Bills 48, Lions 42

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

       

 

Rams 44, Bills 42

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bills 35, 49ers 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.