I’d be lying to myself and to everyone if I didn’t write a bit about Monday night’s debacle because it’s still on my mind but before I do I just want to remind everyone about last year’s Monday night meltdown. Oh, it started auspiciously. The Bills were this young team full of rookies and potential going up against a Dallas team that was barnstorming through the league almost as thoroughly as the Patriots were. Dallas quarterback Tony Romo couldn’t have had a worse first half as current also rans like Chris Kelsay and George Wilson were scoring touchdowns due to his mistakes. The Bills led by a few scores and it looked like a coming out party in front of 74,000 fans and the cable universe. Then came the collapse culminating in a 53 yard Nick Folk field goal at the very end to send us all away downtrodden and feeling like we’d never catch a break… again.
Now this year’s horrorfest didn’t follow the same script but had the same ending, just like a sequel. A sequel is going to have a new twist or provide a new wrinkle the first one didn’t in order to make it somewhat unique and far more watchable. This time instead of the Bills flying high in the beginning only to fall flat in the end, this script was a little more complicated. Think of it as Ocean’s Twelve. A simple grand robbery isn’t enough, now we need an elaborate caper that has surpassed anything thus far. We need to up the ante.
It broke down like this, Trent Edwards gets intercepted on his FIRST offensive play of the game and proceeded to throw 3 interceptions, all while the Bills were in their own territory in the first 12 minutes. I know, despite the fact Cleveland could only muster 6 points off those 3 turnovers some people had either given up or went into full “Buffalo-mode or Buffa-mode if you will”. In case you don’t know, Buffa-mode is when those things happen that we as Buffaloians feel like only happen to us. Now of course, these types of things happen to other people in other places (take Cleveland for example), but we feel alone in our sadness and misery. We feel like no one quite understands or gets it quite nearly as bad as we do so they can’t compare. This is especially true when other previously tortured sports cities have gotten rewarded in the last few years (Boston, Philly, etc.). It would appear we have less brothers in arms which makes us feel better or worse, depending on your perspective. But for as bad as they have it in Cleveland, they have Lebron and 3 pro sports teams and for as rotten the people feel in Seattle for losing their basketball team this year, we lost ours first (1978) and through even worse circumstances but I digress.
All of the people (myself included) who showered the Bills offense and QB with colorful metaphors and venomous expletives were suddenly singing a different tune by the midway point of the 2nd quarter. All of a sudden we were once again solidly behind the team, cautiously optimistic and cringing every time Trent dropped back and didn’t know what to do before checking down. For the first time all year we had a big time running attack, a sturdy offensive line and suddenly we were back in this game. I don’t know about you but by halftime I was spent. The first 2 quarters had the ups and down of an entire month of games. Such action, drama and excitement, good and bad are usually reserved for Jason Bourne or James Bond and there was still a half to go!
When the third quarter went along the crowd was back into it like they were in the very beginning. We had strapped back in, believing as foolishly as we always do like this time would be different. A feeling of we got this started to permeate the air. But as the quarter progressed the Bills couldn’t do much and the Browns kept up their lead, even briefly extending it to 6 points until the end of the quarter. When Harrison broke that 72 yard run at the outset of the 4th quarter that put the Browns up by ten I thought it was over. How could we score at least 10 points in one quarter when our quarterback was afraid to throw and more importantly when we were afraid to let him?
Then came the magical part. We started off by taking the ensuing kickoff back for a score to cut the lead to 3 and when Cleveland extended our deficit to 6 later in the quarter we somehow found the way back again with a dynamic punt return by Roscoe Parrish and an improbable touchdown drive with a little over 2 minutes left to give us a 1-point lead. Despite knowing full well Cleveland had plenty of time to answer I let myself get caught up in the moment thinking about how we played so badly but still triumphed over adversity. We'd win in spite of ourselves… and by we of course I mean the Bills but you understand.
When Cleveland kicked that 56 yard field goal and took a 2 point lead my mind wanted to assume the worst; another late Monday night loss. Another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. I wanted to go into Buffa-mode but my heart wouldn’t let me. My heart kept beating, kept believing, kept pumping to the beat of Let’s Go Buffalo! There was still time. We could do this.
First there was the great field position. Then there was Trent’s best pass of the game, a 22 yard laser to Robert Royal. I was busting! Then the Bills coaches crapped the bed again. They crapped it by not letting Trent build on that pass. They crapped it by settling. You don’t win on the highest levels of competition by settling. To win you must go for it. You must take it away from your competitor. We settled. Three lame predictable running plays later the field goal unit came out. After the 3rd down run by Lynch I looked at where the ball was spotted. I was thinking that it was on 28 yard line, maybe the 29. I was measuring how long this kick would be while still cursing the Bills coaches for not trying to get another 10-12 yards closer. I was hoping they wouldn’t say what they ended up saying moments later… 47 yard try. 47 yards, are you kidding me? Before you could say “Rian Lindell” the announcers and sideline reporters were exposing the name of Norwood and saying those dreadful 2 words, the worst 2 words in the dialect of the Buffaloian; wide right. By the way to round out the top 10 two-word phrases that bring Buffaloians dread:
1-Wide Right
2-Lake Effect
3-Lay Offs
4-No Goal
5-Weight Loss
6-Undeveloped Waterfront
7-Last Call
8-Signature Bridge
9-October Surprise
10-Pan American – referring to 1901 and President McKinley being killed here
So back to the account of the events of 11-17-08.
Lindell lined up for the kick. The whole region was pulling for him. Wouldn’t it be great to nail this one? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to shut up the television announcers and the naysayers and to feel like we’ve turned the corner on these events? As the ball sailed wide to the right I felt a sense of sadness that reminded me of some of those other times. When are we going to break through? After a minute or two of feeling sad I began to think about Rian Lindell and the team. I began to feel awful for those people at the game, stuck in traffic on a cold ass night, not getting home until 1 or 2am after having their hearts broken yet again. Some of those people in their cars or tucking themselves in or even drinking away their grief may have the thought cross their mind: why do I even bother? They break our hearts time and time again.
I read the paper on Tuesday morning. I tuned into the local news and some sportstalk. I discussed the game with co-workers and on message boards. Everyone seems to be hungover either literally or emotionally. To top it all off on Tuesday morning we woke up to snow everywhere- the first decent little snow fall of the season. Perfect I thought. No one could write a more sinister end to that 3 hour emotional roller coaster that was called Monday Night Football. It was the Monday night sequel from hell. It proves once again that reality is always scarier than fiction and it also proves we are the most tortured sports city in America but you know what? We fall so many times in this town, whether it’s our sports, our economy or our politics and it’s not how many times you fall, get kicked when you’re down, have people pee on your ashes, toss flowers on your grave, spit on your gravy, or knock you over, it’s how many times you get up, give them the finger and dare them to do it again… yes, we are gluttons for punishment.
