One Fan's View: Our Bills stock is worth diddly

by Kevin Shenoy

Well this article is coming out late because I ended up calling 3 timeouts before I actually sat down to write this thing. I just wanted to be sure that I knew what I wanted to write. The real reason for my tardiness is that I actually got back to New York late because of the weather on Monday. So both Monday and Tuesday nights were really busy for me. So I didn’t get to this until Wednesday night.

Before we start the article, let’s put our heads down in a moment of silence for the Kansas City Chiefs. The Bills managed to only score 3 points at home…..against a west coast team…..that isn’t above .500 (only a handful of teams aren’t .500 or better)….in east coast weather….in a must win game. The Chiefs let the Bills run wild and score 54 points in their home. If I was a Chiefs fan, I’d probably be dead by now.

Ok, on to the game stuff. I honestly can’t remember a time in the last 8 years where the Bills have opened a game strong. I actually only can think of 4 cases; the 31-0 Pats game, this year’s Jacksonville game, the Miami game where we blew a 23 point lead and perhaps one other game. With the season on the line, against an inferior opponent, we couldn’t make them go three and out?

Instead we watch the 49ers convert 4 straight 3rd downs, several of which were 3rd and 7 or longer. Isaac Bruce, a guy I honestly didn’t know even played football anymore, caught the game winner on a 15 play drive….in the first quarter. McKelvin got burned badly and the only defense worth noting on that drive was the Bills fan in the stand who slapped the ball down during the handoff between Bruce and a 49er fan all while sitting.

This is probably a good time to come clean and say, “I didn’t go to the game.” Yeah, I stayed at my parents’ house. Though I had claimed to friends and family at Thanksgiving dinner, “You got to go, this could be the last win of the season.” I secretly didn’t want to go. I knew the weather was going to stink, and I knew with more assuredness the Bills had yet another dud to deliver.

I tried to put it on Shelly the whole time assuming that my dad would be more understanding if we didn’t go to the game because Shelly didn’t want to sit in the cold. But she kept saying, “I’d love to go. Whatever the weather is, we’ll deal.” When I woke up on Sunday I just audibled out of the game and took it on the chin. “We’re not going. It’s going to be freezing, it’s a 20 minute walk to and from the Stadium, they’re going to break my heart, and it’s still thanksgiving weekend. I’d like to still feel thankful for something. So we aren’t going.” So Shelly, my dad and I watched comfortably from home.

This game was what is affectionately known as the “turning game”. Every year since 2000, there is a game where the Bills break your will and you no longer get angry at the miscues and sloppiness. Instead, you actually enjoy it. You laugh at everything. You become Mel Gibson from Lethal Weapon. You are so crazy and delirious from the utter sadness of yet another lost season. Gibson lost his wife in the LW series, we lost the playoffs. The season is over no matter what the mathematics’ say. You actually watch the team come up to the line of scrimmage on 2nd and two and you scream out, “Their passing. Like of bunch of monkey’s they are going to pass, and it’s going to be incomplete.” Then Losman drops back to pass, takes forever to look around, then gets sacked. Everyone laughs that they found a way to make it worse than your original call.

This is the game where you know they are going to lose. There is no doubt about it, but now you aren’t angry because you made peace with the fact the season was actually over after the Cleveland game. You start to think about how you might be able to do something else with your Sundays (though your addiction will plop you in front of the TV anyways). You add in Sunday as a legit shopping day if you need it for holiday gifts.

Just like all sad stuff in life, once you embrace it, you are free to move forward from it. As Bills fans, we learned this lesson very early on in life. Perhaps that’s why we’re such good, grounded people. We learned how to deal with disappointment at a very early age.

So we have 4 games to go, three against the East, one to be played internationally, and one against the Pats. Now if the model holds, the second matchup of the season is when the Pats just let us have it. So for all the disappointment in you now, wait until the last game of the season. The only saving grace is that you’ll be able to laugh it off.

DVD Extras

* Ralph’s longevity We say what we say about Ralph being cheap and uninterested in winning. I don’t really think that’s the case. I think he is trying to win, but he just wants to do it in a cost effective manner. It comes off to us as cheap to us. But I really get the sense that he lives and dies with the Bills like the rest of us. I, for one, am impressed that he’s lived this long. I’m pretty sure the Bills have taken at least 10 years off my life. With high cholesterol, diabetes, and unfortunate clumsiness in my genes, I wasn’t really aiming for the US average of age in the first place. Add on a side of Bills and it’s like eating a stick of Butter every snap for 4 quarters on Sunday. Ralph might just be Tuck Everlasting to make it to his late 80’s.

* Rescue Ralph Everyone is riding Ralph as being the #1 issue for this team’s suckiness. You hear a lot of “He’s too cheap to get a good coach.” I’ve been on that bandwagon before. But he actually went out and got Tom Donahoe, an expensive, “proven” talent at the time to turn things around. It was only after we had Tom that we realized that the Steelers succeeded in spite of him, not because of him. In any case, Ralph put his trust in his GM as we’d hope he’d do. And Tom wanted weak coaches so he didn’t get played like he felt Cowher played him. So Williams and Mularkey really aren’t Ralph’s fault. After being hustled by TD, Ralph went to a close friend and football guy who made magic in the 90’s in Marv. Marv said to go with Dick. Ralph listened. Ralph has his issues that’s for sure. If he could have just been able to work with Polian and/or Butler (two men who created foundations for teams that are still respectable to this day), we could have been the Colts or the Chargers. I thank my Dad for that point as he was the one who said that to me. But my point overall, is that I really don’t expect Ralph to role out a retread again. I think he’s going to do something to keep the fans interested. As crazy as Cowher sounds, I think Ralph knows that even us die-hards aren’t going to stand for Dick Jauron v1.2. We’ll watch the games, but we won’t get the tickets. And that’s what will scare Ralph the most.

* New Model The other comment on Ralph that I think is telling is that he hasn’t seemed to grasp the Free Agent NFL at all. He still thinks its about paying good players money and knowing just when to strike. I think it may be dawning on him that great coaches like Angry Chick plays with a variety of washed up, unproven talent, yet they keep playing for him. Perhaps Ralph is seeing that you pay a lot of the coach, and you just plug and play the talent at the coach’s behest. I think Net-Net, his expenses could stay the same.

* Vegas bet update As a man always trying to find the silver lining in things, I like that this Bills meltdown will make the Bills bet next year at least 100 to 1 at this rate. Of course I’ll be in Vegas to put down $5 on the Bills. This time I go for it all and go all on the Super Bowl. Forget this “best AFC record bet” nonsense.

* DJ Inept Most people will go to a restaurant, order a meal, get violently sick, and then never go to that restaurant ever again. Lesson learned. I get the sense that if Dick Jauron’s personal life is as poorly run as his football life, he’d keep going to the same restaurant, ordering the same thing, and then lying in bed wondering, “what happened? How did I get sick? I’m doing the same thing I always do. Maybe tomorrow that meal with extra MSG, curdled milk, with a side of WOW chips will make me feel better tomorrow.”

* Sleeved Trent I’m a big believer that Trent has the tools to be a good quarterback, however, it stinks to see the 49erst QB come out with no sleeves and our QB come out with sleeves. You knew almost immediately that we weren’t going to win.

* The Bills are screwed The Bills are screwed by coaching, players, the refs, the league and any one else you can think of. Somehow the team doesn’t have an STD from all this random screwing. Mckelvin got called on two of the weakest penalties I’ve ever seen. But our genius coach decided to challenge that the ball was tipped to negate the penalty. Of course as most Jauron challenges go, there was no reason to believe the ball was tipped. So the player screwed us by making a 3rd down penalty, the refs screwed us because it was such a weak call to make, the coaches screwed us by challenging something that didn’t require a challenge, and then later this week we are screwed by having the Toronto game. Everyone is in on the action.

* Toot my own horn Again, I hate the Fancy I. I hate him. Yet the last two years he seemed like he turned the corner. So I just laid off of him despite being highly skeptical of the guy. Last week, I even mentioned that he never missed an extra point and that you know he’s going to miss one soon. I actually envisioned that he’d miss the PAT in a game where we drove 80 yards in under two minutes, scored the tying touchdown only to be stuck with a missed PAT. But Fancy I impressed me by shanking a kick SHORTER than an extra point. SHORTER!? Then again from inside the 40, clink! The guy is good for a couple misses a season. And was missing 1 field goal a week even in our brief run of goodness. And for a team that struggles to blow a team away, you need a kicker who is automatic. Lindell is one of the least clutch kickers I’ve ever seen. And just to be clear, he doesn’t kick the ball into the endzone regularly on kickoffs, has missed the pop up kickoff by launching it out of bounds several times this year, and has actually hit an onside kick so weakly that it barely went 5 yards instead of the required 10. So he can’t hit it long on the kickoff, and he can’t hit it accurately on long kicks. What is this guy’s strength? He’s a total wildcard every time he comes up to LOS.

* Duke Preston Two false snaps? Two? At home? I don’t even know what else to say. Does the team practice any of these plays during the week or does Jauron just serve juice in sippy cups and tell them bedtime stories?

* On the Topic of practice Is it fair to ask the Bills to practice outdoors after November? You have a natural advantage with the conditions. Get use to them. No one on the team actually is from Buffalo. You have to get use to it. Use the field house to just do the walk throughs, but then go outside and see how far you can throw it when it’s windy. Find out how the wind affects your kicks when going in certain directions. This is such gross incompetence. I want Dick Jauron in front of Congress explaining himself.

* MBS Bills All those MBS securities that have dropped to very little in value are very similar to the Bills depth chart. In July both MBS securities and the Bills looked great on paper. Maybe the MBS didn’t, but they didn’t look as bad as they do now. MBS securities were a great idea...on paper. “If we put together a ton of mortgages in one pool and give people paper that says, those mortgage payments will be paid to the paper holderes directly, they’ll make money. There are no flaws to this unless people just don’t make their mortgage payments. We’ll just get more pathetic mortgages to lessen the chance of defaults. Pish posh with the risk, full steam ahead.” The Bills, on paper, had 3 decent Linebackers that had the potential to be Voltron. Where they were decent individually, but together could come together to prove to be really awesome (“And Poz forms the head”). Crowell, Poz, and Mitchell. Surely, one of them could be injured, but we’ll get Ellison, Bowen, Digorgio and an Orchard Park kid. What’s the chance that they’ll all tank as pathetic LB’s? Pish Posh with the risk, full steam ahead. Now on the free market and in a real season, we see the errors of our ways. Mitchell needs a legit pass rush to be effective. Poz is literally Shane Conlan. Conlan was universally hated at one point because he trailed after the play. Crowell playing as an amputee provides better run support than Ellison who literally looks like he’s built like me when the show a close up of him. Our LB Crew of Ellison, Poz Mitchell wouldn’t scare me if I had to play them in touch football at this point. The free market and regular season has spoken. The paper is worthless.

* Personal fun So I did my show at Comix on Tuesday. It was lots of fun. Jim Gaffigan did a 20 minute set two comics ahead of me. So technically speaking, I’ve now opened for Rosie, and Jim Gaffigan, again technically speaking, opened for me. Gaffigan has this thing on how bacon is amazing and bacon bits are like the fairy dust equivalent because you can sprinkle it on anything and it’ll taste better. It’s so funny that your cheeks start to hurt. If you were there, thanks for coming. If not, there are more shows to come in 2009.

* Slow Wimpson still doing his thing Ko Simpson continues to impress me negatively. On the first drive, he decides to skip the momentum changing interception play by making the big hit. Unfortunately, he bounced off the receiver and fell to the ground. No interception, no message sent. Ahh Ko, I hope you’re playing with Fancy I, Losman and Kelsay on another team next year.

* Kelsay dance Having made 1 sack the entire year, Kelsay makes his second sack with minutes to play. It gave the Bills one last chance to put the ball back in Losman’s hands. (Would you want it any other way? Oh, wait, you’d take any other QB in the league in a clutch, clock running out situation.) Kelsay gets up and dances around. Ok, that’s annoying because we’re still down by 7. But what was even funnier is that he gets to the sidelines and is apparently injured. I don’t know if he was hurt from the dancing or the first contact he’s made since training camp. But only this kind of thing could happen to the Bills.

* Speaking of Dance moves What is going on with Parrish? On punt returns he seems so anxious to dance around that he isn’t zipping around. Are we not setting anything up properly or is his head getting too big for himself? It is becoming clear that Parrish is about as inconsistent as everyone else on the team. He has one punt return early in the season that makes us think he’s a return god and then he spends the rest of the season failing to make plays happen as a returner or as a receiver.

*Mark Ingram meet Plaxico Plaxico is just another convict in a growing line of Superbowl WR for the Giants. Yes, we all know that Plaxico Burress won the Super Bowl with the catch in the back of the end zone. Do we all know that Mark Ingram, the jerk who converted 3rd and forever in Super Bowl 1 (25 depending on how you count Super Bowls) was convicted for bank fraud and money laundering. When an individual with no title commits bank fraud, it’s illegal. When you are a CEO, you need a rescue package. I wonder if Vikram Pandit or any of these other CEO thugs pulled a Plaxico what kind of assistance they’d get. The government probably would lecture the bullet on how wrong it was for getting into the skin of the CEO. All jokes aside, how stupid is Plaxico? It’s one thing for him to be out and about since he wasn’t playing on Sunday. But Antonio Pierce was going to play in Washington and was out in New York on Saturday morning. That’s stupid.

* Miley meet Losman Miley Cyrus annoyed the hell out of me the second they wanted to make her be the next big thing. Prior, I had never heard of her. The industry wants her to be sexy star god that will transition into bigger and better stuff. But the whole push is falling on its face. She has been pushed into the spotlight like a number 1 draft pick because she had a following with Nickelodeon. They tried to capitalize on her “college success” and get ready to make her an “NFL pro”. They tried to create the sexy photo scandal that no one cared about. They have her performing at the Grammies, and every other award show you don’t care about and she apparently can’t hold her own. She actually isn’t performing well if you read the press by singing off key and not really being a good stage performer. And then her voice over for a CGI movie “Bolt” got beaten out by “Twilight”. Miley has a lot of expectation on her shoulders but she seems to be disappointing everyone. I guess that Losman’s saving grace is that his dad didn’t write “achy breaky heart.” But the nail in the coffin is that he writes that song every week.

Kevin Shenoy can be reached at binaural02@hotmail.com. Please feel free to write and I’ll do my best to get back to you.