Halting Drives with the Buffalo Bills

Don’t let the Buffalo Bills coach you into thinking they got close. Nothing else the staff tried Sunday worked, and their efforts at public relations should lead to the same result. Turning an uninspired potential blowout into an aggravating loss as time expired does not count as progress. The team can convince fans they’re capable of fixing myriad issues after proving they know how clocks work.

The visitors would’ve won with only about eight more Texans taunting penalties. I remember the Bills scoring like Houston did. Strive to appreciate what seems to be disappearing. A Metropolitan fan’s ceaseless amusement with a punter named Tom Townsend only offers so much consolation. I’d watch a Whit Stillman football movie, as the ending would be infinitely more satisfying than what the Bills directed.

I finished the Stefon Diggs sauce. It’s time to move on. Expecting the breakup to keep affecting behavior would’ve meant letting past trauma harm the present.

Diggs gained 82 yards on six receptions, which is most notable in its unremarkable adequacy. Robert Woods arguably did more damage to his former team with his punt return that helped make a winning field goal feasible. The Bills didn’t shut down their erstwhile BFF any more than he set a Guinness World Record for catches. He didn’t have to be the sole source of gains, which is a troubling realization for Houston in a win. They won’t be the first team to learn about who needs to be the attention’s center. Leading the Texans in receiving yards for the game with a mere four may lead to future resentment. But Diggs is surely renowned for valuing team success, no?

Relying on injury to incorporate the obvious still didn’t work. It shouldn’t have taken Khalil Shakir’s absence to incorporate Curtis Samuel. And it still didn’t. The only thing worse than Samuel catching one pass is that he gained zero yards. By my calculations, that means he will never ever gain ground.

Samuel is a Bill, but the way. He has been so irrelevant that you may have forgotten about his offseason signing. Was he cut? The Mandela effect makes it possible to think he didn’t make the opening day roster. His unbelievably light usage encourages false memories.

Buffalo should’ve traded for Davante Adams at halftime. His price is only increasing. Brandon Beane is playing Blackmail and losing. This season is going too absurdly for Monty Python. The troupe would stop the offensive coordinating sketch for implausibility.

Replacing Diggs with Marquez Valdes-Scantling may not have constituted an upgrade. Josh Allen spent too long playing like a second-year quarterback while the second-year quarterback played like Josh Allen. Naturally, Buffalo fans will continue to defend him. But making his case isn’t a test for how far blind loyalty can be stretched: the franchise is seemingly daring their savior to win on his own. Allen can miss on 21 of his 30 throws and still deserve to have the case made for his rightful frustration.

Allen will pump fake 10 yards downfield for as long as defenders buy it. The jazzman’s improvisations are necessary with such glaring lack of planning by his label. Buffalo’s offense is either intentionally or unwittingly based on their quarterback playing heroically. I don’t care how much Allen makes: his offensive linemen should sign over their game checks.

I tackle my problems like the Bills do ball carriers. Please accept a penalty request in lieu of a stop. Rasul Douglas can bicker with Cole Bishop about who’s less helpful. The argument’s loser is Buffalo.

Management can pretend the wide receiver committee leads to contributions from all. But the group project inspires deadbeats to rely on the work of others. Grades plunge for all as a result. Take a notable first-possession drop which set the tone. An elite receiver would’ve made an amazing catch. The Bills went with Mack Hollins.

It’s too early in a career to be trying to rectify past mistakes. An impressive touchdown is the exception for a player who after five career games is already establishing a reputation for at best playing erratically. Keon Coleman gets less hilarious by the game. The joke of a pick isn’t funny, either.

I hope you enjoyed Coleman’s catch, because he didn’t have another. His only contribution of the afternoon should’ve been taken as a bonus and not a sign to keep going. Throwing to him from potential safety territory in an attempt to take the lead in the last minutes was a kamikaze mission. His glaring end zone drop during the preseason was excused away based on the game’s meaninglessness. But it turns out his unwillingness to reach revealed a personality tendency.

Receivers catch like Sean McDermott coaches. Every other awful drive competes for second place for Buffalo’s incomprehensible Dadaist assault on the sport. Coaching makes a difference. That only sounds positive if your team employs a qualified one. By contrast, Buffalo is chained to an anvil who doesn’t know how to handle a tie with handful of seconds left. McDermott supervised the slapstick like they were playing baseball. And even that has timers now.

An aggravating finale was merely the culmination. The only thing worse than officials calling Dalton Kincaid’s obvious and amazing catch an incompletion is McDermott not challenging it. A timid leader unsurprisingly creates baffling results like a late-game plan. If he was trying to lose a game somehow made competitive after a mortifying early effort, McDermott wouldn’t have done anything differently. We know he didn’t throw the game because it’d be unadvisable to make it that obvious.

Gaining lessons from a loss is a not an excuse to keep coming up short, especially for those who don’t bother. Allen claimed the letdown against the Ravens blessedly came early. But the Bills only established the limits of gaining from bad experiences.

The Sabres on turf are losing their balance. Buffalo fans can’t even presently count on one half-decent team distracting from the other. The first two games of the NHL season showed the continuation of an alarming consistency over the drought. Even Lindy Ruff yelling hasn’t motivated the hockey works, which means they’re a hopeless case. Meanwhile, the football division looked okay aside from personnel, coaching, and playing.

Every Bills loss prompts concerns that Allen’s career is getting squandered. With the thorough lack of help, the next fear is if they’ll decline enough to alienate their Obi-Wan. If the rest of the squad keeps trending downward, Allen’s going to consider asking about joining one that provides him with a legitimate top receiver as long as it’s not Diggs.