One Fan's View: 'Rian, you string me along'

by Kevin Shenoy

For as long as I can remember, Buffalo has always been mocked for being behind the times. We let manufacturing get away. We lost blue collar jobs. We let urban sprawl take over. We were the rust belt. We were losing our populace. We didn’t have anything.

Somehow all that translated in a dollar for dollar exchange rate with our football team. We couldn’t catch a break. We couldn’t win a close game, a blow out, or a punting battle. We were losers that found ways to bring on the inevitable. We were Buffalo: Behind the Times.

Now that the financial meltdown is in full effect in New York City and the Bills are winning these games, I’m beginning to believe something different. “We aren’t way behind the times. We may well be way ahead of the times.” While New York City is talking about job losses and needing a bailout, Buffalo is unaffected.

Buffalo has built up its rugged skin for financially bad news and weathered it like champions. Meanwhile New York is so stunned by potential bad news in the finance sector that they’ve called their proverbial “Papa Hilton” to bail them out. And now that the shoe is on the other foot, Buffalo’s dollar for dollar exchange rate of city to team is making winner’s out of our beloved Bills. We’re getting ahead in the NFL.

I was hoping the Bills would come out a little more full of themselves for this game. I wanted them to pull off the 51-3 beating and put us on all of the NFL’s radar. I wanted a complete game where we were just stunned at the how brilliantly it was all coming together. But that was not meant to be.

When it was 7-6 Buffalo, I thought, “these Raiders are like last years Bills.” They opened the game better than expected and clearly showed they weren’t as bad as we thought. Yet the Raiders couldn’t capitalize on great field position, redzone chances and multiple turnovers. When the game started to slip from them, they got lucky with one play for 84 yards. It showed that they didn’t have any consistency to wear down the clock and take the game. They only had the big plays and they used all their chances. The Raiders were stuck with a young QB that they could only trust enough to run, run, Pass, punt.

To be clear, the Raiders took the opening kick into our end of the field, they had two successful run plays into our redzone, but then threw 3 straight passes and took the field goal. They moved between the 20’s well enough, but when they needed yards and time off the clock, they didn’t get it done. And in the end, they lost. The 2007 Bills could sue for copyright infringement. My legal team is working on it (as well as the insurance vs. gambling debate below).

As for the Bills woes, it wasn’t anything like last year. You could see that the pieces for success were there, but just not coming together. We had drives that looked promising, but we were turning it over with fumbles and interceptions and missing blocking assignment issues. Overall keeping us from doing what we had to do.

Once it was the fourth quarter it looked like the Bills brushed off their mistakes and found themselves. And the oddest thing, even after the 84 yard Higgins touchdown, was that the Fans knew this was a different team. In years past we would have scattered like cockroaches after the Higgins touchdown. But everyone stayed, everyone remained standing and watched what could very well be known as a classic.

Hopefully now, Buffalo, the team and the city, is no longer behind the times.

DVD Extras:

• Reminiscent of another Past Bills game Anyone thinking about the Dolphins’ game where Kelly scampered in at the end for a 2 yard rumble? I remember as a kid, I gave up on that game. I walked outside to play football with the neighborhood kids. As we threw the ball around and were whining about the expected results, one of the kid’s mothers ran out screaming, “we won!” We kids were floored. We all ran back into the house to see the results. It was stunning and led to years of fantastic football for Buffalo. I wonder if this game will go down in our collective minds as something as special as that Miami game. Is it a sign we have officially turned the corner? We could have had our last rites read to us 3 or 4 times during that Raiders game, but the team pulled it off.
• Why the Bills sucked so badly for 3 quarters My excuse for the Bills is that they looked like a team that was still tired and weak from Jacksonville. Not so much in this game, but they looked like a team that took it easy during the week to recover from the brutal conditions of Jacksonville. Once it got down to the last quarter, they just had to man up and win the game. Hopefully, they are fully recovered and able to put together a good, full week of practice that lets them feed on the rickety Rams.
• Arm Strength and Durability: I know the two knocks on Trent are durability and arm strength. I think he went a good distance to explain both of those on the Roscoe TD toss with 4 minutes to go. He did not get to step into the pass because he was getting killed by two defenders. Yet it was a perfect pass, and he got up and trotted…..to the wrong sideline.
• Key Play that last year’s Bills would never have done #1 Trent avoided a safety and then dumped it to Marshawn who got the hard 5 yards on a 3rd down late in the third. Marshawn picked up the first down, and the Bills picked up the momentum.
• Key Play that last year’s Bills would never have done #2 Marshawn ran on 3rd and 3 right into the tackler, spun off him, tried to juke and almost slipped, yet held his balance to pick up the first down. Bills continued to hold Momentum and don’t have to settle for a long field goal while down 9.
• As for the slipping Why is it that running backs have issues with footing? All the Raiders seemed to go down early when they tried to cut. The Bills occasionally had issues with it. Yet, at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Buffalo Jills performed dance moves in cleatless, knee high, high-heeled boots. They were spinning, jumping, and turning, yet none of them fell. Am I supposed to believe that it doesn’t rain in the endzone? Lynn Swann, famous for his Monday night cleat conversations, needs to be asked how such a thing could occur.
• Halloween at Ralph I know I’ve always thought that Raiders fans look ridiculous in the gear they put on for the game. It looks infinitely worse when they come to a visiting team’s stadium and sit four across instead of with a gaggle of their fans. What makes it even more hilarious is walking out of the stadium with some dude wearing old school donzi shoulder pads (painted from bright orange to black) and silver and black face paint all dejected. Maybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybeline.
• Halftime notes #1 Two things worth noting aside from Bruce Smith. Ralph Wilson took the clock down to the 6 minute mark for his halftime speech. Each year he takes longer and longer off the time that the honored player gets to speak. “Hey Bruce, we think so much of you, we’d like to give you 2 minutes to talk while Moorman is booting punts over the podium. You feel honored?”
• Halftime notes #2 Deal or no Deal. Daryl Talley looks like Howie Mandel. You put the soul patch on Talley, and he’s the black Mandel.
• Donte’s Inferno I like that Donte Whitner smacked Higgins after the touchdown. I liked that we all knew that was coming from somewhere around the 30 yard line. I don’t know why Higgins stopped. He should have kept running. It would have been hilarious if Whitner kept after him and the Benny Hill music came over the speakers. As for the penalty, 15 yards on the kickoff, isn’t a big deal. Worst case, they kick it out the endzone and you start at the 20 yard line.
• Other “I’m sending a message” Moments There is something so bad ass on how Marshawn left the field after his second touchdown. People are throwing punches, and he’s putting the Bills back in the game. He just walks off like nothing happened. It was a subtle cockiness and business like attitude that I really liked. They were still down 2 and totally intended to win the game at that point, but he wasn’t going to celebrate until it was over. I liked that more than any dance any player could come up with. And to be clear, I’m big on dances.
• Special teams celebration. After Lynch’s touchdown to make it 16-14, the Bills had a 15 yard penalty to kick from the 45. While Lindell moved the tee forward, the special teams unit had a Michael Jackson choreographed dance going on in the endzone.
• Ref issues For the first time this year, I thought, “these refs suck.” Was Ed Hochuli at the game? The Evans interception was mind boggling. If this ref couldn’t see that Evans was down in the little box on the sideline, how about looking up at a gigantic tax-payer provided television. It looked pretty clear there, Hochuli Jr.
• More on Lee Lee didn’t have his finest day. The pick, the pass interference (which also was a weak call), and the fumble were all very disappointing. In fact, if his first two games helped drive his resigning price up, week 3 should have brought the price back down.
• Running Lane Lane Kiffin pretty much packed it in with 5 minutes to go. In the final two minutes he had 2 timeouts, but never used them. What was odd was how confused the Bills were by it. I think the Buffalo coaching staff fully expected to run another two plays. They wouldn’t have settled for not getting the ball in the middle of the field.
• Buffalo tidbits For those of you not in Buffalo, channel seven has a new anchor named Ginger Geoffery. Hello! Porn star name. Obviously, I must be late to this, but I’m still giggling that the local news anchor is named Ginger Geoffery. And for the record for you out-of-towners, Ginger’s first story after the Bills win was about the local fire that needed to be put out. Instead of ragging on the local news, Channel 2 had a really interesting piece on the development of the US side of Niagara Falls on Saturday. The website was niagarafallsvoices.com and the story was great. I highly recommend it.
• Fancy I, why are you like this? Coming out of the stadium, there was a drunk fan who kept saying, “Lindell. Man, that guy is automatic. AUTOMATIC!” Right, automatic. So automatic that he missed the 42 yarder. Damn you Fancy I. I feel like the female lead in a romantic comedy who is at her wits end. “Rian, you string me along. I don’t know whether to love you or hate you.” Then I put my forearm to my forehead and run off all dramatically. Aaaaaaaand…scene.
• Jetblue tracker As you know, two years ago, I had the worst luck on my Jetblue fights. It seemed like every flight was late by at least an hour. Then I instituted a Jetblue tracker in the articles to note how bad they were, and of course, they got the situation fixed. This weekend all flights were on time. However, a certain thing has been going on for a while, and I’ve been kind enough to be quiet. But now I must speak up. We were just getting into the air, and the Bills highlights were on ESPN’s the Blitz. Jauron comes on to say a couple things, and the flight attendent, picks up her mic and says, “thanks for flying with us, your choices are coke, diet coke, and sprite, your choices again are coke, diet coke, and sprite, don’t forget to apply for a credit card and ask for chips and here is a canned joke that less than 2 % of all flights laugh at. Thanks again for flying.” She lets go of the mic and it is now on a different game of high lights. Then ESPN recycles through to the Bills highlights again 20 minutes later. This time as they are talking about the ramifications of 3-0 for Buffalo, the pilot comes on to tell us the altitude, how many miles we are out of NYC, what he’s wearing, that he likes a long walk on the beach and that he’s a Sagittarius. He lets go of the mic, and we’re on to the Dolphins/Pats highlights that I’ve already seen. Somehow, they always interrupt something at its most key moment when I’m watching the TV. My question is this: Is there anything that the flight attendants or Pilots are telling you that you need to know? I would argue that I only need to hear from them in the event they are saying, “please get in the crash position.”
• Work place/no playoffs In this financial crisis, people in and out of finance are asking me “what is it like in your office?” To which I answer: it’s a lot like being in week 16 playing on the road in blizzard like conditions, and your team is 3-11. You can’t believe you are going through this, and worse, that there is another week of this to endure. You are pretty sure your coaches will find a way to not utilize you properly, you’d rather be in the lockerroom and you don’t have a clue as to why next year is suppose to be any better. Now, I know what it’s like to be on a non competitive football team. And I’ll tell you this. It’s no fun.
• Insurance vs. Gambling - Mark and I try to come up with “get rich schemes” all the time. We just come up with the ideas and never follow through. I assume 99% of America is thinking of similar stuff. Anyways, the latest crazy idea we came up with was providing “insurance” to either season ticket holders or DirecTV subscribers. In essence, you’d pay in full for your season tickets or your DirecTV NFL package. Our “company” would offer, for a premium that the Market would bear, the right to get a portion of your total cost back to you if the team didn’t achieve a certain record. For example, at the beginning of this season, we’d ask for like $50 if the Bills didn’t go 8-8. You’d get half your subscription rate back if the Bills failed to get there. Now the problem is Mark and Pat (of blue justice fame) both suggested that the “company” was providing a gambling service not insurance. I argued, “if the company provides a portion of the cost back, it’s insurance. If the Company provides the entire amount and more, it’s gambling.” We were all left trying to figure out what the difference between Insurance and gambling was. Then AIG exploded and we are even more confused. Either way, I’m not sure why this isn’t being done. Anyone want to go into business. Pre-requisite: you’ll need deep pockets.
• 15 minutes of fame continues First of all, thank you so much for all the good wishes we received about Shell’s job situation. The Update is a bit cryptic. Barclays bought Lehman. They are providing at the least 90 more days of employment, but it’s no guarantee. But it’s better than what we thought at this time last week. As for our fame, our clip from Lehman exploded past the national and international news. My clip made “The View”. I debated to even tell you that.
• Bledsoe part Deux: Is it me or is Favre going through the Bledsoe joining the Bills progression at hyperspeed. At least the Bills got close to 6 weeks of top notch football from the guy. The Jet’s have week 10 2003 and beyond Bledsoe. That is no fun for the NYJ fans. I’m beginning to feel bad for them. I think.

Kevin Shenoy can be reached at binaural02@hotmail.com