One Fan's View: Crying in the Fetal Position

by Kevin Shenoy

The Bills needed one play to win that game. One! And we didn’t get it. Usually opposing coaches talk about playing on the road and taking the crowd out of it early. But they never say that when they head to the Ralph because they know our coach will take the crowd out of it. No matter how badly you want to cheer and go crazy, Jauron and his stooges dial up a low octane, watered down football game that makes you want to cry in the fetal position.

We didn’t seem to run any receivers in motion. We insisted in dumping down. Jackson ran well, yet we never really play actioned any passes. To be fair, I think even if we just tried a flea flicker after the fake field goal, the crowd could have been shocked into thinking, “we got a chance. They are thinking of ways to score.” The play didn’t even need to be successful. The Bills just had to show that they were throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the Saints.

Instead it was just a slow bleed. My only hope is in his post football life, Jauron doesn’t go work an ER room or with paramedics:

Nurse Defense: Doctor Jauron, close that wound. I’ll keep massaging the heart of this person with my bare hands, but we’re running out of time.

Doctor Jauron: No, I think that gaping wound will be ok. My policy is, “if we let it fester, it’ll only get better.”

Nurse Defense: I’m losing him.

Doctor Jauron: I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. I was clapping.

Nurse Defense: Please! Just tend to the wound. This guy should have been dead 20 minutes ago. I’ve got him alive. Barely. I don’t want to lose another patient.

Doctor Jauron: Let me take off my Ray Ban sunglasses. Ahh yes. Here we go…stitch one and stitch…oh wait. What’s that? A Flag? I have to start over.

Nurse Defense: Do something? He’s flatlining!

Doctor Jauron:

Nurse Defense: What are you doing?!?

Doctor Jauron: Just thinking about what we should tell the family of this guy. I’m thinking, “we tried hard. We have a good team of doctors and nurses. We’ll look at the film and xrays.”

Nurse Defense: Not on my watch!

Doctor Jauron: Hey, we gave it a good effort. That’s all that was needed. You can’t win them all.

Nurse Defense: This guy came in here with a small paper cut. He shouldn’t have died.

Doctor Jauron: That’s true, but we did a bang up job for 51 minutes. That’s something in my books.

Two weeks and two dead bodies (four in total) later.

Hospital Administrator Brandon: Doctor, we’re letting you go.

And regardless of your political affiliation, I believe that’s a healthcare plan we can all believe in.


DVD Extras:

• Week 1 week 3 – Week 1 we remained in the game until there were 2 minutes to play. This week we made it to 9 minutes. Just as is the case with a Jauron team, it just keeps getting worse as the season wears on.
  
• Roscoe – This guy was one squat away from literally crapping on the field. What an ugly performance. Fumbling after the first stop of the Saint’s power offense (just after the momentum turning the trick play to boot), getting slam tackled in NFL Blitz video game style on the kick return, not knowing what the play being called in the 2 minute drill which led to the team taking a time out, and of course getting up gingerly after their kicker tattooed him with the force of a pillow fight. For about a month, I’ve sat here listening to rumors that they’ll trade him. And I’ve sat here excitedly twiddling my thumbs waiting for the news, “the Bills got a second day draft pick.” After three weeks of running backwards on kickoff returns, missing blocks, and general suckiness, I could deal with just seeing him dropped. It’ll be for the best. He’ll be able to join up JP on the Locomotives.
  
• Roscoe trade Just to make a bizarre, useless point. You realize that if the Bills traded Roscoe for me, they’d get a bigger player in return. At 5’8, I believe I tower over Roscoe. However, if the Bills traded either of our kickers for me, they’d get a smaller player. Have I made my point?
  
• Jauron’s ineptness I believe any other coach in the league would have benched Roscoe after not knowing the play at the end of the half. No other coach would stand for that level of stupidity. Clearly the guy doesn’t know his playbook. It’s not like we were in a hostile stadium and it was loud. The crowd knows we’re trying to go down to get a field goal (how pathetic, we don’t even expect a TD) and then get the ball back for the second half. It was quiet until they realized that we are leaking 10 seconds off the clock for the second time in 3 weeks. And we run a no huddle all the time! I was literally screaming, “get him off the field.” I’ve noticed fans are asking for Steve Johnson instead of Josh Reed. But the real switch should be Johnson for Parrish. Johnson would have been such a better, larger target when we had two TE’s who couldn’t make a catch. This reminds me of when we were begging for Jauron to bench A Train and bring in Jackson.
  
• Jauron Ineptness #2 - I can’t be the only guy who thinks this. When we go into halftime in a close game, I know our team will make zero adjustments and lose the game in the second half. Isn’t that the definition of being outcoached? Even the games we win, the tide turns in the second half and luckily the opposing team just makes more mistakes then us. We never shut it down or turn on the offense in the second half. A well coached team would occasionally come back to life in the second half and take a game just sitting there for them.
  
• Stop me if you heard this one before So the second half of a game you’d ideally like to win is there for the taking. Then a no-name 3rd string RB piles on a couple of TD’s, breaks your heart, and the Bills fall yet again. Does that sound familiar?
  
• 4th and 23 vs. 4th and 1 I’m not the smartest guy in the world. But for some reason I like my chances in a ten point game on 4th and 1 more so than 4th and 23 (down 17). I thought the point in switching the offensive line was to get a more aggressive unit that could pick up a yard when you needed it. Also, if I went for it on fourth and 23, I’d try throwing it further than 3 yards.
  
• Sarcastic boo-birds I didn’t get to see the famed 4th and 1 play because my DirecTV streaming video punked out for 8 minutes in the fourth quarter. Classic, no? But talking to Mark, he said everyone boo’d the decision to punt. Then as the game wore on after that, from the cheap check downs to the worm burning snaps, there was a sarcastic tone from the boo-birds. They sarcastically cheered the low snaps and the 4th and 23 decision. I enjoyed that for the comedic value. However, I think sarcasm is too complex an idea for the front office. We need to just chant “you’re gone Jauron” until they actually come down and fire him mid game. We need Russ to come down to the field and take the headset from Jauron the way a baseball manager takes the ball from the pitcher.
  
• Better bring your Pop Warner: The old adage, “bring your popcorn” rang in your ears. And you thought, if only they brought a Pop Warner like effort on offense, we could have won.
  
• Stormin’ Mormon - Ryan Denney made his annual contribution in the first half of the year. Denney, a BYU graduate (my father-in-law’s undergraduate alma-mater), usually receives negative accolades from me for being blasted 5 yards off the line of scrimmage on a routine basis. As a special teams player, getting down the field 5 yards is a huge play. So for the second year we got the Moorman to Mormon play completed. Fantastic. Let’s get rid of him at the peak value. You know there is no chance that he can be good two weeks in a row season.
  
• Two oh-for teams coming up I don’t want to be the first team to lose to the Dolphins or Browns. Yet I can’t help but think hitting the Bye week with a losing record gets Jauron out the door faster than beating bad teams and being .500 at the break. Please show all your cards, Buffalo. If you are going to be a craptastic team, please show us that during this Dolphins game so that we can arrange our weekends around family and friends and not this life sucking event called Bills football. I don’t want to be doing complicated math in week 11 telling people that the Bills are still in when I know they are just going to let me down.
  
• Lynch is an idiot - Not our beloved Marshawn (although having him wear down the Saints run D might have been a difference of winning that game or not) but John Lynch the color commentator. He actually referred to the Bills as the Buffalo Bears at one point. Early in the game, the Saints had two drives to the Bills one. He circled that the Saints put up 136 yards to the Bills 42 and said, “you just see how great this saints offense is. John, when you have more drives, you get more yards for the most part. It’s not that stunning. And of course, he contradicted stuff that Ron Pitts said. Pitts: “Ohhhh, if Derek Fine catches that ball, he probably picks up the first down.” Lynch: “Yeah. I think even if Derek Fine catches it, he’s going to be short.” Obviously the concussions were a problem.
  
• Time Warner continued Thanks for the email responses. It ranged from, “I had a problem and I hate Time Warner” to “There are other choices out there. Try this red pill and snap out of the Matrix.” I see I’m not the only person who goes into TW rage.

This week, I told Ms. Zephyr that I wanted to talk to an IT person. She declined. “They don’t have phone numbers.” “Really? How do you tell them that I have a problem? Smoke signals?” After 8 months of a Jauron-like effort of telling me it’d be different the following week, she passed me on to her supervisor, Claudia. Same conversation. Claudia claimed she couldn’t get me an IT person’s number, but within 3 hours, an IT person called me. So congrats to Claudia for finding me Chino. When he called I couldn’t understand what his name was. I asked him to spell it. And he literally said, “is this for your blog?” Is he a closet Bills fan that knows about this weekly article? Anyways, Chino diagnosed some issues from his computer and apparently, I might have even more issues than originally believed to be a problem. And better yet, it probably effects more homes in our area than just ours. Russ Brandon, may I recommend you Claudia or Chino as the Bills next head coach.

As always, 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. To comment on this and other articles drop by The Bills Zone. Registration required.