One Fan's View: If you stink, at least be entertaining

by Kevin Shenoy

Mark and I watched the first half in a comatose state. It wasn’t from drinking or partying the night before. It was just that nothing worth mentioning happened. I feel like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin when the Bills are on offense. Each play becomes somehow more uninteresting than the last. It also didn’t help that the TV next to the Bills game was the Saints/Falcons game where every time we looked, either team was running or passing for 10-15 yards a clip. And if we weren’t seeing awesome plays, we kept seeing Mularkey sitting in the booth most likely getting praised for helping a formerly washed up Chris Redman be a serviceable NFL quarterback. Where was that with Losman, Mularkey?!

Anyways, Mark said just before the big 4th and goal stop at the 1. “I would rather watch the Bills give up 100 points each week so long as we score 7 times. If we were a good team, I wouldn’t mind low scoring, head knocking affairs. But when you stink, at least entertain us with offense.”

On the following drive, TO scored, but there was confusion on whether it was a TD or not. It was awarded to him almost off camera. It was so unrewarding. For a team that rarely gets 2 touchdowns in one game, it felt like we missed the only notable play that was going to happen during the game. It was such a tease to not see a legit celebration of arms raised and the team being excited. Instead we saw TO raise his arms halfway to suggest he was asking if it was a touchdown. And once the ref’s agreed, TO and the team just walked to the bench. BORING!

It’s one thing to have zero expectations on whether we can win another game this season. It’s another to think that we might only have 3 more touchdowns in us for the season.

DVD Extras:

• TO not really a cancer - After Nelson’s fumble, TO was actually talking to a dejected Nelson. I assume he was telling him to hang in there. It’s one thing to question TO’s desire when he’s on the field. Sure, he cuts off routes when he has been kept in check, but he seemingly is well liked by the team and still interacts with the younger players. I don’t know if that means I want him back, but he’s been pretty good about helping teammates other than QBs.
  
• Ref question – How do the refs come to the decision of wearing the nerdy knicker uniforms of white pants and high striped socks as opposed to the fairly badass all black set up? “This is a big game today guys, let’s go traditional nerdwear and stick with tradition.” Vs “guys, this is Buffalo vs. KC and it isn’t 1992 anymore. It’s cold out there so we might as well stay as warm as humanly possible. No one is going to ever look back at this footage, so no need to keep tradition for the sake of the film.”
  
• Sorry KC – I feel bad that we were the team to break their wonderful 19 year record of continuous sellouts. True to form, the Bills showed why the fans are right and provided half of the pathetic football. We have a starting QB who hasn’t thrown more than 100 yards in two consecutive weeks. The fans will say, “that’s too boring and pathetic to watch.” The Front office responds with, “no, it’s a work in process.” I hope Jerry Jones doesn’t start asking for this legendary, historical team to move because the fan base expected better. I always wonder why people stay in the updeck when you can tell no one is in the lower bowl. Move down. What are they going to do? Kick out of the Bills vs KC game? Is that suppose to be punishment?
  
• Fitzpatrick – I like that he is a fairly mediocre quarterback, but has been one of our better runners in the last couple games with scrambles. And on Sunday we saw that he was one of our better blockers when he sprung Marshawn for a 47 yard gain. Marshawn ever the generous teammate repaid that awesome feat of blocking by whiffing on his block on a Fitzpatrick scramble. Oye Ve!
  
• Back to the Fancy I bashing – Atlantic City gave me a very accurate analogy as to who Fancy I is as a kicker. He is the video gaming machines. He is the Joker poker, slot machine, video BlackJack machine. When you are gambling on those machines, you usually go through a swing of winning and losing. Occassionally you find a machine that wins quite regularly for a short period of time. Mark, Rohit and I found a video blackjack game that let us rack up some winnings on Saturday night. During halftime of the game, Mark and I left the bar to hit the blackjack machine (mostly due to the fact people smoke like crazy in the casino bar). Again, the machine yielded great results. When we came back to the bar up again to see what was going on. The first play was Charles sprinting 76 yards for a touchdown. Immediately we sprinted like Fitzpatrick anxious to spring a block back to the blackjack machine. We had done nothing but won on that machine. So when we headed back, we no longer feared the machine and assumed we were going to take more profit from the machine. It is then where we prompty lost some of the gains we had main earlier. Point is: this is who Fancy I is as a kicker. The second you get comfortable because he kicks a 49 yarder and a 54 yarder, you begin to believe, “he can kick from out here.” And then he lets you down in spectacular ways just like the joker poker or video blackjack.
  
• Poz interception – In realtime, when Poz made the interception and was running it back, I felt Mark jumping up and down behind me screaming, “just go down!” I even believe he did it with an Indian Accent which I’ll take credit for. That’s my thing. When anything gets hairy and I’m getting nervous, I’ll blurt stuff out in an Indian accent to make others laugh. Football games, hockey games, video games, poker hands, I’m using an India accent and mostly in falsetto for what it’s worth. As a statistical side note: over the last few years of Bills football, I would say I’m in full Indian accent mode for 5-10 plays a quarter. A pathetic stat, I know. This year, I am so jaded about every thing, it’s not even worth doing the Indian accent. I’m watching these games more out of obligation of routine than because I have hope they’ll win. Anyways, Mark proved to be prophetic as we saw the running back go for the strip. Due to the poor angle we didn’t know that there was an issue until they had the close up on Haley’s face. This is also why I hate sports bars. No sound. Why in the name of Roscoe Parrish would someone run with the ball in their still heavily casted arm with the ball, I don’t know, say, 12 yards from their body? Only because Kansas City is worse than us did we get the break. If that happens next week against the Patriots, the Pats recover, and the next play is the bomb to Moss with commentators saying, “Moss is back!!!! Long live Bruschi. Moss is Back!!!”
  
• And that brings us to Roscoe Parrish…again – Just because I like to rip on this guy once a game and hopefully I only have 3 more chances to use all my Roscoe material. On a couple punts, KC defenders decided not run right up to Roscoe. Instead, they circled like sharks waiting for him to fumble the kick. Mark and I always mention how gigantic the football looks when he catches it. It’s like a baby is being dropped from 30 feet in the air and he’s catching it. We figured we should get him a baby bjorn for the front of his jersey so he can catch the ball better.
  
• Keeping teams in it – The Bills love letting teams hang around until the end, don’t they? They could have put the Chiefs away much earlier, yet they were settling for field goals and not executing in the redzone. The fact this game came down to a two minute drive is indicative of how awful this team truly is. The Chiefs actually drove down pretty easily with some of the worst clock management ever. Even with players getting tackled in bounds and not hustling, they moved about 50 yards in just over a minute. That Hail Mary pass wasn’t really that long of a throw. So while it comes up as a W in the win/loss column, are we really that close to turning the corner when you need to defend against a hail mary against one of the worst teams in the league 2-3 years running?
  
• New England week – We lost by 1 point on Monday night in the last matchup. Is this the standard game 2 Pats matchup where the game is over by minute 10 of the first quarter? I’m going to say, “Yes. Yes it is.” Sadly, I think Fitz’s 86 yards of passing yardage my grossly eclipse next week’s performance. I really don’t want to beat the patriots and break the streak in such a meaningless game. I want the Bills to break the streak at home with the playoffs on the line or early in the season where we know everything is different. Watch the Bills let me down this week.

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.