Bills 30, Chiefs 21

“The play of the year” exclaimed Jim Nantz on the CBS broadcast after Josh Allen bulldozed his way to the endzone on a game-clinching 26-yard run on fourth down and two to put the Bills up 29-21 last evening in Orchard Park. Tyler Bass came on for the critical extra point to extend the lead to two scores and made it. I had spent most of the game - after Bass missed the extra point wide-right in the first quarter – convinced that the Chiefs would end up winning the game by a point, making Bass the scapegoat once again. But he was solid on his one field goal try and his other three extra points. Not as confidence inspiring as we might want but Bass does seem to have the ability to shake off his shaky moments and regain consistency.

When Josh Allen is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, yesterday’s touchdown run will be included in the highlight reel of the top ten plays in his career. Hopefully, along with his multiple Superbowl winning plays as well. Someone commented that on his touchdown yesterday, Allen ran as if it might be the very last thing he did in his time on this earth. I was happy enough to see him pass the first down marker then amazed as he made another three or four Chiefs miss or get dragged into the endzone with him. The play of the year indeed.  

When I saw late in the week that Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker sprained his misogynous bone and was placed on Injured Reserve (meaning he must miss at least four games), I wondered how his wife Isabella was feeling about the prospect of having him around the house more than usual during his recovery from arthroscopic surgery. His traditional ideas around marriage and the role of women, which sound like those of a stereotypical 1950s American family, probably mean more work for her with him laid up as he is. She’ll be doing more cooking, more cleaning etc. I guess but will probably be happy to oblige as, according to her husband, and by happy coincidence, she shares his views on family roles and responsibilities.

The Chiefs plucked Spencer Schrader from the Jets practice squad to handle placekicking duties for the next four games. The Jets had elevated Schrader for their week 10 game against the Cardinals and he made both kicks he tried. But they left him on their practice squad rather than protecting him by moving him up to the active 53-man roster - presumably unaware that another team like the Chiefs might claim him. He kicked his three extra points yesterday as if they were 60-yard field goal attempts and certainly looked confident doing so. He will be a much cheaper option than Butker next season and beyond.    

I’ll be sure watch Chris Berman’s halftime week 11 recap package tonight where he will be sure to include some Grey Cup highlights as he does every year.  Berman is one of the all-time great sports broadcasters, having invented the convention of the insertion of a middle name for sports figures as in Tony “what are they” Pena, Pat “international” borders and probably my favourite: “fettuccini” Alfredo Griffin. Berman will be running through highlights of another Toronto Argonaut Grey Cup victory – the team’s 19^th in its 151-year history. The Argos are the oldest professional sports team in North America which still uses its original name. Now owned by MLSE (the reason why CEO Keith Pelley was shown celebrating fourth quarter touchdowns), the Argos have had an eclectic ownership journey over the last few decades which famously included Wayne Gretzky and John Candy in the early 1990s.

I have never been to a Grey Cup game but I make up for it partly by having attended several Vanier Cup games at Varsity Stadium and one – my last one – at the dome in Toronto. My CFL cred comes from being at a few Argos games in the early 1980s at Exhibition Stadium and running onto the field afterward to celebrate. One of those times, we smoked a joint in the Blue Jays dugout. Seriously. I am also one of the very few surviving attendees of the Las Vegas Posse game in Edmonton in the final week of the 1994 CFL season. Originally scheduled as Posse home game, it was moved to Commonwealth Stadium on account of stadium lease issues in Vegas along with a general lack of fan support. The Posse folded immediately following the game. A great CFL story indeed.

The Bills now find themselves at 9-2, a half game up on the Chiefs and now holding the potentially all-important tie-breaker with them. Teams usually hope for a late bye week and this one now upon them comes at a perfect time for the Bills with a growing list of nagging injuries which will benefit from a couple of weeks off.

The Chiefs have an easy remaining schedule, starting with a trip to Charlotte this week to face the 3-7 Panthers. They may not lose again in the regular season which would lock up the number one seed in the AFC for them. It safe to assume that their offence will improve when stud running back Isiah Pacheco returns from injury perhaps as early as next week. The defence – and the run defence in particular – is mainly what led them to the 9-0 start and it looked very good most of the time yesterday as well. Despite trying, the Bills were unable to establish an effective run game yesterday and had most of their offensive success by way of Josh Allen.

After the break next week, the San Francisco 49ers come to Orchard Park for Sunday Night Football on December 1^st. The last time they visited western New York was in the middle of the Colin Kaepernick controversy when players were kneeling or choosing to stay in the locker room during the national anthem. Kaepernick was on the 49ers roster that day. I was at the game and saw many anti-Kaepernick signs in the parking lot. The political situation in the United States seems ripe for another round of some form of civil protest. Who knows if and when it might manifest itself but Roger Goodell is certainly hoping that if it happens, it happens well away from NFL stadiums.   

Bills 30, Colts 20

My dad grew up in Scarborough and attended Scarborough Collegiate (now R.H. King Academy) in the early 1950s. One of his pals and class-mates was Danny Nykolyk (older brother of one-time Leaf coach Mike Nykoluk) who went on to play 16 seasons as an offensive tackle for the Toronto Argonauts. When I was a kid, we watched the Argos and the CFL. The NFL was not on our sports radar at all. Only later in his life, and mainly due to my fandom of the Buffalo Bills, did my dad develop an interest in the NFL – and that interest was only a passing one (forgive the pun) at best. In the 1970s, average CFL salaries were actually higher than those in the NFL. Tony Dorsett once famously said “I’d play for peanuts before I’d go to Canada”. The Dallas Cowboys paid him more than peanuts I’m sure but many US college players came to the CFL because it paid well, was popular and well-attended and offered black players a chance to be revered - even worshipped - by appreciative Canadian fans as well as offering a much more equitable social setting. Times have obviously changed considerably in the last 50 years with the CFL now an afterthought for most Canadian football fans, except for a shrinking and aging cohort of what Stephen Harper called “Old Stock Canadians”. Fun fact: Canadian football is actually a four-down game but, being Canadian, teams are so conservative that they always punt on third down.

Last year, the CFL finally figured out that it might draw more viewers if it played its playoff games (except for the Grey Cup) on Saturdays rather than going up against the NFL juggernaut on Sundays. The two conference championship games played two days ago – the East game in Montreal and the West game in Winnipeg – were both well-attended. Percival Molson Memorial Stadium on the campus of McGill University was sold out and Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg looked completely full as well. The East game was exciting and close with the visiting Argos holding on for a 30-28 win and a birth in the 111^th Grey Cup game next weekend in Vancouver. The Blue Bombers sent their fans home happy with a dominating 38-22 win over Saskatchewan. I heard a report that Grey Cup tickets were selling well last week in Vancouver, a market whose support of the CFL in recent years has been about as lukewarm as Toronto’s has. Let’s hope we don’t see many empty seats. The Argos will be without their starting quarterback Chad Kelly (nephew of Jim Kelly) who suffered a gruesome broken ankle in the second half of Saturday’s game. The Argos will look to Nick Arbuckle (a great sports name), who finished the game capably, to guide them to the Grey Cup.

The Indianapolis Colts have suffered from problematic ownership since Robert Irsay acquired the team (then the Baltimore Colts) in 1972. After his extended unsuccessful negotiations with the City of Baltimore around the construction of a new stadium, the Maryland legislature passed a law permitting the City of Baltimore to seize the Colts from Irsay under the legal principle of Eminent Domain. In response and after receiving a sweetheart offer from the City of Indianapolis, Irsay orchestrated the team’s “midnight move” in the early morning hours of March 29^th, 1984 when 15 tractor trailers were loaded with the team’s filing cabinets, office furniture, shoulder pads, athletic tape, etc. The move made headlines around the North American sports world and reinforced the doctrine that NFL owners can do almost anything they want to. Son Jim Irsay assumed control of the team following his father’s death in 1997 but only after a bitter legal battle with his stepmother. Jim Irsay has struggled with addiction and was charged with impaired driving in 2014. Police found oxycodone and a large amount of cash in his car but he was able to avoid jail time, pleading to two misdemeanors. He faced heavy criticism two years ago for firing head coach Frank Reich mid-season and replacing him with former Colts Pro Bowl centre Jeff Saturday who had no previous coaching experience beyond the high school level. After drafting Andrew Luck first overall in the 2012 NFL draft, Luck abruptly retired from football two weeks before the 2019 season was to begin. The team has struggled since then and those struggles continued yesterday against the Bills with 39 year-old Joe Flacco under centre.

The game at Lucas Oil Stadium was a sloppy affair with multiple errant passes and fumbles by both teams. Star slot cornerback Taron Johnson intercepted Flacco on the Colts first play from scrimmage and returned it for a pick-six touchdown. The Bills have not lost since Johnson returned from injury five weeks ago. Curtis Samuel made an appearance and a significant contribution early in the game as the Bills were without both Keon Coleman and Amari Cooper. The Colts Jonathan Taylor had great success running in the first half, racking up 107 yards but managed only another seven yards in the second half. The Bills final scoring drive was a classic close-out drive, chewing up significant fourth quarter time and finishing with a James Cook two-yard touchdown run to put the Bills up 30-13.

Someone said last night that the Kansas City Chiefs are the worst 9-0 team ever. That may well be but they extended their winning streak to 15 games (including the Superbowl) yesterday by blocking a 35-yard field goal in the dying seconds to hang on for a 16-14 win over the Denver Broncos. Will their win streak come to an end on Sunday in Orchard Park? In the most anticipated game of the 2024 season so far, CBS has decided to send its studio crew to the Highmark Stadium parking lot on Sunday. They are expecting to witness Bills Mafia fully in its drunken stupor, chugging beer bongs, jumping through folding tables and proving that they are the hardest drinking and most dedicated fans in the NFL. With the late 4.25pm start, Bills fans will definitely not disappoint.  

Bills 30, Dolphins 27

The Miami Dolphins played well enough to win yesterday’s game in Orchard Park. But of course they didn’t and their season is probably done – definitely done in terms of any hopes for a division title and probably also out of contention for a Wildcard playoff spot. Statistically, they topped the Bills in most key categories: they registered 26 first downs to the Bills 24, they outgained the Bills 373 yards to 325 and they held the ball for just under 32 minutes compared to the Bills 28. Tua Tagovailoa played very well with only three incomplete passes in 28 attempts, 231 yards, two touchdowns and an impressive Quarterback Rating of 124.9. It felt like the Dolphins knew that this game was essentially their season and they responded accordingly. It just wasn’t quite enough.

The ups and downs of Bills pipsqueak place-kicker Tyler Bass have been well-documented this season and yesterday’s game was a perfect sample of his inconsistency over the last two seasons. While he hit two field goals from 40 and 49 yards in the first half yesterday, he missed one extra point and doinked another off the goalpost which did go in but did not inspire confidence. On the Bills second touchdown, Bass remained on the sidelines as the Bills went for the two-point conversion and got it. His unlikely game-winning kick in the dying seconds of a tie game was a moment for the ages – a 61 yard kick which probably would have been good from 70 yards. He hit it perfectly – high, long and close to dead-centre. It was in fact the longest field goal in the team’s 65 year history, breaking the previous record of 59 yards set by Canadian Steve Christie 31 years ago.

The Bills dominance over the Dolphins in recent years – they’ve won 15 of the last 17 match-ups including playoffs – is noteworthy but still doesn’t match the Dolphins streak of 20 consecutive wins over Buffalo which extended through the entire decade of the 1970s including the OJ Simpson years. These division rivals have now played 123 times and, despite the Bills recent strength, the Dolphins still hold a 62-60 advantage with one tie game in 1968. The squishing of the fish remains a highly satisfying result for Bills fans, especially those old enough to remember the 1970s. Tyler Bass has kicked the winning field goal two of the last three times that the Dolphins have come to Orchard Park – yesterday and in a snow squall in December of 2022. Based on the team’s reaction to Sean McDermott’s awarding of a game ball to Bass in the locker room after the game yesterday, it seems clear that Bass is a popular figure with his team-mates. He stuttered his way through accepting the game ball, tearing up in his gratitude. It’s hard not to pull for him. Let’s hope that his huge kick yesterday will shake his jitters away for the rest of the season.

Against my better judgment, I ended up watching a bit of CNN over the weekend. Wolf Blitzer is one of the network’s most recognizable faces, dating back to 1990. His coverage of the 1991 Gulf War made him a household name and, now 76 years old, he is still going strong. Blitzer is also known as one of the most famous fans of the Buffalo Bills. Blitzer was born in Germany but grew up in Buffalo, attending Kenmore West Senior High School and earning a history degree from SUNY at Buffalo. Blitzer posts a photo on his Twitter account before every Bills game, usually adorned in Bills gear and always holding a Bills coffee mug. For whatever reason, Blitzer has for the most part been able to avoid being included in Trump’s “Fake News CNN” attacks which have targeted Jim Acosta, Anderson Cooper, Kaitlin Collins and most other CNN anchors. The chances of the US presidential election results being known a week from now seem to be about 50/50. Blitzer and his colleagues have a busy week ahead. Let’s hope that election unfolds in an orderly manner and that chaos is avoided. I’m referring, of course, to the Ward 15 Don Valley West Toronto City Council by-election which takes place today. I’m supporting whoever has the best chance at keeping former Sun columnist Anthony Furey from winning.

The Bills head to Indianapolis next week to face the Colts who lost last night with 39 year old Joe Flacco under centre. Anthony Richardson, the fourth overall pick in last year’s draft, made headlines last week by taking himself out of the game for one play due to fatigue in a loss to the Texans. Regardless of who the Colts start at quarterback, the main concern the Bills will have is running back Jonathan Taylor who helped the Colts spank the Bills in Orchard Park 41-15 in their most recent meeting three years ago. At 4-5, the Colts still have playoff aspirations and the Bills better not be looking ahead to their huge match-up the following week with the Chiefs at home. Kansas City plays tonight on MNF at home against Tampa Bay. Go Bucs!

Bills 31, Seahawks 10

When the NFL realigned its divisions before the 2002 season, some teams were required to leave old rivalries behind and join newly created divisions in order to land on the existing structure of two conferences, each with four divisions with each division having four teams. The Houston Texans were the final piece of the symmetry puzzle as they became the 32^nd team that year and joined the AFC but maybe the oddest change was that the Seattle Seahawks moved from the AFC West to the NFC West to re-balance the conferences at 16 teams each. After that, the pattern of each AFC team playing each NFC team every four years – and every eight years at home – has held. The addition of the 17^th game in 2021 upset this overall pattern as each team’s 17^th game is against a non-conference opponent but the Bills and Seahawks have not met in a “17^th game” yet and have been on that schedule of meeting each other every four years since 2002.

The all-time series between the Bills and Seahawks since the Seattle joined the NFL in 1976 amounts to only 15 games, including yesterday’s, with the Seahawks now holding a narrow 8-7 advantage. One of those games, a 50-17 Seattle blow-out in December 2012 was played in Toronto as part of that ill-fated six-game experiment. I was there for it, unfortunately. The half-time show featured Psy. Before yesterday, the last meeting between these teams took place before empty stands in Orchard Park with the Bills outlasting the Hawks 44-34 in November of 2020. The Seahawks home stadium, now called Lumen Field, is now almost 25 years old but still claims the Guiness World Record for the loudest crowd in an outdoor stadium. Visiting teams are flagged for false starts more than in any other stadium in the league, although recently, these have reverted closer to the mean. It is a difficult venue for visiting teams to play in because of crowd noise but also because many visiting teams, including the Bills yesterday, have to travel a long distance through multiple time zones to get there.

Anyone looking for a scenic drive this autumn in Ontario, outside of the stretch from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay which is tough to beat but a long way from Toronto, need look no further than the remote area between Renfrew and Haliburton. I mention this because that’s where I was from shortly after 4pm yesterday, having attended a family memorial in Ottawa. This relatively unknown part of Ontario is surprisingly mountainous with grand vistas from the heights of land, lush river valleys below and hardly any vehicle traffic at all. Once west of Renfrew, there is basically no cell service for most of the way and obviously no updates to my Score app were coming through either. And no AM radio (other than a French station which my scan function kept landing on) so I found myself in an unconnected bubble for pretty much the entire time that the Bills were flexing their offensive muscles in Seattle. When I passed through Bancroft, I saw that the score was 17-3 which boded well and the next score I got as I approached Haliburton was what would be the final score of 31-10 with a few minutes remaining. I had plenty of time to reflect on the loss of my beloved uncle for whom the NFL represented the antithesis of his core beliefs. I hope that he would have been impressed that I was silently thinking about him at the very time my team was on the field.

I did get back in time to see the end of the Commanders game and the Hail Mary(land) miracle. Bears coach Matt Eberflus explained afterward that his team had practiced its defence against this play multiple times and he just wasn’t sure what had gone wrong. Luckily for the Bills, the Hail Mary they gave up two weeks ago against the Jets did not cost them the game. Speaking of the Jets, they managed to lose their fifth straight game, this time to the Patriots. The Dolphins managed to lose at home, with Tua Tagovailoa back under centre, by one point on a game-ending field goal by the Cardinals. The Bills are now sitting very comfortably atop the AFC East at 6-2 while the Jets, Dolphins and Patriots have only two wins each. Even with the Bills leading the way, the AFC East is clearly the weakest division in the NFL this season. I did dial up a 12-minute highlight package from the Seattle game and saw the Bills offence moving and scoring seemingly at will. Josh Allen got the monkey off his back in terms of his first interception of 2024 but it didn’t cost the Bills as the defence stepped up when it needed to and when the outcome was still in question.

The problem for the AFC, as it seems to be every year, is the Chiefs and the fact that they just don’t lose. Now 7-0 after winning in Las Vegas yesterday, they are the class of the league. But we already knew that. As we work through the 2024 schedule and look for meaningful games ahead, the November 17^th match-up is looming large. The Chiefs come to Orchard Park that day for a 4.25pm kick-off - a game which CBS must be expecting will attract a huge audience for a regular season game. The Divisional playoff game in January was watched by some 50 million. Expect this one to come close to that.

The Bills can not afford to focus on the Chiefs game just yet. The Dolphins come to town next Sunday and the Bills travel to Indianapolis the following week. These could both be “look ahead” or “trap” games for the Bills if they let them. I’m expecting that Sean McDermott will have his team ready on Sunday. The Dolphins have a hope of salvaging something from this season with a win but a loss could make them sellers at the trade deadline set for Tuesday November 5^th which is also election day in the United States.  

 

Bills 34, Titans 10

The weather was perfect for a football game yesterday in Orchard Park, if not a little too warm for the third week of October but what else should we be expecting these days? From our vantage point on the visitors side, the sun was low over the south side of Highmark Stadium and the game took place in a small window between the brims of our ball caps and the head and shoulders of the folks sitting in front of us. For a 1pm game in October – a rarity for the Buffalo Bills these days - the low sun lasts for the entire game. Between the direct rays from above and the reflection off the shiny Field Turf, it almost felt like a sort of snow-blindness after three full hours. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve been to plenty of cold weather games with wind, sideways rain and snow. Those are coming in a few weeks but yesterday’s conditions required probably the last sun screen application of 2024. And the stadium was absolutely full and brimming with energy. Bills fans went home happy, however slow their journey probably was.

As good as the weather was and as well as the home team played (in the second half at least), the traffic yesterday was epically bad everywhere. As dawn broke and as I naively made my way down Yonge Street for a pick-up at Harbourfront, the traffic seemed to be building to weekday levels with throngs of pedestrians crossing at every intersection south of Bloor Street. Yes, I unknowingly picked the day of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon to execute what became almost impossible – getting all the way down to Bay and Queens Quay then on to the westbound Gardiner toward Niagara. Bottom line was that the multiple closures and the resulting traffic jam even at 7.30am cost us about 40 minutes and it would have been at least 20 minutes more had I not executed a brazen and highly illegal manoeuvre move involving streetcar tracks at Spadina and Lakeshore. The 40 minute delay could not have been the only reason that the Queenston-Lewiston bridge was backed up for an hour compared to the usual five to seven minutes we’re accustomed to early on a Sunday morning. Maybe cross-border shopping is in vogue once again; maybe the spectacular weather caused everyone to bolt out of bed and drive to Western New York; maybe it was something else but we didn’t get parked in Lot 7 until just before 11.30am – around two hours behind our usual schedule. But we tailgated, cooked our lunch and somehow got to our seats a few minutes before kick-off.

The game started very slowly for the Bills offence in particular with three straight three-and-outs and an Amari Cooper dropped pass on his first target, not to mention an anemic pass rush as the lowly Titans built themselves an early 10-0 lead. Things certainly turned around for the home side in the second half as the Bills scored 34 unanswered points as they cruised to an easy win. Fans quickly took to the Amari Cooper cheer of “Coooo-per” as the new receiver started his Bills career with four catches and touchdown. Cooper does not fit the standard mold of star NFL wide receiver: he comes off as being quite thoughtful – even cerebral, calm, reserved and reflective. He is also an accomplished chess player, having finished second in a recent tournament of NFL players. Titans cornerback Chidobe Awuzie was the winner. Cooper appreciates that football and the routes he runs as a receiver is clearly analogous with chess. Who knew?

Yesterday was Josh Allen’s 100^th start as an NFL quarterback. His record now stands at 68-32 which ties him with Montana, Bradshaw, Favre and Aaron Rodgers for the most wins in his first 100 starts. Allen went a paltry 4 for 11 for 65 yards in the first half but finished 21 of 33 for 323 yards – his first 300 yard passing game this season. This against the Titians defence which came in ranked as the league’s best against the pass, having not given up even 200 passing yards in a game through their first six. The Bills receiving corps now seems well balanced with Cooper, Shakir and rookie Keon Coleman who finished with four catches for 125 yards and what we thought was a touchdown before it was overturned on replay review. Add in tight ends Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox and James Cook out of the backfield and Allen now has what looks like a nice variety of options in the passing game.

With a comfortable lead, we were able to leave early and would have easily engineered a speedy exit from Lot 7 had the Sheriff’s office not been asleep at the switch. We were stopped two vehicles from the main route onto Southwestern Blvd for about 30 minutes as pedestrians ignored barricades and streamed through the stopped traffic until the authorities finally showed up and instituted the usual alternation between pedestrians and vehicles. The new stadium, now fully rising from the site just west of Abbot Road, will purportedly have much better and safer pedestrian and vehicle separation and egress. After witnessing multiple near misses as we sat waiting, it was clear that the present situation is quite ridiculous and dangerous. Once finally out onto the roads, they were expectedly slow but the Peace Bridge was in surprisingly good shape and we were left only to deal with the QEW and the Gardiner which were stressful and slow at times. Yesterday’s traffic situation was probably the worst I’ve experienced in my 30+ years of attending games in Orchard Park. Finally got home just before 9pm, making it almost a 14 hour day.

Border Report: The surly guy we got after our hour-long wait at the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge asked me where we were going. “Orchard Park” I said, as I always do. “Going to the game?” he asked with an irritated tone. “Yes, sir” I replied. He came back with “making me fish for it?”, indicating that he would have found it helpful had I offered the "why" in addition to the "where" without the need for another question on his part. He wasn’t very nice about it. Upon further reflection, I see his point and I’ll expand my answer for next time. Yet another example of it always being something different at the border.

Up next for the Bills is a long trip to the Pacific Northwest next Sunday to face the Seattle Seahawks in what is considered probably the loudest stadium in the NFL.   

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.