It’s no disease: Bills can only blame themselves

By Anthony Bialy  |   Sunday, November 30, 2008  |  Comments( 105 )

Buffalo Bills
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The Buffalo Bills’ game against the San Francisco 49ers ended as just their year will: They’ll finish with frustration because of a frustrating inability to finish. Four red-zone trips led to three points, which in turn leads to another season where they somehow brutally managed to make themselves irrelevant. Averaging a point every 20 minutes is fitting for a team that has plummeted to the supremely pathetic level of a “Celebrity Rehab” participant with a flat showing against an opponent that was begging to be flattened. As with Jeff Conaway appearing in “Grease,” a 4-0 start may as well have been a thousand years ago.

They managed to lose in the ugliest manner possible, too. Except for the starting quarterback, center, premier rusher on one huge fumble, rookie wideout on one huge penalty, cornerbacks, and everyone involved with the kicking game, the Bills played sharp football. Even after plaguing themselves with errors both notable and mundane, they still dominated in one sense: Buffalo ended up with 350 yards compared to the 195 San Francisco totaled, yet 90 percent of the home team’s 10 drives ended with nothing in its 10-3 defeat. Scoring that frequently may be acceptable when it comes to hockey shots on goal, but it’s not going to work on the grass for a team that so utterly deserves its .500 record.

It’s fitting that a team with no identity had to swap quarterbacks at the half, no matter the reason. The Bills can claim the move was a result of Trent Edwards’ groin straining, but what injury excuses the same ineffective way the starter has largely been playing for over a month? It might be lingering concussion effects, or it may simply be something that’s trickier to diagnose and repair, namely damaged confidence: He only completed 10 of his 21 tries against the Niners, as haphazard accuracy once again continued to be an issue in the same way it has ever since he bumped his skull.

As for this game, no other coach in the AFC East would have pulled his respective starting quarterback under the same circumstances, as a passer who had earned trust would have been allowed to persevere through a nagging but not debilitating injury. It’s certainly not an issue with the passer’s toughness; rather, it’s about whether Dick Jauron and his staff feel that a hobbled Edwards is better than no Edwards at all, and in that case it turns out they’d rather he’d wear a knit cap than a helmet.

The real West Coast disadvantage was suffered not by a feeble opponent playing about 2,600 miles from home at 10 a.m. their time but rather by a California-born, Stanford-educated quarterback who led his team to no scores before getting quasi-benched in its last hope to stay in the discussion.

Putting away the 49ers wasn’t the trickiest of assignments, either. The Bills have failed to show they can keep up with even passably solid opponents, and now they’re falling apart against the NFL’s I-AA teams. Their loss to the Cleveland Browns a couple weeks ago turned out to only be the first time the Bills played down to their competition’s level: A team in San Francisco that had surrendered 28.2 points on average in each of its first 11 games got to significantly lower its aggregate thanks to an accommodatingly listless host.

Never mind running the table against the four ominous foes that remain while hoping five or six AFC teams simultaneously collapse. The trial’s over, as an ugly effort like this proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the Bills aren’t a playoff team. Of course kicker Rian Lindell deserved to be booed mercilessly, but he was just like a great deal of his teammates; he lost his direction.

This squad displayed zero character when needed, and the worst thing is that it wasn't pushed into the gutter. These Bills fell, and now they’ve set themselves up to wallow with the dregs through another miserable offseason.
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