Remaining games resemble past games for Bills

By Anthony Bialy  |   Friday, November 14, 2008  |  Comments( 105 )

Buffalo Bills
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The Buffalo Bills have faced a few bad teams and some decent ones, and they’ll now face. . . a few bad teams and some decent ones. An extra day off thanks to an appearance on the joyous event that is "Monday Night Football" is an extra day to fret, as it gives this team and its fans a chance to wonder if the slide will stop. As far as upcoming adversaries, the challenge is going to be about the same, only the Bills have to beat more than a handful of sad franchises in the time remaining.

The Bills haven’t impressed at all when faced with quality opposition. They’ve beaten three 2-7 teams and two 4-5 ones; meanwhile, they fall to winners, as three of their losses have come to 6-3 teams with the other coming against the 5-4 Miami Dolphins.

Even Buffalo’s middling 5-4 record is thanks in part to a random geographic feature: By chance, there is a great deal of crummy football being played in this league’s West divisions this season, and the Bills have been blessed with matchups against those two groupings, including the laughably pathetic likes of the Seattle Seahawks, Oakland Raiders and St. Louis Rams.

They’ve been good at pushing around jobbers but fall apart versus legitimate contenders; the Bills are the Iron Mike Sharpe of the NFL, and they’re not even going to contend for the Intercontinental Championship at this rate.

What’s left isn’t as easy as it seems, either. Buffalo’s remaining foes hold a 28-35 record, but that overall poor mark is deceiving: 15 of those losses belong to two disadvantaged teams in the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers. On the other hand, the second half of their divisional lineup of course means three games against formidable teams; meanwhile, any elation about facing the 3-6 Cleveland Browns is just about canceled out by having to travel to face the 5-4 Denver Broncos.

On top of that, while four home games allegedly remain, only three are of course actually at home thanks to the Toronto Experiment. Having to host a December game in a stadium two hours away located in a foreign land that calls bathrooms “washrooms” and measures roads in some baffling unit called “kilometers” couldn’t come at a worse time, as the Bills could use both the usual fervent crowd and wintry weather conditions in their battle against the Dolphins.

But the Bills have manufactured this tenuous situation themselves. They’re exactly where they wanted to avoid residing, namely back to worrying every game about positioning and whether they’ll eventually need help even to snatch the conference’s sixth playoff berth.

And they'd better not be looking at the schedule and assuming they’re destined to win against teams with pitiful records: Rule No. 1 in the NFL is that anything can happen any weekend, and the surest way to make things worse is to think that, say, the 49ers will let themselves get stomped. Chalking up future wins is a mentality that leads to present losses.

On the other hand, the positive outlook is that the oscillating nature of this league means the Bills aren’t damned to life in the gutter. There are concerns with play-calling balance, an embarrassing offensive line, a rattled quarterback, a curiously nonexistent pass rush and a languid secondary, and while that’s a more extensive list than expected the fact remains that their troubles are repairable and not fundamental.

The problem is they have only seven chances left to prove they’ve made necessary fixes, and they can’t exactly wait until the seventh to enact everything. On top of that, the Bills must show that they can put everything together against more than lesser enemies.
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About Anthony Bialy

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CommentsComments: 105  |  Sign Up  View all comments
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No.1
ddd		10:29 AM
11/14/2008
The Bills' playoff hopes are on life-support IMO. Watching the Pats and Jets last night, it is clear they have both better...
No.2
10:34 AM
11/14/2008
Congratulations Anthony! You've managed in today's piece to say everything and nothing all at the same time. We know the Bills...
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No.3
ba bye		10:34 AM
11/14/2008
Watching the epic battle between the Jets and the Patriots last night put the Bills in clear perspective. The Jets and Pats were...
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