Hating Mike Mularkey

Whenever I see Mike Mularkey, I always think central casting should give him a call and see if he'll play the role of a bumbling sheriff in some hick town. He looks like he'd fit perfectly in a tight cop outfit with brown pants and a brown hat. Pretty much picture Sylvester Stallone in Cop Land, or the sheriff in True Blood or Rick in The Walking Dead. Now besides the physical profile, his whole "ah shucks" demeanor fitted him perfectly for being the perfect aloof copper.

You wouldn't need an experience cop to crack the case as to what is wrong with the Bills. They are all sorts of terrible. I really can't add anything much to the discussion about how terrible they are because its been regurgitated by everyone year in and year out. However, if there was a stretch of Bills football that was probably the brightest, it was the 2004 season.

We all know what happened. The Bills started the season 3-6 and had a lot of close losses. They ran off 6 straight victories until the #becauseitsbuffalo reared its ugly head against the Pittsburgh backups. Of course, this all came on Mike Mularkey's watch. The following year, the Bills were a disaster. JP Losman sucked ass and the defense lost Spikes.

At that point, Mularkey was the butt of a number of jokes. There was the Eric Moulds suspension Mularkey had to get permission from Ralph Wilson to orchestrate, making the coach look like he had no balls. The "Taking the sail out of our winds" quote. Yes, he copied Hammering Hank Bullough of the 80s. The terrible play calling. There was talk his kids got picked on in high school. Yeah, it was really ugly and he deserved a lot of it….besides the kids getting picked on, of course. All of these stories have been shared by fans and media this week.

That was seven years ago. At the time when we hated Mularkey, the Bills were only six years removed from the playoffs. I don't think any of us thought it would get to 13 years. And here's where the actual hate gets manifested…

I don't think Mike Mularkey is all that bad. Actually, let me rephrase that before you drug test me. I miss the 2004 season. And the guy I think of during that season was Mularkey. I then start telling myself maybe he wasn't that bad. Maybe he could have done something in 2005 if Ralph Wilson wasn't the owner. Maybe Tom Donahoe was just the worst GM in the history of the world and Mike was doomed because of it. Maybe if they kept Pat Williams and Drew Bledsoe, things would have been different.

At this point, I want to shoot myself because I'm embellishing how nice it was because we have been through worse and 2004 is the best year we can talk about.  All of the above sucks! It is a trick. A reminiscing of a tolerable year between a lot of intolerable ones.

For 31 other NFL fan bases, they would totally hate that year and not act like it represented their moment for immortality only to be wasted away. That's how shitty it has become for us. I still recall that season as the year of lost love. A year in which we let the girl of our dreams get away. A girl that was going to be ugly because the Bills would have been blown out in the wildcard game against Indy that year. Just pathetic.

This is why I hate Mularkey. He represented the best of what we've had over the last 13 years. Call a cop, because that's just highway robbery for fans.