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.

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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.

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