Tag: NFL 2007

Congratulations to the 2007 New England Patriots, who have just eclipsed the 1998 Minnesota Vikings and the 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers as the greatest team to fail to win the Super Bowl. This is a team that will never be forgotten! Let their praises be sung, and let the faithful advance all the tortured logic they can to assure the world that 18-1 really is every bit as impressive as 17-0, even though all of us who live in the real world know that’s just not the case. And let us not forget that Saint Tom has now, for two years in a row, come into a game facing a “score or lose” situation, and walked off the field having opted for the latter. So much for Mr. Clutch, the greatest QB of All Time.

OK, gloating aside, this was a terrific game; it was a sufficiently good game that had the Patriots pulled off the win, either 14-10 or 21-17 or 20-17 in overtime, I wouldn’t have even minded. (But if that had happened, I sure as hell wouldn’t have posted anything about the game!)

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I suppose I should post about the last game of the Bills’ 2007 season, mainly for the sake of completeness.

:: The Bills finished 7-9 with one of the NFL’s youngest and most injury-prone rosters. There’s some talent here to build on.

:: Bills quarterbacks. Sure, Trent Edwards has shown promise. So did JP Losman and Rob Johnson, once upon a time. I’m not bothered by Edwards’s play in those two games with horrible weather; he seems like a smart and competitive guy, so maybe he learns better to handle that stuff. I dunno.

:: Defensive line getting run down.

:: Offensive line often getting dominated.

:: Offensive playcalling: early in the season they’d call daring plays at really bad times while late in the season they seemingly stopped calling daring plays at all.

So there it is: they went 7-9, which is what I originally figured was the very best they could do. And yes, I do take a “glass is half full” view of this team; there’s talent here and they’re closer, I think, to being good than they were two years ago.

But Marv Levy has just resigned, leaving the team behind again after two years as General Manager, and the worst thing is that for claiming that he was never going to serve in that position for more than two years, he didn’t have a successor ready to step in and carry on the work. So now there’s uncertainty in the front office again.

And even more pressing is that Ralph Wilson, the team’s owner, is still getting older. I really think that he’ll be dead within five years, and when that happens, unless something dramatic happens in this area, I have come to think that the Bills are almost certain to leave. When that happens, I very much doubt my interest in football will continue.

This is almost certainly the last football post I’ll be writing for this season, because I’m just not that interested in the playoffs or in continuing to try to invent new ways to call the Patriots names. As promising as the Bills were this year, I’m increasingly finding the NFL a joyless, mechanical affair, so much so that my posts on the subject are also joyless and mechanical. So, while I’ll still watch football, I probably won’t be blogging about it any more.

Thus, as long as they’re still in Buffalo, go Bills!

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Well, the home portion of the 2007 season is over for the Bills; only one game, a road game, remains, and then it’s the offseason. The season mostly met my expectations, although it exceeded them in some areas — particularly the team’s heart. Now, if their onfield talent matched the heart that Dick Jauron is able to inspire, we’d be talking.

As for the game itself, remember how I wrote that last week’s loss to the Browns made clear the Bills’ deficiencies? This game took those deficiencies and tattooed them to Marv Levy’s forehead. I hope he looks in the mirror.

:: Kevin Everett’s return to Buffalo.

:: Jason Peters. He must be good, for his departure from the game due to injury to lead to the complete failure of the Bills’ offense to do anything of note from that point on.

:: Trent Edwards, again. A really good first quarter followed by three quarters of ineffectiveness, with a dash of desperation-borne self-immolation at the end, combines for a solid “Meh”. I still think he’s got a lot of upside, but he’s clearly not there yet.

:: Eli Manning. This was the first time I’ve really watched him play, and he was not that impressive at all. I never liked him much after his petulant “I don’t wanna play in San Diego!” temper tantrum when he was drafted, and as it stands, the Chargers are certainly enjoying the last laugh on that score.

:: The Bills’ receivers, yet again. They’re too small, and nobody seems able to catch anything that’s not thrown right on the numbers. Sometimes in the NFL you have to be able to go up and get a pass or stretch out to snag one; none of these guys seems able to do that.

:: Run defense. The Bills were awful up front. I’ve been trying to figure out lately what the franchise’s single biggest mistake of the last five years has been, and right now, I’m leaning strongly toward the decision that Pat Williams was washed up and let go to Minnesota, where he’s only played at a Pro Bowl level. I’ve been watching teams with big, competent offensive lines and powerful running backs throw the Bills’ small-and-quick defensive linemen around like rag dolls pretty much for the entire duration of this blog’s existence. Please, Mr. Levy, get a big run stuffer!

:: Offensive line. I say it every week: they don’t blow anyone off the line, so the Bills’ running game consists of the occasional brilliant run offset by four or five rushes for less than a yard. Marshawn Lynch is a terrific talent, but the line still isn’t very good. Please, Mr. Levy, get a big center who can give the line some push up the middle!

:: The announcers. One exchange stood out, when they were discussing the fact that the Giants’ home finale next week is versus the New England Victor Von Dooms*. One of these two intoned solemnly that “It’s not the responsibility of the Giants to ensure that the Von Dooms do not finish the season undefeated. It’s their responsibility to make sure they’re healthy for the playoffs.” Since the Giants’ playoff position is already set — they’re the fifth seed, no matter what happens next week — the game is meaningless, so this guy’s saying that they shouldn’t go all-out to beat the Von Dooms, and maybe even rest some starters. And yet, is anyone suggesting that the Von Dooms rest their starters in that same game? Is anyone saying that they should take a loss and end 15-1 in order to remain healthy for the playoffs?

If the Von Doom’s are to be expected to play the game for real in hopes of setting the historic 16-0 record, then the Giants are equally to be expected to suit up to stop them. Nobody thinks for one second that Beelzebub Belichick is going to bench Brady Satan to keep him healthy; why should the Giants roll over?

Put it this way: the third batter in the ninth inning against a pitcher who’s gunning for a perfect game still has an obligation to try to get on base.

:: Dolphins linebacker Joey Porter. I caught one play of the Dolphins’ game against the Von Doom’s, and Porter recorded a sack of Brady Satan. And then Porter started doing that muscle-flexing strut thing that guys like to do when they record sacks. Ummm, Joey? Your team is 1-13 going into this game. You don’t get to dance for recording a sack in the first quarter. Putz.

:: Commenters on the Buffalo News‘s BillBoard blog, as evidenced in yesterday’s game thread. Yeesh, these are fans? I especially love the ones who think that the Bills “quit” in yesterday’s game. I didn’t see the team “quit”. I saw the team play hard and get whipped by a team that was well-equipped to whip them. Or the guy who insists that Trent Edwards is “worse than the last guy” and “another soft California quarterback”. What twaddle.

Next week: the Bills travel to Philly to play the Eagles. And Michael Strahan is our only hope. Remember, Michael: even Brady Satan’s ACL isn’t made of steel!

* The Wikipedia page for Victor Von Doom has this “Wiki complaint” at the top of the page: “This comics-related article or section describes an element of the series in a primarily in-universe style. Please rewrite this article to explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective.” What a stupid complaint. Someone at Wikipedia needs to remove the large piece of elongated wood from their colon. Who the hell needs “non-fictional perspective” about a fictional supervillain?!

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Well, that was disappointing, wasn’t it? I mean, I suspect that everybody already knew in their heart of hearts that the Bills weren’t ready for prime time yet, but still, it’s a bummer to see it laid out so plain. And this game was pretty useful, I think: it laid out in one afternoon all of the faults that the Bills need to address in the looming offseason if they want to get better in 2008 and finally end the playoff drought. I truly believe they can get there, if they do the right things. Yesterday’s game pretty much wrote the Bills’ faults on a piece of white paper and then took a pink highlighter and made them all stand out.

But it’s still worth noting that I said before the season that I’d be impressed if the Bills managed to equal last year’s 7-9 record with this much-younger team, after everyone looked at the players they sent packing last offseason and concluded that they’d be Teh Suck. My attitude was, “They were losing with those guys, and they can lose without ’em”. Well, I’ve seen enough this year to make me think that they might be not losing, but learning how to win. And just think: these young guys will be coming of age when the Colts and the Force For Evil From Foxboro are in physical decline.

:: The Bills didn’t self-destruct, and they didn’t shoot themselves in the foot with disastrous mistakes, penalties, turnovers, and so on. Their failures yesterday were failures to capitalize and make things happen, not gaffes that allowed Cleveland to dominate.

:: Trent Edwards. I’m cutting him slack because he’s a rookie, and yesterday’s weather at Cleveland was anomalous even for that city (and ours), but he’s got to learn to play in snow sometime. It took until the fourth quarter before it seemed like he figured out how to keep his passes from sailing on him.

:: The line of scrimmage, on both sides of the ball. The Bills were dominated. Offensively, pass protection was decent but run blocking was inconsistent. Meanwhile, the Browns were able to contain Marshawn Lynch and they were able to control the tempo of the entire game with their own rushing attack. On offense, the Bills don’t blow anyone off the line; on defense, the Bills to to get blown off the line. This has to be the top priority this offseason.

:: The Bills’ receivers. I’ve been buying into the company line that the Bills have a number one receiver (Lee Evans) and a bunch of number three’s, with no real number two. But frankly, after watching Evans fail to haul in passes that may not have been thrown on the numbers but were at least within range of his fingertips, and after watching yet another game where Evans’s contributions didn’t come until halfway through the third quarter (he had one catch in the first half, on a three-and-out drive), I’m wondering if what we have here is a number two receiver and a bunch of number three’s, with no number one. And they don’t have any real size at receiver, which is turning out to be a giant liability. There’s nobody the Bills have who can outleap a typical corner for the ball.

:: Tight ends. The Bills’ tight ends suck. There’s just no other way to say it: they’re a terrible bunch. And after dropping a perfectly-thrown pass on which he was wide open and on which he had nothing but open field ahead of him (he might well have scored had he caught the ball), Michael Gaines said this after the game (emphasis added): “I feel like I let my team down a little bit because if I would have caught it, I was one on one with the safety, and I like those odds.” A little bit? Ya think?! Look, when you muff a pass like that in a game that you lose 8-0, I personally think that your postgame interview should consist solely of you repeatedly banging your head against the door of your locker while you say “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” over and over. Ye Gods.

:: The Miami Dolphins. Way to win yesterday, you jerks. Now you have nothing to play for next week, when you take on the New England Iagoes. Dummies.

:: On the topic of the Iagoes, what is up with this “revenge on the Jets” and the chip on their shoulders? By what right do these guys get to be angry about anything? They’re the ones who cheated! This reminds me of all those cop shows where the cop who turns in the dirty cop to Internal Affairs is ostracized more than the dirty cop himself.

Next up: The Giants come to Buffalo. Only two games left, and then it’s “Wait ’til next year”, and then I get my Sunday afternoons for movie watching.

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Wow, they’re actually in playoff contention! I certainly never expected this. I still don’t expect them to actually make the playoffs, but the Bills have turned in one gutsy season, haven’t they?

:: Trent Edwards: poise, confidence, and he showed that he can throw deep. Sorry, JP, but Trent’s our boyfriend now.

:: Marshawn Lynch and Freddie Jackson, the newest Dynamic Duo of running backs. Here’s hoping we’re looking at the second version of Thurman Thomas and Kenneth Davis!

:: In the playoff hunt!

:: Over .500! Seriously, that to me is huge, especially the way this season started. Remember, I forecasted a 5-11 finish for this team, figuring that if they could go 7-9 with a younger group of players than the squad from last year that also went 7-9, I’d be highly impressed. And now, with three games left, they’ve equaled that win total. Wow.

:: John Beck. It’s not like the Bills feature one of the NFL’s stiffest defensive lines, but man, did Beck look like he had no idea what was going on. So far I’m not impressed.

:: The Dolphins. Man, have they fallen on hard times. Wow.

:: Bills safety George Wilson, who is now out for the year with a rib injury. This is a guy who was converted to safety from wide receiver, and has been playing quite well in that role. Bummer.

On another NFL note, I hereby proclaim Steelers safety Anthony Smith the NFL’s Biggest Dumb-ass. Guaranteeing a win against the New England Richard Nixons? Come on! Why would you give those guys anything for their bulletin board at all? Sure, they’ve obtained their talent by consuming the souls of the innocent in blood-soaked rituals convened upon an altar of stone by the light of a full moon, but they’re still the NFL’s best friggin’ team. Yeesh.

I’d like to see someone try reverse psychology against these guys. Have someone say, “Wow, they’re going to kill us. I just hope we manage to only be behind by ten points as we go into the second quarter. We are so screwed.” As soon as I saw that quote in the news last week, I immediately thought, “Well, so much for the Steelers restoring goodness and integrity to football. Maybe the Jets can do it the week after.”

Yeah. Because if there’s one group of guys who can pull it off, it’s the Jets. And if Luke hadn’t been there for the Battle of Yavin, Porkins could totally have destroyed the Death Star.

Next week: Buffalo at Cleveland, in the first really meaningful game, playoff-wise, for the Bills since the 2004 season finale (when they lost to the Steelers in a game that would have put them in the playoffs had they won). The Bills pretty much have to win out to make the playoffs, and anyway, this is their last game against an AFC opponent (their last two are against the Giants and Eagles), so for tie-breakers, this one’s essential. How likely is a win? Who cares? I’m really starting to think that the Bills may be a serious contender next year, depending on how their draft and free agent acquisitions turn out.

The New England Nixons may have the wins…but there’s no doubt that the Bills are the character champions of the NFL. Too bad they don’t hand out the Lombardi Trophy on that basis!

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This was a strange game to watch. First, the whole Sean Taylor thing; I can’t imagine how gut-wrenching that must be for that team. Second, the way the game unfolded was just…weird. It’s interesting that the Bills apparently believe in themselves, because as a fan, I’m not there yet; the idea doesn’t start seeping into my head that they can win after all until well after they’ve been entertaining that same thought. And that’s why they’re on the field and I’m watching them on the teevee. Anyway:

:: Rian Lindell. Lots of folks like to claim that he’s not a “clutch” kicker, despite his statistical status as the most accurate kicker the Bills have ever had. Well, he was sure clutch in this game, wasn’t he?

:: Trent Edwards played extremely well, I thought, for a rookie. He didn’t lead any touchdown drives (the Bills’ scoring consisted of five FGs and a safety), but he threw for over 250 yards and didn’t turn the ball over at all. He showed more command managing the tempo of the game than JP Losman did most of the time he was here. Now I’m starting to look with hope on what things might be like when the Bills have a slightly better offensive line (they need a new center, I think) and they upgrade their receiving corps and tight ends.

:: Joe Gibbs. Geez, I like that the Bills won, but how bad a call was that at the end, when Gibbs apparently was unaware of a pretty important rule? I’ve always liked Gibbs, even when he beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXVI, but wow, maybe he needs to look into re-retiring from the NFL.

:: For once, nothing, really. This was a gut-check of a game. The Bills didn’t let themselves get buried under the emotion that was running rampant in Washington, they kept their heads clear and played their style of football. This may have been their best executed game all year, and it could be a harbinger of better things to come. We’ll see.

Next week: the Bills host the still-winless Miami Dolphins. They barely got by the Dolphins a few weeks ago, but this one’s at home and the Dolphins will probably be feeling more demoralized now that they got shellacked by the not-very-good Jets this week. I canna wait!

And of course, let’s pray that Baltimore can knock off the New England Montgomery Burnses tomorrow night!

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Well, at least we finally got some definitive answers about one of the Bills’ quarterbacks in this game!

:: Well…er…hmmmmm. Yeah, I got nothin’.

:: The offensive line. I know, I harp on this all the time, but it’s still an issue, isn’t it? They do OK in pass protection, but the run blocking is terrible. They still don’t overpower guys off the line of scrimmage, so Bills running backs are either doing too much east-west running or having to push their way through crowds at the line for any positive gain. The line’s gone from jaw-droppingly-bad a couple of years ago to “Meh”, which I guess is an improvement, but Melvin Fowler’s just an awful center. I wonder if in spending so much energy wondering who the next Jim Kelly’s going to be, we’ve lost sight of the fact that this team won’t be a great team until we find the next Kent Hull.

:: Josh Reed whiffing on a pass toward the end of the game. At this point, the outcome was pretty much set, and the pass was way too high, but Reed should have gone up for it. It did, however, look to me that Reed may have had the sun in his eyes when he turned for the ball and whiffed on it because he just couldn’t see where the heck it was.

:: It’s over, folks. JP Losman’s era in Buffalo is done. He had his chance this year, and frankly, he blew it. I find this a bummer because I like the guy, but his inability to hit receivers on the numbers no matter how open they are, coupled with his inability to hit receivers in stride (every catch of a Losman pass seems to come when the receiver has come to a dead stop) and his generally bad decision process means that he’s just not going to get it done. It’s time for Trent Edwards.

:: Defensive line. They play hard, but without a large body in the middle to clog lanes and occupy multiple blockers, the smaller guys on the ends just get lost. Aaron Schobel has just 2.5 sacks so far this year. Ugh.

Like last year, this year has become about letting talented youngsters emerge and finding out about Losman. Maybe next year can actually be about getting good again. I think it can happen, but they have to get better at the line of scrimmage. Please oh please.

(Oh, and a giant raspberry to the Philadelphia Eagles, who toyed with my emotions last night in nearly knocking off the New England Baby Seal Clubbers, but instead allowing the Evil Ones to escape with the win. Ugh!)

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Lord, now that was a steamrolling. Holy crap. I’m still not sure that Belichick’s Boys of Ultimate Evil are going to go undefeated, but yeesh, they’ve probably got a better shot at it than anybody has in years.

Why am I not convinced that the Foxborough Hitlers are going to go 16-0? Because of the way the standings work out. They’ll clinch the AFC East with just one more win (probably this weekend), and assuming Indianapolis doesn’t lose again, they’ll clinch the top seed with four more wins, which would leave two meaningless games at the end of their schedule. Now, their last two games are one at home against Miami (no problem), but then on the road at the Giants, who may need that game for either playoff position or possibly even a division crown. And they could end up playing meaningless games sooner than that, if Indy loses again. So, you never know.

Anyhow….

:: Kevin Everett is out of the hospital.

:: The game ended.

:: Al Michaels and John Madden, who acted like Buffalo’s City Hall is the single largest City Hall they’ve ever seen in their lives. Come on, guys. It would have been nice to hear them say, “That’s Buffalo’s City Hall, and let me tell you, that is one beautiful building, and this city is full of ’em.”

:: Again, JP Losman. It’s official, folks: I have given up on him. Not that I expected him to beat New England — that would have required, oh, some kind of event involving two snipers on the roof of Ralph Wilson Stadium, the ritual sacrifice of six goats, and a DVD of a Jerry Lewis movie — but can’t he at least complete short passes to open receivers? Apparently not, sadly enough.

Losman strikes me as a terrific guy, which makes this kind of sad for me. I didn’t just want him to succeed here because he was here, but because he’s genuinely likable. But sometime you just wanna win, you know?

:: Smuggy McBrady left the game with his knee intact. What somebody needs to do is send all eleven guys after him, on the game’s first play from scrimmage. Come on, remaining 2007 opponents of the New England Genghis Khans! Take him out! Do it for the children!

Next up: the Bills go to Jacksonville. Apparently JP Losman is still the starter, and Marshawn Lynch may still be out. Whoopee.

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