From the “Snappy Answers to Stupid Claims” department…

On page A3 of today’s Buffalo News, you can read the full-color, full-page open letter to the community from The Buffalo Niagara Partnership Executive Committee, also known as “the usual suspects.”

Question: What kind of Chamber of Commerce is so jittery about its public image that it feels the need to buy such expensive ad space in an attempt to convince the community it allegedly serves that things are on the right track?

Here are the things the BNP is taking credit for:

UB 2020 established as the regional priority for Albany action

Unfortunately, it’s a plan rooted in the dream that public money should be spent with no oversight. This is a plan? Why not just propose robbing Fort Knox? Both plots are illegal. Only difference is when the UB plan fails, the perpetrators won’t go to jail, they’ll just blame “politics as usual” for foiling their dubious scheme.

Modernization of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and bringing low-cost carriers to our region

Just how much more modernization needs to be done at the airport? Transporter machines? This place has been modernized so many times you’d think we’d be zipping around it like the Jetsons wearing jet packs.

Construction of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and creation of nearly 5,000 jobs in the life sciences

Sure. How are things progressing with the dissolution of ECMC as a public benefit corporation? Don’t mind me, just a taxpayer, just asking.

Federal Courthouse going up on Delaware Avenue

Really? Taking credit for this? I had no idea a group of local businessmen exerted such influence on the Federal Government. Should be a busy place.

Development of more than 1,000 lofts, apartments and condos in downtown Buffalo—a place very few people lived in just a decade ago

Over the past 16 years, Andrew Rudnick has made like $6 million dollars in salary as head of BNP. Buffalo is the third poorest city in the nation, and lots of people live downtown. They just don’t have much food, and little shelter.

Demolition of the Aud and significant work on the outer and inner harbors

Excellent. Destroy a monument to American War Veterans in the hope of luring a fishing store. Better throw a few more buckets of tax breaks into the water. Drives ‘em into a feeding frenzy.

Retention of the Niagara Air Reserve Station

“Retention” sounds so much better than “reduction.”

Creation of Charter Schools throughout the region

Why shouldn’t we be discovering more ways to siphon public education funding into private enterprises? Think about the kids.

Downsizing of the Buffalo Common Council
The benefits of this accomplishment are all around us, for everyone to see.

Introduction of an affordable Enhanced Drivers License as an alternative to passports at the border

I don’t know whether I should feel safer or more of a sucker. Maybe I should buy a Nexus card for good measure.

Business Backs the Bills effort, which kept the team here

Which, for nine days every fall, guarantees a surge in alcohol related arrests for local law enforcement.

“Some of our success, however, is largely invisible,” the ad crows. Yeah, we know all about it. Invisible like the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Local poet Aaron Lowinger sends us this poem:

Bills Fan
it’s third down
on mt everest
my dad at the bar says
mt everest is the highest
but not the most difficult

it’s third down and extremely long
there’s an overbearing wind
dressed in another teams uniform
that’s blowing and blowing
right in bills fan’s face

security is on alert
a balloon knocks the stadium’s power out
there are no lights on in the bathrooms
bills fan is pissing wherever
the sink
the mop bucket
the floor
his pants

it’s third down
on K2
the bills may never score again
the kicker has left the stadium
the kicker is a painter
he has left to go home
into his basement studio
and paint another triptych
in his ‘riders of the apocalypse’ series

the bills just got scored on
we’re not sure how
my dad recites the kol nidre prayer
“i renounce and deny any affiliation
with the buffalo bills . . .”
the bar goes quiet
the sky which had always been gray
gets heavier
and sucks the drunk red
out of bills fan’s face

it’s third down
and the bills decide to punt preemptively
the punter takes the field
to ‘wild thing’ and pumps his fist
bills fan loves a good punt

i piss myself at the bar
it doesn’t feel like pee
it feels like the longest tear
my body has ever created
outside a cop car goes off the road
and plows into a Tim Horton’s
i can’t stop watching the game

it’s still third down
and raining yellow snow
ralph wilson stays alive
bills fan renews itself every generation
in the waste areas off the buffalo river
where we all used to get beat up as kids
breaking windows and making teachers cry

the bills get the ball back
first string quarterback is injured
second-string quarterback has peach fuzz all over his face
we don’t have a third-string
only the punter comes back onto field
wild thing
you make my heart sing
bills fan gets pumped
the end is near

in the fourth quarter
they turn the scoreboard off
it’s third down and one
and the coach calls a flea-flicker
to be thrown by a running back
the ball’s in the air
it’s so high
it looks like a punt
the Jills go into their wild thing routine
the kicker painter at home
is going expressionist with black oil paints
the bar holds it’s breath
just as the ball is falling into a cornerback’s arms
a 5 foot 3 receiver runs under it
and splits the defense
this is better than a punt
he’s the fastest shortest guy ever
and no one will catch him

Apparently, nice guys do finish last.

Buffalo’s nauseating retreat from a three-point lead with just more than two minutes to play Sunday in New Jersey all but assured that the Bills will conclude 2008 at the bottom of the AFC East, as well as serving as this month’s laughingstock of professional sports.

The game-turning fumble by the helpless J.P. Losman, the direct result of the most inexplicable single play call in the franchise’s 49 seasons, put Buffalo at 6-8, three full games behind their three foes in the AFC East, a division the Bills led barely two months ago, with two contests left on the schedule.

Back then, Dick Jauron’s team looked positioned to put Leo Durocher’s old taunt-turned-cliché to rest, to prove that a football team coached and populated by humble, decent men with some sense of perspective might actually triumph over the glaring, jaw-jutting, mustachioed mindset prevalent through most of the National Football League.

It was easy to pull for those Bills, whose efficient and entertaining string of early-season wins reflected the philosophy espoused by Jauron and the man who hired him, Marv Levy.

Buffalo’s strong start also seemed to validate Levy’s two-season return as general manager, further puncturing the notion that only spittle-spraying football traditionalists can build a winning team.

But while Levy and the only head coach he hired share Ivy League backgrounds and a more expansive world view than most football types, Jauron’s team showed none of the resilience that was at the franchise’s core during his mentor’s tenure on the sidelines.

Jauron’s team never recovered from the knockout blow absorbed by Trent Edwards in Week 5. Yes, the Bills and their starting quarterback recovered in time to put together a comprehensive win over San Diego, but that accomplishment has become significantly less impressive as the Chargers have also stumbled to a 6-8 mark.

Buffalo became increasingly lost as November dragged into December, managing only a pair of field goals in lifeless losses to San Francisco and Miami.

The offense came to life Sunday, due mainly to bravura efforts by running backs Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson.

So it was only fitting that the Bills chose to give the ball to neither back on Sunday’s pivotal play, but to instead entrust the game to Losman.

Losman is another guy you want to like, an amiable sort who is one of the few Bills in modern times who chose to make his home within Buffalo’s city limits, instead of barricading himself in a suburban mini-mansion.

Unfortunately, Losman’s level of civic commitment matters as much as Jauron’s degree from Yale when it comes to Sunday afternoons and Monday nights.

Jauron told reporters after the game that he, and not offensive coordinator Turk Schonert, decided it would be a good idea to eschew all rational thought and let Losman roll out on second-and-5.

Whether that’s true or not, the disastrous but thoroughly predictable result – sack, fumble, Jets touchdown, ballgame — would ensure Jauron’s dismissal in any other city. On Sunday, however, NFL.com reiterated its earlier report that Ralph Wilson had given his coach a three-year extension back when things were good, which would mean the Bills owner will be paying Jauron to do something for the next three years.

But after a season of collapses, both sudden and ongoing, bringing Jauron back as coach would rate as an up-yours of epic proportions to the fans who bought every ticket for every game in the stadium that bears Wilson’s name.

Wilson must know that. You don’t achieve his level of success without knowing what your customers want.

The only question now is if he cares.

Pick up Thursday’s Artvoice for further analysis of Sunday’s debacle.

Miami

Any realistic playoff hopes floated into the wintry November night along with Rian Lindell’s field-goal try against Cleveland three weeks ago.

Finishing with a winning record, or even at .500, isn’t going to happen, either.

At this point, even matching the barely mediocre 7-9 marks of the past two seasons does not appear tenable. Doing so would require the Buffalo Bills to remember how, precisely, you beat a team other than the Kansas City Chiefs, a feat they have not accomplished since October 19.

After Sunday’s rancid 16-3 loss to Miami in Toronto there remains, however, one distinction well within the Bills’ reach. To achieve it, they need only to keep doing what they have been doing.

Barring a three-game winning streak spanning the rest of December, the 2008 edition will have completed the most stunning, thorough collapse in the franchise’s 49 seasons.

Before this year, seven Buffalo teams opened the schedule with at least four straight wins. All but one reached the postseason, with the 1975 version providing the lone exception.

That, however, was at a time when only four teams from each conference qualified, as compared to today’s six entrants. And since the Bills had the league’s best offense and O.J. Simpson, then a nationally beloved superstar and spokesman, broke the record for touchdowns in a season with 23, the year ended amidst optimism for the future (which would turn out to be wholly unfounded, with Buffalo winning a total of just five games over the next two campaigns).

Moreover, 17 versions of the Bills have found themselves at least four games over .500 at some point in the season. Of that group, only the ’73 team — which only reached that benchmark in the final week, after being eliminated from contention — and the aforementioned ’75 squad failed to qualify for the postseason. Both of those teams finished with winning records, at least.

This year’s model has already joined that decidedly prestige-free club, while offering none of the excitement of their underachieving ancestors.

Since scoring six touchdowns during the 54-31 walkover in Kansas City, Buffalo has managed none in the last two games.

Offensive coordinator Turk Schonert has shown little interest of late in getting the ball to the team’s top runner, Marshawn Lynch, or its franchise receiver, Lee Evans.

A gimpy Trent Edwards struggled in the first half against San Francisco before leaving with a groin injury and his healthy replacement, J.P. Losman, has been even worse.

The defense and special teams, crucial to Buffalo’s 4-0 and 5-1 starts, have been blandly average during the two-month skid that followed—playing well enough to avoid humiliation, but failing to produce game-changing plays.

Dick Jauron, who may or may not have received a contract extension when times were good, has yet to show that he has any remedy for whatever has befallen his team.

To characterize Buffalo’s performances over the last two weeks as lifeless would be an insult to the departed. The first National Football League regular-season game played in Canada, which included one touchdown, four field goals and countless displays of ineptitude, turned out to be a great marketing tool—for the Canadian Football League.

Neither the Dolphins, nor the 49ers a week earlier dominated, or necessarily played well enough to beat even an average National Football League team.

For these Bills, though, even considering themselves average would rate as a remarkable act of hubris.

Pick up Thursday’s Artvoice for further analysis of Sunday’s debacle.

JP Losman is sacked.

AV correspondent Dave Staba reports on Sunday’s loss from the cheap seats at Ralph Wilson Stadium:

Trent Edwards rolled to his right.

And he rolled to his right.

And then he rolled some more.

Finally, a moment before he would have run completely off the field, Buffalo’s quarterback flung the ball towards his intended receiver, who was evidently sitting in a third-row seat near the southerly corner at the tunnel end of Ralph Wilson Stadium.

No one wearing a Bills uniform was in the vicinity of Edwards’ throw, which he released midway through the second quarter, with his team trailing San Francisco 7-0. The National Football League’s play-by-play insists the intended receiver was Josh Reed, whom it places in the “front right corner of end zone.”

As the official account of the game is understandably commentary-free, it does not mention that Reed would have needed to be roughly 19 feet tall to have gotten a hand close to Edwards’ fling.

Taken in isolation, the third-down play was unremarkable. With no open receiver or clear running lane, Edwards did the sensible thing. Following the incompletion, Buffalo was in position for a kick no more daunting than a routine extra point. Neither the quarterback nor the coaches who called the play could have known that the generally reliable Rian Lindell was about to become far less so, bonking the sure thing off the left upright.

The truly galling part about the incompletion, one of 11 issued by Edwards before a worsening groin injury forced to him to pack it in for the day at halftime, was that it was immediately preceded by another one. With the Bills all of six feet away from tying a game they absolutely had to prevent a steadily unraveling season from complete disintegration.

(more…)

Marshawn Lynch

Amid the anguished finger-pointing, plaintive wailing and resigned head-shaking sweeping the region following the Buffalo Bills’ third straight defeat, Season Ticket would like to apportion a minute sliver of credit.

Quarterback Trent Edwards, by most quantitative and qualitative standards, failed miserably at New England on Sunday (not coincidentally, this was also his third consecutive regressive outing).

He did not throw accurately or effectively, throwing two grotesque interceptions and failing to complete a pass that produced a gain longer than 15 yards. Though sacked only twice, he seemed perpetually rushed and never quite certain about the nature of the of defensive contraption Patriots arch-villain Bill Belichick had conjured to stymie Buffalo’s offense. And he could not get the Bills into the end zone at Gillette Stadium until long after it had ceased to matter.

Edwards did, however, nail the post-game press scrum at his locker.

Unlike some of his predecessors at the position over the past decade, Edwards did not subtly shift blame toward his coaches, blockers, receivers, or running backs—though there was clearly plenty to go around, given the painful deficiencies in every phase of the game and on the sideline during New England’s 20-10 win. Nor did he sniff haughtily in the direction of his interrogators, clumsily try to deflect criticism with non-sequiturs or stare blankly as if posing for a Hall-of-Fame bust (not to bring back bad memories of Doug Flutie, Rob Johnson, J.P. Losman or Drew Bledsoe, respectively, or anything).

Instead, he acknowledged both that criticism comes with the job and that he needs to get better at his.

“I think a little bit of everything, honestly,” Edwards said when asked where he needs to improve. “Underneath throws, deep throws, footwork, pocket presence, turnovers—everything. I think all that needs to be looked into and I need to fix it soon.”

Contrast that with the words of Jamal Lewis, running back of Cleveland, Buffalo’s next opponent, following the Browns’ collapse against Denver last Thursday.

“This is the NFL, you can’t call it quits until the game is over,” Lewis said after the Browns blew a third-quarter lead and lost 34-30 at home against the Broncos. “But it looks to me like some people called it quits before that.”

In case none of his teammates had been adequately insulted, Lewis continued.

(more…)

From high in the silver-lined clouds whereon he lives, Dave Staba reports on Sunday’s loss by the Buffalo Bills to the Miami Dolphins:

The fourth quarter of Buffalo’s annual visit to South Florida on Sunday could, in theory, have gone worse for the Bills.

The cart used to wheel the injured off the field could have slipped into gear and careened, driver-less, down Buffalo’s sideline, dissembling the knees of Trent Edwards, Marshawn Lynch, Lee Evans, Brian Moorman, Donte Whitner, and Kawika Mitchell.

The National Football League could have lifted its Michael Vick-induced ban on the playing of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” on stadium public-address systems every time the home team registers the mildest of achievements, which, given Buffalo’s self-immolation over the final 15 minutes of a 25-16 deflation, would have led to near-constant loop and countless royalties for the Baha Men.

(If you don’t think this would be so catastrophic, that’s because you weren’t at a football stadium in the fall of 2000, particularly Dolphins Stadium for Miami’s 22-13 win over Buffalo that October. Whoever was running the audio portion of the game presentation hit the button after each of Miami’s five scores, all six sacks of Rob Johnson, and whenever else the mood struck. I was keeping count in the press box and the tally reached 17 before I had to give up and start writing early in the fourth quarter. Go ahead. Try to get it out of your head now. You’re welcome.)

Or they could have been playing a better opponent, in which case the final score could easily have been 40-16.

It started off well enough, with the Bills trailing by but a single point and the ball at Miami’s 47-yard line. If anything, Buffalo seemed poised for the sort of triumphant rally that produced three of their first five wins.

Then Edwards, who had been nearly perfect in the first five fourth quarters in which he had appeared previously this year, dropped back to pass.

(more…)

Safe in the electrified comfort of his home, AV football correspondent Dave Staba reports on Sunday’s win over the Chargers:

Two pivotal plays in Buffalo’s partially electrified win over San Diego on Sunday showed why anything short of the Bills’ first playoff appearance of the millennium will be a crashing disappointment.

Trailing by four points with a little more than five minutes left in the first half, moments after the first balloon-forced blackout, an efficient drive following an unforced fumble by Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers had Buffalo two yards away from a touchdown.

(The Season Ticket coverage team would like to take this opportunity to categorically deny any involvement in the release of metallic-tailed helium balloons in the vicinity of Ralph Wilson Stadium, which team officials have blamed for the power outages that denied ticket holders their right to high-definition highlights on the stadium’s Jumbotron. Besides causing tremendous embarrassment to NYSEG, the mishap also triggered immeasurable cursing among local television viewers who  had spent the morning trying to hook up archaic antennae, thanks to the stunningly dumb standoff between the local cable company and Buffalo’s CBS affiliate, only to lose their hard-won signal for extended periods twice. Like the power company, we’re blaming this one on the kids.)

The call sent in from the sideline was a run to Marshawn Lynch, a pretty safe call considering the second-year running back’s propensity for carrying opposing tacklers into the end zone.

(more…)

Wide receiver Lee Evans

Bills historian Dave Staba contextualizes the team’s 4-0 start:

Winning your first four games, an accomplishment Buffalo achieved with Sunday’s 31-14 win in St. Louis, does not guarantee a great season. Over the nearly half-century since the creation of the current Bills, though, it comes pretty close.

Seven previous editions have opened with at least four straight triumphs. Two won a league championship, two others earned a Super Bowl berth, one reached the conference title game and another remains the subject of the franchise’s most tantalizing what-if discussion.

Only once, in 1975, did a Buffalo team win four games before losing one, yet fail to reach the playoffs.

Blame that one on O.J. Simpson, since it’s easy and fun and he’s otherwise occupied with all that Las-Vegas-hotel-room unpleasantness. As in his 2,003-yard season two years before, the future repeat felony defendant set a National Football League record, this time by scoring 23 touchdowns, yet his team—perhaps drained by the force its superstar’s ego —somehow faltered before the postseason.

The other six 4-0 starters account for most of the franchise’s high points.

(more…)

Marshawn LynchThrough the coaching tenures of Wade Phillips, Gregg Williams and Mike Mularkey, as well as through their first two seasons under Dick Jauron, playing their best often did not always guarantee a win for the Buffalo Bills.

On Sunday, their worst was good enough.

Against Oakland, the Bills committed more turnovers and were found guilty of more penalties than their opponents, gave up two huge plays to a barely known wide receiver who is not related to a local Congressman with the same surname and generally behaved like a team determined to disprove all the nice things said and written about them during the season’s first two weeks.

And still, they won.

Contrast that with last year’s Monday night game against Dallas, when Buffalo returned two interceptions and a kickoff for touchdowns, led by 11 points in the fourth quarter, and still lost.

Or the 2006 season opener, when a general malaise in the second half cost the Bills a 10-point lead and a readily achievable upset of New England, on the road, no less, in Jauron’s debut with Buffalo.

Or the 2005 visit to Miami, when J.P. Losman and Lee Evans hooked up for three touchdowns in the first quarter, then, like their teammates, spent the rest of the afternoon napping on their laurels as the Dolphins stumbled all the way back for a 24-23 win.

We could go on. And on. But then we’d eventually have to revisit the Flutie Bowl, when a special-teams breakdown cost the 2001 Bills a game they had seemingly won behind Rob Johnson. Then there was that playoff game in Tennessee, when, well, you know. And dredging all that up again wouldn’t do anyone any good.

(more…)