One Fan's View: I'm not Nostradamus

by Kevin Shenoy

The 2009 Bills have brought you such hits as “Cleveland 6-3”, “No Offensive TDs vs the Saints”, “False Start Galore (Home Game remix)”, “Trent’s last stand in Tennessee”, “Patriots debacle (Lead Single)”, and “Texans 2nd string RB blues”. With a discography so full of wonderful hits, it’s hard to find a space for “Jettisoned to Toronto” on the album. Perhaps it’s a b-side or to be offered as an itunes special. Either way it’s another catchy tune but has the special attribute to keep giving and giving and giving for 3 more years.

Just to get it out of the way, this Toronto game is a farce. I am hoping that this sheds some light on the topic of moving teams for the NFL. Not every city, despite its size and wealth, love football. They don’t all need to spend $200 a ticket to see football. Perhaps areas that have failed in the past of supporting a team (I’m looking at you LA) just can’t do it.

NFL, it is possible that there are some areas that, GASP, you are already in that provide you the fans and the pandemonium that generate the crazy tv contracts. Businesses call this a loss leader. It’s the cost of getting bigger and better future profits. I can tell you in Utah saying, “let’s wawtch football and eat thanksgiving dinner isn’t an option.” In Buffalo if your family doesn’t combine the two, then no one frowns upon eating as quickly as possible so you can run back to the TV.

Perhaps, NFL, you are already maximizing your profits. Give us our home game back and let us keep the team!!(rant off).

As for this game, I was actually waiting for Matt Millen, famed awful GM of the Lions, to say, “this Bills team needs a GM bad, and not like a dud GM like me, but real guy who knows talent. But to be fair, even if I was the GM right now, this team would be somewhat further along than where they are now.”

I have some favorite whipping boys. Donte Whitne is one and he was truly awful. If SNL ever brought back the fake commericial of “oops, I crapped my pants”, Whitner would have to be considered a spokesman. Early in the game in the Jets’ redzone, Whitner seemed to not know which receiver to take. So he just stood there like a rookie. Both receivers were wide open in the endzone. If Sanchez had a mild level of accuracy it would have been 7-3 instead of 3-3.

To keep on the Whitner awesomeness, he is being asked to cover the slot receiver a lot in man coverage. He not only can’t do this, he is god awful at this. I noticed in the Arizona game last year when I was at the game that almost every 3rd down conversion went to Whitner’s receiver. Nothing has changed. With the exception of one 3rd down break up, Whitner’s guy was constantly opened. Most depressing was that on one pass to Braylon Edwards, Edwards was running away with ease. Whitner couldn’t keep up.

Then with the game on the line and 3rd and 1 our only manner to stop the Jets we neede a stop bad. It would let us keep our timeouts as well as give the team 5 minutes to work with. On that play Whitner looked like a child jumping into a pile of leaves. It just happened that the child’s bigger, stronger dad was hiding in the leaves. Whitner literally got picked up and thrown to the side as the Jets easily converted for the first. It looked like I was trying to make a play at the line of scrimmage. Thanks to Marv, Tom, Dick, and presumably the proverbial Harry for taking this guy number 8 in 2006. Don’t forget that since 2000, Bills first round draft picks in even years end up out of the NFL in 5 years. We all thought it was going to McCargo who was easily out of football next year (Ahead of Schedule!), but all of a sudden, Donte is looking like the guy.

I’ll give Donte a defense though. Perhaps if we had real run defenders and pass rushers, he’d be comfortably playing back as a centerfielder making big hits and an occasional interception. But leave it to our GMs by committee to field a DL and LB core that can’t rush the passer and can’t stop the run.

The only saving grace from this game is that I was very close to making a deadly move. If the Bills had won and then beat the Chiefs, I would have been all excited for that Pats game. And even though I’ve warned about it several times, I was ready to believe that we would actually beat the Patriots. All that disappointment has been preemptively taken care of. Thanks Buffalo. At least you spared me some level of indignity.

DVD Extras:

• Slightly more NFL rant – I wonder if there is going to be a day where we hear which mega corporations are buying these “expensive suites” that are so key to the NFL owners. I wonder if someone will break a story about a government bailed out bank or insurance company that fired say 100,000 people, yet still decided to pay millions of dollars for one suite. I’d love to hear that for the cost of keeping several thousand people employed, it was better “business sense” to have a box at the Jets/Giants/Pats/Cowboys/Redskins game so that these brilliant generals can continue to business that helps the general economy. In some ways a company is subsidizing ticket costs for the segment of Americans who more than easily can get tickets to the game themselves. This all just makes me more angry about how the NFL owners are really only focused on selling suites and not selling actual seats to actual fans. That can’t possibly be a good long term model of making and keeping dedicated long term fans.
  
• I Suck – As I watched the game, I was looking at the lethargic Marshawn Lynch. In the fanzone gameday thread I wrote, “anyone want to bet that Marshawn Lynch doesn’t have a gain for more than 10 yards for the rest of the season?” I hit send, lifted my head and watched Lynch rumble for 35 yards. Next run, 15 yards. Ok. ok. Marshawn, you proved your point. Well done. But then in the second half after watching Poz not blasting through any of the gaps and seemingly struggle to not get run over by the Jet RBs, I wrote, “does anyone remember POZ ever blasting through the gap to make a big play?” I hit send, I lifted my head, and Poz decks Clemens on a huge sack. So at least we know I’m not Nostradamus.
  
• NFL Network - This was my first Thursday night game I’ve ever watched under the new NFL Network deal. I don’t need to go search out more football if it isn’t part of the CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN fold. Those games are free and without the hassle. When I was in Aruba, our hotel had NFL network and I’ll give you this. It’s an amazing channel. But NFL Network, when you make me side with Time Warner, you obviously are doing something wrong. Either just give up your anti-trust exemption and put all the games on pay-per-view or make this channel available to the masses already.
  
• The Playcalling – Eww. At the beginning of the game, with Evans getting a long pass and Fred Jackson running well, a 3rd and 4 came up. The call was a shotgun handoff to Marshawn Lynch. Really? You went to a big play to the guy who up to that point was struggling to show any speed to the holes? Ok. Then to end the game, AVP decided with 74 yards to go, no timeouts and a second half of about 10 positive yards gained, he was going to go to a big set with 2 receivers and one running back. Isn’t that how you’ve always seen a hurry up offense run? With as many big men physically unable to sprint down the field as possible? The next play was the interception to Revis that Fitzpatrick seemingly wanted to connect on all night. Better late than never.
  
• Reggie Corner – Well, he’s fit into the Buffalo mold nicely. Once a budding young player as a nickel back last season, he now is completely useless as a DB. I have no idea what the issue was, but on the Edwards dropped pass, that was his guy. He seemed to think he had help, which he didn’t. He did this about 3 more times from what I could see. He needs to go back to his nickel back role or he might spiral to the awfulness that happens to most of our promising players over the last 10 years.
  
• Summerall voiceover – What was with his voiceovers coming out of commercial break? He sounded like the Pat Summerall from Madden 94 where he has said 10 lines and on a separate day read every player’s name from every roster. This of course creates an awkward gap when he says, “That’s a nice run by (pause) Thurman Thomas.” The Simpsons nailed this idea with Camp Krusty when camp supervisor (pause) MR BLACK stepped in for Krusty. It also sounded like it was using 1990 dolby technology. In the end it creeped me out and made me think maybe Pat Summerall died 25 years ago, and they are just using the speak-like-a-Transformer toy from the 80’s to recreate his voice. Perhaps it’s a small Asian man speaking into the speak–like-Pat-Summerall box that made those commercial voiceovers possible.
  
• Ryan Vickspatrick – Ever since last week’s touchdown run, the guy wants to run. A couple times it wasn’t such a great idea, but his fake shuffle pass and first down pick up was pretty sweet. He also apparently needs to hang out with Joe Girardi as he doesn’t seem to ever slide.
  
• Ref observation – Sometimes Refs suck. The NFL and the NHL won’t let you critize refs, but we all know it. What I find interesting is that teams who spend millions of dollars on scouts and scouting can get draft picks wrong on a regular basis. This is part of the cost of doing business. Sometimes you find great players, sometimes you miss. Or in the case of the Bills, miss every single time in the first round, most of the time in the second and third rounds, get lucky in 4-6th, and miss on the 7th, but that’s not my point. My point is that organizations and their money are dedicated to finding good talent and it still comes up with failures. Yet the NFL seems to want to say that they never miss on finding good officials. God knows what the process is, but they don’t really pay these guys much. I mean for heavens sakes, all the refs still have regular jobs. Reffing in the NFL apparently is the babysitting equivalent for old, mainly senior citizen men. The refs blew the Fitzpatrick non fumble call. They blew a couple calls in the Jets favor. It’s something that’s been on my mind forever.
  
• Ref observation Bills edition – Remember in the years 2001-2006 when the bills sucked it was often because we were getting jobbed out of calls by referees. It was consistently them screwing us over? We had ok teams but we never got any of the calls. Now we get fairly called games, yet we still suck. That’s how bad it’s gotten.
  
• Lindell – It pains me to do this, but Fancy I seems to be getting stronger. He nailed that 49 yard kick. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone is taking something that rhymes with Smaech-G-Smaech. But in seriousness, Fancy I is probably who JP losman was and Donte Whitner is. A player we needed to keep on our roster forever until they finally turn the corner….8 years later.
  
• Kickoffs – If the Bills try to do some gadget play on a kick off one more time this season, I’m going to scream like Wesley in “the Princess Bride”. First of all, let’s set aside the fact that we have 2 runningbacks and the one that is good is also running back kicks in a play that traditionally creates injuries. My issue with the fakes is Jackson isn’t a burner. I’ve said this before but he seems to be in the Matrix running at half speed. And it works for him as a running back. But for the best returners, they just pick a space and go with it. And they fly. So why would you take Jackson and ask to slow him down even more with a fake reverse or a fake throw. Just let him run. That’s the name of the return game!
  
• And that brings us to Roscoe Parrish – Just when you think he can’t underperform any more, he calls a faircatch and then starts running. Why he didn’t get a flag for that I don’t know. The refs seem to have some answer since they are never wrong. But I believe this was a fairly awful performance for Roscoe even by the pathetic standards he already set. I said this last week, but its worth saying again, you realize we hated and I mean vehemently hated Chris Watson for his punt catching duties in the early 2000’s, right? And we hated him because he caught the ball and fell forward for a 3 yard gain. I don’t even think Parrish is doing that right now. He fair caught a bunch and then caught one and fell sideways for no gain. What the Roscoe Parrish is going on with this guy?
  
• Insomniacs unite – If you have trouble sleeping at night, ask your doctor about Bills offense in Toronto. In the middle of the 3rd Quarter I thought, “I hope the Bills defense wins this game for us.” Is that not the most desperate thought one can have? I have more faith in our defense that is giving up on average 7 yards a carry to win us a game than our offense. And with that thought, I started to go in and out of consciousness. Then Shelly returned home with Subway dinner, and I was restored to life like Marty Mcfly watching his parents kiss on the dance floor.

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.