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.

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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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.

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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.

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Trent Edwards after the brain-bruising hit by the Cardinals' Adrian Wilson.

AV football correspondent Dave Staba send in this dispatch on Sunday’s undertelevised blowout:

Someone really should have blocked Adrian Wilson.

And probably ought to have covered Larry Fitzgerald.

Wilson, the Arizona safety, delivered the biggest play in the 41-17 curb-stomping the Bills absorbed at the at the hands of the Cardinals on Sunday, romping uninvited, yet unhampered, into Buffalo’s backfield and driving Trent Edwards’ head into the retractable natural grass playing surface at University of Phoenix Stadium. The resulting impact ended the quarterback’s day and quite possibly altered the course of the rest of his team’s season.

The defensive breakdown that led to the game’s first points was not physically painful to anyone, but barely easier to watch. (If, of course, you weren’t staring at your television, wondering how the owners of Channel 4 could possibly be so monumentally self-defeating as to deny untold thousands of viewers throughout Buffalo of the programming so many of them care the most about.)

Moments after J.P. Losman replaced Edwards and swiftly bounced the ball off of Marshawn Lynch and into the grateful hands of Phoenix’s Antonio Smith, a very lonely looking Fitzgerald caught a flip from Kurt Warner that could have been launched underhanded, or blindly backwards over the quarterback’s head, so open was the target.

How, exactly, an ill-intentioned defender and an all-star receiver are each left unaccounted for by a heretofore undefeated team in the first five minutes of a game present the first two questions concerning Buffalo’s unraveling.

Yet those breakdowns, and how quickly Edwards’ head clears, are only the first of the issues to ponder as the Bills spend the next two weeks—thanks to the bye week that keeps them inactive until San Diego visits on Oct. 19—wondering whether they’re as good as they played during the season’s first four weeks, or as lousy as they looked Sunday.

1. What’s with Jason Peters? His holdout should no longer be a factor, since he’s been back in uniform and practicing for as long as he would have been from the opening summer session at St. John Fisher to the season opener, had he reported on time.

2. How does a defense make it through an entire game without sacking Kurt Warner? Even at his best and youngest, the most famous grocery clerk ever has been quite easy to catch, having absorbed 222 sacks in 98 career appearances before Sunday yet the Bills rarely got near the 37-year-old, aside from Kawika Mitchell’s chin-splitting shot in the second quarter.

3. Speaking of which, how long will fans and media types kvetch over the legal and moral implications of the hit that ended, at best, Edwards’ afternoon?

I’ve heard several people argue that Wilson “left his feet” before the hit, but this ain’t hockey, folks. Unlike Mitchell, he did not lead with his helmet, the National Football League’s ultimate sin when it comes to attempted quarterback decapitation.

If Wilson gets fined, Mitchell should be sending part of his game check to the league office, too.

4. What could the people who run LIN-TV possibly be thinking? By withholding the most highly rated program on any given Sunday throughout the Buffalo area, the company that owns Channel 4 has managed to make Time-Warner into a sympathetic multibillion-dollar conglomerate.

Well, almost.

Plenty of people are blaming Time-Warner for the partial Bills blackout, even though LIN-TV is attempting to charge those same viewers for a signal they have always been able to get for free. Some are switching to a satellite provider, but there are those of us who like to watch television when it rains or snows, too.

Dave Staba has covered the Bills since 1990. He welcomes e-mail at dstaba13@aol.com. A full report on Sunday’s game will appear in the October 2 issue of Artvoice.

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.

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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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