No one circles the wagons...

...like the Buffalo Bills. If you're from Buffalo, or just a Bills fan in general, there's no doubt that you're familiar with the trademark phrase of ESPN's Chris Berman regarding their play. For me, "circling the wagons" means taking a situation at it's worst and turning it around to your favor. [Marvel at the tremendous thought processes of my supreme mind!] Anyhow, at first glance it seemed like that's exactly what the Bills did this year, after starting out a dismal 0-4 they came into last Sunday's game a pretty impressive 9-6 and right on the cusp of their first playoff birth since 1998. This was a fairly exciting proposition for me, since I had all but written their season off after they got crushed by New England for the second time this year way back in week 10. I wanted to "BILLIEVE", but I had a bad feeling that the football gods [read TMQ!] had been angered after the Bills were passing for touchdowns instead of pounding the ball late in the fourth quarter of blow outs over the past few weeks. And now that I've a had few days to get over the spanking they received this past Sunday at the hands of Pittsburgh's 3rd and 4th stringers from the practice squad, I'm beginning to see their "miraculous" turnaround in the second half of the season in a different light.

Sure the Bills had won 6 straight before Sunday, but against who? The dregs of the NFL: Miami, Cleveland and San Francisco [along with three other teams from the pathetic NFC West]. I suppose I should be happy that they pulled off their first winning season in a few years, and they have 2 great young offensive players in McGahee and Evans, but I just can't feel enthusiastic about their prospects for next year.

Their biggest problem? Quarterback Drew Bledsoe. He looked horrible early on, I was among the many who called for his benching. And even on their hot winning streak late in the season he played at best adequately against weak teams. When everything was on the line Sunday, he returned to his old form of holding the ball too long and making extremely poor throws against an elite defense. Even if we had made to the playoffs, we would have probably have met up with New England again before long, and Drew cannot beat his old team. Belichick knows him too well. So with Drew as quarterback, it's like having two automatic divisional loses on the schedule every year. And it's not like the Bills can just get rid of Drew, even if they wanted to. Their late win streak pretty much assured that he'll be the starter at the beginning of next year.

Indeed, it seems like their late season success actually ended up hurting the Bills, because it kept J.P. Losman [one of our first round draft picks last year] from getting any real experience on the field. If this kid is going to be the team's future, it's better to get him in the game sooner than later. While there is the slightest of possibilities that he could the next Roethlisberger, I think it's going to be quite a while before another rookie quarterback has an undefeated season. For now we'll have to sit back and wait until either a)Bledsoe gets hurt or b)Bledsoe plays poorly enough to benched. Guess what's probably going to happen first? Unfortunately it still looks to be at least another 2 or 3 seasons before the Bills can even begin to hope to be a real power in the NFL.

Bleh. Enough sports talk. In fact, that will probably be my last long football related post for quite a while. Moving on to a few quick things before I get out of here: For lunch today I had carrots sticks [yum], a corned beef sandwich [meh, it's no Koch's], and some Bean Soup [soup from Lockheed cafeterias is actually pretty good].

I had a paragraph here about some jerken-burger who had some eBay listings for a picture of a used X-Box and 17 used games. I called him an asshole scumbag, and also made fun of the idiots who were actually bidding up to $300 on these pictures because they didn't take the time to read the auction listing. Well, it looks like the auctions have all been removed, as well as the posting on EvilAvatar.com that brought this whole scam to my attention. So my little paragraph is no longer relevant. Oh well. Hopefully the ass-jerk got booted from eBay.

DYFE!