Up next is a Monday Night home game against the Jacksonville Jaguars who, at 0-2, will be desperate to salvage their playoff prospects.

Bills 34, Cardinals 28

When the Bills traded Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans in the off-season, burdening the team with a massive “dead cap” number by so doing, the most enduring video clip over the ensuing months has been his dropped pass in the Divisional Playoff game in Orchard Park on January 21^st. With the Bills trailing the Chiefs 27-24 late in the fourth quarter, Josh Allen dropped a perfectly placed deep ball into Diggs breadbasket. From our vantage point, the play was to the far side of the field and as Diggs turned to his right to make the catch attempt, his back was turned to us, leaving us to see the ball sailing into his arms (and as we know through his arms) with the defender close behind. At the time, I thought he had made the catch but of course he had not. The Bills went on to punt and the Chiefs simply ground out the necessary first downs they needed to run the clock out, advance to the AFC Championship Game and go on to win the Superbowl. I have now seen that drop multiple times from every available angle and I still wonder how things may have played out had he made the catch. The team just may have been unveiling its first Superbowl banner yesterday in Orchard Park (it actually would have been this past Thursday as the defending champs open each NFL season with a week one Thursday home game), Diggs would probably still be wearing a Bills uniform and this season would be their own attempt to repeat as champions.

Through most of the first half of yesterday’s season opener in a blustery Orchard Park, it felt like 2024 might be the rebuilding year Bills fans hoped that it would not be. A healthy Kyler Murray was able to move the ball seemingly at will against the Bills still-depleted defence and a classic Josh Allen sack/fumble/turnover on the first drive created a sinking feeling and I had visions of an 8-9 season accompanied by thoughts of the benefits of greatly increased salary cap space and inventory of draft capital going into 2025. A loss to the lowly Cardinals, who drafted Marvin Harrison, Jr with the fourth overall pick in April, could cast a long shadow over what might end up being a lost season. A step back to absorb the dead cap hit, re-tool the receiving corps and defensive backfield might just be what we would have to endure as we prepare to move to a new stadium (and pay a lot more to see live NFL football) in 2026. But, as quickly as the prospect of a lost season loomed, the team gathered itself in the second half and squeaked out a win in a game not decided until the final minute. The fans went home happy. For now.

Yesterday was the first real exposure for most of us to the new and still somewhat incomprehensible kick-off format. As I understand the logic, there were two goals in mind which brought about the change: to create fewer touchbacks and more kick returns and to limit injuries from players colliding at full speed. I’d say that goal number two will be achieved because of the elimination of the running by the kicking team but in the limited sample I saw yesterday, in the Bills game and others I saw parts of, it seems like there are just as many touchbacks as there were under the old rules. We did see a few twists such as the Cardinals kicker failing to reach the landing zone giving the Bills the ball at their own 40 yard line, Tyler Bass kicking the ball out of bounds in an attempt to hit the landing zone kicking into a strong wind, also giving the Cardinals the ball at their 40 yard line and, most importantly, the Bills giving up a touchdown on a kick-off return. Take away the wind yesterday and it looked like we would see just as many touchbacks as before. The only real difference is that the receiving team gets the ball on its own 30 yard line on a touchback. I’m sure I’ll get used to the new kick-off format but seeing the kicker standing alone, 40 yards from any other player, is a strange look indeed. When punter Sam Martin came out to hold the ball on the tee for Tyler Bass (on account of wind), as was pointed out on the CBS broadcast, it was the first time in NFL history that a team legally fielded 12 players.  

We watched a bit of college football on Saturday. The Michigan game went the way the Bills game looked like it was going (for fans of the blue and maize), Notre Dame lost at home to Northern Illinois and the Deion Sanders coached Colorado Buffaloes lost to the Cornhuskers in Lincoln, NE. After seeing Deion Sanders (“Prime Time” or more commonly, “Prime”) wearing his trademark sunglasses throughout last season and again this season, I wondered what brand they were and how much they cost….maybe $2,000? Maybe more? They look like they’re gold-plated or something. Well, the answer is that they are made by Blenders and are called Prime 21. They come in white or black frames and retail for $89 USD. Over the last year, Sanders has made them one of the most popular brands of sunglasses. So, I ordered a pair to look as cool as possible on canoe trips. White frames.

Up next for the Bills is a very short week and a tough Thursday night game in the humidity of south Florida against the Dolphins who eked out a win yesterday against their northern Florida cousins, the Jacksonville Jaguars. Tyreek Hill will be taking an Uber to the stadium.       

Chiefs 27, Bills 24

The clouds parted in north Toronto just after 9am and I basked in the morning sunshine from the 12^th floor of my building as I drank my coffee and wondered how the traffic would be, where we would park and whether or not I should wear my huge arctic parka. We had tried one night game a few years ago – an 8.15pm start – which got me home just before 3am.  Little did I know that despite last night’s game kicking off almost two hours earlier than a regular night game, thanks to inexplicably and unbearably slow egress from the stadium parking lot and heavy traffic up to and including the Canada Customs line-up and the Peace bridge, I would arrive home once again at the aforesaid time of 3am.

A bit more on yesterday’s (and this morning’s) travel details: It was a tale of two driving trips. The drive to Queenston, the US border line-up and the rest of the drive to the stadium parking lot was clear and uneventful, even once we began to see the towering snow banks south of Buffalo and into Orchard Park. We were parked and ready to begin our seven-hour outdoor winter adventure shortly after the stadium parking lots opened four hours before kick-off. A couple of drinks, a good barbecue and smooth entry into the stadium brought us to our seats a full hour before kick-off. This allowed ample time to watch the Chiefs players’ wives gather, greet each other and mingle around in their fancy coats and boots during the warm-ups. The guy who sits next to me arrived a little later, sporting a photo of the back of Taylor Swift on her way in to the stadium a few minutes earlier. After the game, as one parking lot attendant commented, it was “the worst night ever”. He had heard that an ambulance had tried or was trying to access the area and that was apparently part of the reason why we moved about 10 metres in 75 minutes before actually starting to leave the stadium parking lot. As we sat wondering about the cause of the delay, Mike Schopp and the Bulldog on WGR waxed on about Wide Right 2.0 and whatever else had gone wrong with the game.

The elevated level of excitement and anticipation around this game was palpable as kick-off approached. Bills mafia were ready to finally slay the Chiefs dragon – the playoff version at least – in their house. But of course it wasn’t to be. A few key dropped passes on deep balls, the evaporation of the running game in the second half and a missed game-tying 44 yard field goal were certainly valid contributors to the crushing loss but, in my view, it was the inability of the Bills depleted defence to stop Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Isiah Pacheco which cost the Bills the game. Even if Tyler Bass had made the kick and tied the game at 27, it seemed highly likely to me that the Chiefs, with 104 seconds on the game clock and two time-outs still at their disposal, would have easily been able to drive far enough for Harrison Butker to kick the Chiefs into the AFC Championship Game anyway. But he missed the kick wide right and the Chiefs needed only one more first down to seal the game.

Despite the profound disappointment of another playoff loss to Kansas City – the third one in four years – and the salary cap and roster issues which General Manager Brandon Beane will be faced with starting this morning, optimism will continue to abound around the Bills and their fans as the off-season finally leads to the start of training camp in the late July heat. 2024 will be Josh Allen’s 7^th season as the Bills quarterback. He is clearly one of the best players in the league and he will continue to be as he is arguably only now entering the prime years of his career. Primarily for this reason, I will clean my barbecue grill and pack away my Bills gear not with a heavy heart but with anticipation of another successful Bills season to come. The injury pendulum may swing back in 2024; Dalton Kincaid could begin to earn the label as the NFL’s new Travis Kelce; James Cook might continue his journey to becoming one of the league’s offensive stars. I am confident that with a few luckier bounces here and there, a key fake punt play that actually works, a healthy defence and the continued and unwavering support of Bills fans, the team can easily surpass what they accomplished this season. That’s what being a real fan is all about – even on this gloomy sleep-deprived Monday morning.

The NFL season now only has three games remaining. The Chiefs go to Baltimore as 3.5 point underdogs. I’ll be cheering them on.   As I watched Kansas City’s star players up close last night and the commanding presence of Andy Reid lumbering (and slightly limping) around the sidelines, delivering short messages from time to time to certain players, gave me new respect for him and program he has built in Kansas City. He is rumoured to be contemplating retirement after this season and I would find it pleasing if he were to win another championship before he walks away. And maybe shoot some new State Farm commercials for the Superbowl.