One Fan's View: Hello, I'm Kevin and I'm a Bills Fan

by Kevin Shenoy

First question I have to ask you is, “Did you think you’d feel better if Lindell made that FG?” We’ll come back to that point in the Extras. I do want to admit a few things to you first. This article is going to be known as “The Article of Admission”. AA, if you will. Imagine the irony that Bills fans end up at AA after that game.

First, I did not wear a jersey for this game. What was the point? This was the first time in about 8 years that I didn’t wear one. That speaks scores of how low the expectations have come. I normally fold it one way after a win and another one after a loss. I figured, why even take it out and refold it. Just keep it in the lost fold.

Second, I’m not really angry at Fancy I at all. Can you image? You’d expect that I’d be seething due to Lindell’s miss, but I think they put him in a miserable situation. It’s true; I am not a Fancy I fan. I don’t find him to be all that reliable (though the stats say otherwise), but he shouldn’t have been put in that situation. Never mind that he squeaked in a short field goal just inside the uprights at the end of the 3rd quarter. We’ll skip over that after the Bills had a TD kickoff return, he kicked a chip shot out of bounds with Cleveland’s ST unit gasping for air. We’ll skip over the fact that his supporters always say he’s automatic within 40 yards. I personally hate that a defense. As a field goal kicker in the NFL, you should be automatic within 40 yards. That should be a requirement not some sort of honorary badge. It should be required of you. Outside 40, with or without winds, you really don’t know if he’ll make it. It’s a total faith based prayer from outside the 40. You want that guy as your clutch time kicker? But the truth is he should have never been asked to kick the field goal in the first place, and the team should have gotten him closer in the second place.

Third and biggest admission is that as big a supporter of Trent Edwards as I am, he cost us the game. That’s the hardest part of this article really. His regression over these four weeks is numbing. I can’t envision the Bills winning another game this season at this rate. What is sad is that I don’t think any of you see that as hyperbole. That’s the god’s honest truth. If they don’t win one of the next 2, they could very well lose them all. Hey Toronto, you still excited to pay 4x the amount for the same crappy team?

A number of people who had been playing poorly actually played well on Monday. The offensive line actually managed to form a pocket. Hardy made a catch. Royal caught the ball and didn’t fumble. Lynch ran for 100 yards. Leodis looked good in coverage (even though he dropped the game winning interception). Stroud played well after having a couple off games. Kawika “Mungojerrie” Mitchell (more on that nickname below) actually held up with big hits and decent coverage. The Linebackers as a whole managed to plug up the middle that they left leaking for so long.

But yet again, the story was with Edwards not being accurate, not seeing the field properly, and turning over the ball. With the sky cam, you could see receivers open. You could see him pull the Bledsoe double pat of the ball waiting seconds too long before throwing. He had the Losman pitter patter feet. He had the Rob Johnson tendency to hold on to the ball too long. He almost let the half expire without getting the field goal. He channeled every awful Bills QB even though the Best one was standing right there on the sidelines.

I still think Trent needs the rest of this season to see if he is our guy. JP got 4 years. Trent is under contract assumedly for 2 more years. Trent has earned respect by at least winning early. JP’s first play was against the Pats and he threw a disgusting interception and kicked the ball out of his hands on a scramble. Trent’s first drive was versus the Pats, backed up on the goaline, and he drove for a TD. Neither guy has beaten the Pats, but Edwards has earned the rest of the season to sort this out, moreso that option 2.

If Trent shows no signs of improvement and more deterioration in decision making and ball security, they’ll have to bring in a journeyman vet, just to give him a push in training camp. Truth is that this will happen regardless due to JP leaving at the end of the year. But how many more times can we go through this rotation of uncertainty? I think we all badly want Trent to get “it” so we can focus on other areas.

As it stands now, he is really a turnover machine and to a degree his lack of accuracy could be the reason the most conservative coach in football is going even more conservative. With 3 picks and short dump offs even when receivers were open downfield, what else can the coaches really do but run? I think you’d have been more angry with Trent throwing an INT to end the game than a missed field goal. Well that’s debatable. Either way, Trent’s performance has to make you a little gun shy as a coach.

The only shining light in this is, at least we’re not Jet fans. We’re taking our lumps up front in the regular season. I’d rather take that than pretending that Brett Favre is going to save our team, lose interest at the end of the season, throw pick after pick in the playoffs, play the “will he or will he not retire” game, and then find out that all the high priced vets are actually too old to build around. They are actually 2 years behind us in their rebuilding efforts and we all know that. So take some Quantum of Solace in that.

DVD Extras

* Would you feel better if we won? Really? The Bills struggled to throw the ball on the one of the worst defenses in the league. They let a rookie QB drive 96 yards for a touchdown at home on national TV. They still can’t run for 2 yards when they desperately need it the most. They went to the wire with a now 4-6 team. In my mind, I think if the Bills made a playoff run this year, we’d see a team get ripped apart worse than the Dolphins Jags game of yesteryear. 62-7 would be nothing for this Bills team. We play poorly against winning teams. Imagine how bad it can get if we were playing playoff teams with national exposure. A double whammy of Bills ineptitude. Ewwww.

* 3rd and 1, empty back field We can stop doing this now. That is all. They even called a time out and came back in the same formation. What did they discuss?

* Sugar rush called! Time to toot my own horn. I had asked why the Bills didn’t go back to their “sugar rush” that they used against the Seahawks now that the DL literally can’t pass the line of Scrimmage. Lo and behold, they went sugar rush a couple times and experienced success. Toot! Toot!

* Kirk Chambers in the goal line package On the Browns touchdown run, they took Marcus Stroud out and put backup, offensive lineman Kirk Chambers in the goalline package. I could repeat that for emphasis, but I sense you get how stupid that is by reading it once. For a conservative bunch, the Bills coaching staff seemed to be taking a huge risk on that play. I only know that occurred because Shelly noticed it. She went to high school with Kirk, so she notices when 73 is on the field.

* Jamal Lewis as Pete from Cosby Show Jamal Lewis is built like Peter from the Cosby show. You remember Rudy’s friend who always ran home in the first signs of trouble. He also runs like him insofar that he looks like an 8 year old running against an NFL defense.

* Dick Jauron Comments I noticed after they lost to the Jets he said something like “we’re 5-3. It’s a lot better than we had hoped.” Then after the Patriots game he said almost the exact same thing except said 5-4. My question is how bad did Dick think this team would be? If we are at 5-8, is he going to say, “Hey, we’re 5-8. This is more than I expected.” How about a little upfront prediction next time. At the start of the season. “Look fans, I’m aiming for 3-13. If I get 2 games over, it’s pure gravy to me.”

* Romeo? Is Romeo Crennel the least “Romeo” looking of all Romeo’s out there?

* The 56 yard boot It was a line drive kick. It almost looked like if Stroud just ran straight forward instead of twisting, the ball would have hit him in the head. You just can’t catch a break if you are a Buffalo Bill.

* The missed field goal I like that they showed Jim Kelly’s face after the miss. That was the equivalent of a seeing a Veteran have a Vietnam flashback. Other than curse words, I wonder what Jim Kelly was thinking. “The Horror…..The Horror”

* More Jim Kelly I loved the sitcom theme song thumbs-up that Jim gave the cameras. It was very “Family Matters” like. The FM intro use to have the characters doing something really intensely for 2 seconds, then they’d look up at the camera and smile and their name would pop up. Kelly nailed his sitcom intro. He was watching the field, then turned and popped up the thumb. This guy has charisma; I wonder why he didn’t head up to the booth during the game. Tony K could ask why the team is irrelevant and Kelly would give us a small glimmer of hope.

* Even more Jim Kelly At the end of the game, he was standing right in Dick Jauron’s face. He even looked perplexed at the coaching decisions. At what point does Ralph just ask Jim to take the wheel to this thing? I’m not even a big proponent of Players-turned-coaches, but I’m even less excited about loser-coach-staying-employed. Seeing that Jim is not on the payroll, why is he on the sideline? And further more, he’s actually talking to Jauron during the game? What? Ralph loves to stick with the guys he knows. Why not let Jimbo take a crack if he wants it? Or do we not even want to ruin the legacy of Jim Kelly?

* Remember Training Camp? Do you remember how the Bills were so “deep” in the secondary, but the Browns were in desperate need of a CB? Remember that? And we thought we’d give them our best open field tackler who actually has a nose for the ball in Youboty? In return we expected half their team because they were desperate and we were stacked. Ugh, turns out they didn’t need him. Their scrubby little secondary had enough without our perpetually injured, now dangerously close to being considered a bust CB. And even worse, we apparently did need him.

* Weather watch on Edwards The few passes that went for more than 5 yards seemed to get there without issue on a fairly windy day. But the skeptics get fuel for their fire; the guy simply didn’t try anything long. And I’m defining long as anything over 15 yards.

* Edwards first Pick It was batted by Shaun Rogers who had 3 people blocking him. Three people on him and he makes the play. When is the last time you’ve seen a Bills DL make a play with two guys on him?

* Corner Blitz, Corner miss There was a third down play where Corner blitzed and he totally whiffed on the sack. Ahhh, the joys of rookie DB’s. We seemingly draft a DB every year in early rounds yet this is what we have on the field. Perfect.

* Goalies and QB’s Why is it when a goalie is having a miserable experience in hockey, you yank him for his sanity, but when a QB is sucking, yanking him will ruin him forever? I simply don’t get the Diva positions in sports.

* Halitosis for the OL and DL? You’ve certainly heard of playoff beards for hockey players. I think with the state of the Bills line, they should stop brushing their teeth until they make the playoffs. I saw the Pats sideline during the Pats-Favres game and one of the Pats linemen had the yellow-est teeth I’ve ever seen. It honestly looked like a row of canaries hanging from this guy’s gums. But it raised the question, if you had to go facemask to facemask with a guy who has Level 5 halitosis going on in his mouth, maybe you try going around him instead of bull rushing him. Again, at this stage of the season, you should try everything at your disposal.

* iPhone curse Just for the record, the Bills haven’t won a single game since I got this iPhone. My AT&T contract runs up approximately at the same time as Jauron’s contract. iPhone has great applications, amazing internet capabilities and a special connection to losing Bills games. Odd that the Bills were better when I had a cell phone that couldn’t text vowels. Now I have a great phone and the Bills even struggle to come up with a decent sack dance.

* MEOW! Some people said that when Trent’s first pass was picked off, they knew the game was over. I was a bit more optimistic than that. I held out hope until Kawika Mitchell re-enacted a scene from the musical “CATS”. After a big play in the 3rd quarter, Kawike “Mungojerrie” Mitchell (MungoJerrie is a character from CATS and I know that only because I looked it up on Wikipedia ) Shelly’s first comment was “wow, that guy looks like a scary version of Michael Bolton.” Paris shouted out, “CATS? Like the musical?” Cats and Michael Bolton in reference to your favorite team. That never ends well.

* On the topic of entertainment A few weeks ago we had the Dick Cheney ref, this week we had the ref that looks like the black guy in Die Hard 2. SPOILER: this is the guy who gets thrown into the airplane engine at the end. (Do you have to mention spoiler alert for movies people should have seen almost 15 years ago?) Secondly, I pointed out the resemblance and Joe asked, “I don’t remember that guy, but he definitely looks like the father in “Coming to America.” I yelled in board game excitement, “That’s the same guy!”

* Refs Anyone notice that the refs blew a call that didn’t affect the outcome of the Steelers/Chargers game. It affected the spread but not the game. Last week I mentioned that this year’s shoddy officiating all around smells like there is some heavy gambling going on with the refs. Personally it makes sense to me. We are potentially in catastrophic economic times. This is when people begin to gamble more and with reckless abandon.

* The Comeback that didn’t come back At the beginning of the fourth quarter, I claimed, “the Bills are going to come back and win this game, and I still feel sick.” Then some guy named Harrison ran 72 yards on the first play. BAH! Then Leodis gave us the “death by 1000 cuts” hope that we could still win it by returning the kick 98 yards. So in 30 seconds 14 points went up on 170 yards of play. Then the aforementioned Joe came over. Joe is Paris’ buddy and just passed the Bar exam. I sensed that kind of good vibes could only help. Somehow the Bills messed it up, and we lost. Joe, of course, was at the Rams game where we did the seat change for victory in the second half. For the record we never tried a seat switch in this game. I am Dick Jauron. I froze when change was needed most.

* NFL Blitz Paris aptly called out that this game was like the video game NFL Blitz. I don’t even know if they make the game anymore, but back in college, this was huge in our dorm. The game would literally autocorrect any large margins of leads with turnovers and crazy plays so that every game’s fourth quarter would just be a slug fest. If you left 2 seconds on the clock, chances are you left too much time on the clock. I really thought after the 56 yard field goal that the Bills were going to kick a field goal. And I was pretty sure that the Browns were going to come back the other way if there was any time on the clock. And if they didn’t kick with 0 on the clock, we’d have come right back.

* The Favres vs the Pats Point 1 I like that with 3 minutes to go and facing a 4th and 17, the Patriots punted with 1 timeout and the 2 minute warning as their only way to stop the clock. In what year do you think the Bills will be able to have that kind of confidence in their defense to get the stop and get the ball back for your offense? I know our coaches have that confidence, but it isn’t really founded on anything. When will we fans have that confidence?

* The Favres and the Pats Point 2 I like that on that final drive the Jets called a timeout when the Pats had no timeouts, and it was 4th and 1 with 8 seconds. The Jets really deserved to lose that game. Had they lost, that would have been their season. They would have slowly crumbled like all teams do when they have a devastating loss where they give up a huge lead.

* The Favres and the Pats Point 3 I’m not sure who you rooted for. I was rooting for a tie. I was 8 minutes away from being so happy. But back in reality I was rooting for the Patriots. I figure if the Bills aren’t going to be a part of the AFC East championship, then we might as well get beaten by the same old team. Everyone but Jets fans seem to know that Favre will be this teams undoing later in the season. Also, I took like 3 showers after rooting for a quarter and a half for the Patriots. It just won’t come off.

* Nerd Alert 1 - Auto bailout like saving the Bills One prominent viewpoint on the Auto bailout is that you are throwing good money after bad money. But the issue of letting major US manufacturing crumble and the multiplying negative effects it’ll have for the economy is staggering. So in some ways, even if no one really wants to buy American cars, people don’t have the cash or job stability for a new car, and/or banks aren’t lending for new cars, we have to do something to prevent hundreds of thousands of layoffs sending us down a miserable spiral. So the bailout becomes an almost necessary evil. We will still be stuck with cars that aren’t very good and don’t get the proper gas mileage. The Bailout doesn’t solve the underlying issue. Similarly, Roger Goodell said this week to a Bills booster group that the Bills can be viable in Buffalo as long as the fans keep showing up. But we fans are throwing good money after bad money. Having the fans show up still leaves us with a barely watch-able team perform on Sunday. I get how the money helps preserve these outdated models of GM/Bills, what I don’t get is how are we really fixing the real problem of making better companies and teams?

* Nerd Alert 2 - Tricky Accounting and the Bills I am a big believer that tricky accounting is one of the major reasons we are in such bad economic shape as a country. It’s almost impossible to look at the numbers of a company because there are so many ways they can “fix” the numbers. So even if a company knows its failing, they have plenty of latitude with accounting trickery to say the opposite. Their logic is the same as a chronic bettor. “If I can just get through this patch and get a little cash, I can turn this all around.” Allow me to explain.

If you pretend I’m a company and you take my Bills $5, 25-1 odds “best record in the AFC” bet I put in Vegas, then you’ll see the stupidity of accounting trickery. I could publicly state in my figures one of three things. “I spent $5 with an expectation to make something”, “show my revenues as $250 now because I really think I am going to win my bet” or “write the entire thing off as a loss.” Obviously, if you were lending me money, you’d love to know that I have $250 coming in instead of just a $5 expense and nothing currently to show for it. You certainly wouldn’t lend me anything if I write it down. As a lender you get to look at my books the way I mark them. So if I said I had $250 but had no obligation to tell you that I’m depending on an outlandish bet to pay off to make the $250 a reality, you’d be none the wiser.

Companies are often times allowed to do this claiming they are marking it to the market value. And if there isn’t an easily priced market, they just mark to model. And their model literally is me saying, “my model says this bet is going to pay off.” If the bet works, then marking your books aggressively isn’t a problem. When it falls as flatly on its face as the Bills have, it has dire consequences for the people who lent to you thinking that you legitimately had $250 coming to you. Corporate America is littered with this example at staggeringly high values of money. This is one of the biggest problems for the Bills bet and for Corporate America. We know we suck. That’s a given. We just don’t know how much we suck by and no way to really monetize it.

* Nerd Alert 3 – reference to Week 3 article Ok, I know, lots of nerdy stuff at the end of this article this week. You get what you get. Anyways, in week 3, I wrote that Mark and I were talking about the legitimacy of creating a company where we would insure your DirectTV package in the event the Bills sucked. We’d charge $50 for the season and if the Bills didn’t go 8-8, we’d give you half your NFL ticket subscription back. Well in week 7, we were kicking ourselves that we didn’t do it. “You’d have to be the worst team ever to not get 3 more wins. We’d have made millions.” Now we are looking at it and still kicking ourselves. We wouldn’t have the cash to cover what we wanted to insure, we’d apply for a federal bailout and probably skim a good billion or so for ourselves while going for pedicures and massages at the Ritz. At least some Bills fans would end up with a happy ending. Hey-oooo!!!

Kevin Shenoy can be contacted at binaural02@hotmail.com. While I may not be able to respond to each email, I certainly appreciate the feedback.