Status Quo

"The Bills stink."

You have read that a lot already, whether on this blog & others, or over on the Twitter & message boards.  Sometimes maybe even accompanied by an “F” bomb in front of “stink”.  And it is absolutely correct for their performance in New Jersey on Sunday, just as it was for the final 2+ months of 2011. I know, I know, “It’s just one game, plenty of season left,” yadda yadda… However, I gotta say folks; it looks like we have a trend here.  New defensive coordinator.  New & improved pass rush (on paper).  A healed quarterback.  Whatever.  0 and 1.  In the same fashion they finished last season 1-8. 

I don’t want the Bills to stink.  You don’t want the Bills to stink.  But they do stink.

What’s left to say at this point that has not already been said in infinite ways for the last decade?  We’ve been spinning the Big Wheel of Bills Excuses over and over now since 2000.   We oughta just hook it up as an extra turbine at the hydro plant in the Falls.  Could they do with a better quarterback?  Yeah, probably.  Is the head coach up to par?  2-11 in AFC East games so far doesn’t help his case.  Where’s the front office in all of this?  The draft history suggests they have a huge hand in it.  And the owner….well that’s where things get REALLY sensitive, don’t they?  And around and around it goes.

Like you, I’m watching these NFL games featuring no team nicknamed “Bills”.  Playmaking defenses that get off the field.  Quarterbacks that repeatedly find receivers while under duress.  It’s often like I’m watching a different sport than what we see in WNY.  It really is something that an organization that for close to 15 years got so much of it right – players, coaches, executives – can now for the last 12 so often get it wrong.  Just not wrong enough, as it turns out, to ever get a chance to pick a new franchise quarterback.

Again, it’s just one game.  But the Bills are fast approaching having played 200 regular season games since the Music City Miracle.  Now add in how many stupefying ways they have taken the gas pipe over that time.  It gets harder to see the Bills pulling themselves out of this franchise flat spin, with the part of the fast approaching ocean played by an expiring stadium lease & aged owner.