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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Bills QB Trent Edwards

From his perch high above Elmwood Avenue, Dave Staba writes:

Over the past decade, as the Buffalo Bills endured a parade of quarterbacks and coaches, you could always be sure of this much:

In the most critical of moments against quality opponents, something would go horribly wrong.

In the closing moments, the defense would passively allow the enemy quarterback to work his way methodically downfield, unable to get within swatting distance of him or his receivers until the other guys were celebrating in Buffalo’s end zone.

The Bills’ own attempts at late-game dramatics would end with an interception, sack or fumble. Or, just to shake things up, a sack and a fumble.

And, on those rare occasions when the offense and defense each performed their late-game duties with competence, you could look forward to a special-teams fiasco either mundanely procedural (watching the other team, lacking timeouts, manage to get off a decisive field goal as time expires) or historically surreal (watching the opponent execute a cross-field throw of questionable legality to produce a touchdown as time expires. In a freaking playoff game).

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