For the last two weeks, I have been saying that Bills fans need to hold their collective breath because this game was a classic Bills let-down game. Consider the situations: the Bills won two straight against teams that were preseason Super Bowl favorites. A road trip to the West Coast against a team they should be able to beat just begged to be lost… but it wasn’t. Or the next week, the Bills were riding a three game winning streak back home to face a one-win team starting a failed QB for the first time in over a year. That is another situation that had alarm bells ringing in the back of my head the entire week leading up to the game. And yet, the Bills pulled off another win, this time in dominating fashion. And I started to think this time might be a little different.
The problem is that I forgot that these aren’t the same old Bills. No, this team has far more talent than than the perennial four to six win dumpster fire that the Bills have put on the field for the majority of this century. These new Bills have a much more creative and colorful way of causing me intense emotional pain. Their new trick is to rattle off some impressive wins, gain some national respect and notoriety, then completely soil their pants against a team that has looked comically inept for five out of the first six weeks of the season.
No disrespect to the Dolphins- no, wait. I do mean to disrespect the Dolphins. They were clearly the better team on the field yesterday and the 11 point margin of victory (not counting the garbage time points) was only so small thanks to two big special teams plays and a bomb for touchdown that got the Bills their 17 points by the 3rd quarter. But this was a game the Dolphins had no business winning. It was a twisted inversion of the two teams, the Bills were the comically inept team on both sides of the ball while the Dolphins were able to run at will. This was an even more embarrassing loss for the Bills than the Jets game in Week 2, make no mistake about it. But in my book, it is more of a Bills loss than a Dolphins win.
Going forward, here’s what I think the Bills should do. They are 4-3 and face two top tier opponents in New England and Seattle before their bye week. LeSean McCoy is already dinged up, but they played him anyway in Week 7 and it was a mistake. Put him on the shelf for the next two games and the bye week, let him get healthy again. The Bills will almost certainly lose their next two games even with a healthy McCoy, so why bother risking a more serious injury? Accept the two losses, regroup over the bye week, and face the back half of the schedule (where the most frightening game left is at Oakland) with as healthy a team as you can muster.
Philospher’s Note
Being a sports fan is like being a gambling addict. You’re putting emotional currency on the table in the hopes of getting that big payout when your team wins, but when they lose, you accept the pain and go right back to the table to double down on your bets. It’s kind of a sickness, when you think about it. Even for someone who tries very hard to be as objective about all things, not just sports, as I do, it is very difficult to avoid this mental trap. Less than a day after a crippling loss that had me ready to throw something out of my second floor window, I still find myself thinking things like “well, we still have a chance to be 6-3 at the bye”. I honestly wish I could kick this habit, life was a lot simpler for me when I stopped caring about football.
One more thing: Jarvis Landry is a piece of fecal matter and should have been ejected from the game for that hit. I guess the defense couldn’t get their dirty work done on our quarterback, so the offense had to step up their cheap shot game.
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