A Loss For The Ages

Even for a franchise in the midst of the National Football League’s longest playoff drought, the Buffalo Bills hit a couple of new lows yesterday in the course of taking a 48-28 evisceration from the New York Jets.

Not since at least 1994 has a Bills team with even modest offseason expectations splattered so spectacularly, so quickly. Coming off of four straight Super Bowl losses, those Bills got pancaked in the opener by, yes, the Jets, 23-3.

And when has a Buffalo quarterback destroyed his team’s chances so spectacularly, and so early? Trent Edwards, J.P. Losman, Kelly Holcomb, Drew Bledsoe, Alex Van Pelt and Rob Johnson each produced some remarkably inept performances since the Bills last reached the postseason. But none can claim responsibility for the sort of disaster Ryan Fitzpatrick produced Sunday.

Fitzpatrick did not merely throw three interceptions. He threw three horrendous interceptions, misfires that were either incredibly poor reads that misjudged both the Jets’ coverage schemes and the abilities of the interceptors or miserably off-target throws. Or both. Each was thrown in the general direction of a receiver running an out pattern, one of the most basic passes expected of a minimally competent NFL quarterback.

The timing of the interceptions could not have been worse, either. The first negated Buffalo safety Bryan Scott’s pick of a misguided heave by Mark Sanchez and gave the Jets good field position for their first touchdown drive. The second ended what started as a decent drive, ceding New York an even shorter field for the game’s second score. The third handed Jets corner Antonio Cromartie a 40-yard touchdown that pushed it to 34-7 little more than a minute into the second half, effectively ending the game’s competitive portion.

It could have been even worse. Donald Jones played defensive back to break up a potential fourth interception. What could have been a fifth went was deflected by Jets linebacker David Harris into the hands of Donald Jones, keeping alive a third-quarter drive that led to the first of Buffalo’s three purely cosmetic second-half touchdowns.

Fitzpatrick’s inaccuracy extended even to his completions, as he rarely hit a receiver on-target, in-stride. One such tenuous connection came resulted in C.J. Spiller’s second-quarter fumble, as the second-year running back was stripped as he twisted his body around after coming up with the catch.

The turnovers spilled over to the entire team, putting the supposedly rejuvenated defense out there early and often, trying to defend a short field and playing from behind, allowing the Jets to pound away on the ground and avoid the obvious passing situations where Buffalo’s new rushers could thrive.

There’s an argument to be made that no Buffalo quarterback has performed so ineptly for a single afternoon since this site’s namesake, Gary Marangi, was mopping up back in 1976.

If you are looking for some sort of bright spot from Sunday, beyond C.J. Spiller's breakout 169-yard rushing day, Fitzpatrick did throw three touchdown passes after the score reached a ridiculous 41-7 with more than half the third quarter remaining, proving that he can produce garbage-time points with the best of them. So he's got that going for him.

And a lousy opener can be overcome.

After that ’94 loss at home to New York, in which short-timer Jerry Crafts performed so miserably at left tackle that he earned the nickname Route 66 (the most direct path to the quarterback), the Bills rebounded to win three straight and four of five before a late-season swoon ended their postseason run.

And in 1966, when the Bills, coming off two straight American Football League championships, took a 42-20 beating from San Diego, they turned it around to come within a game of making it to the first Super Bowl.

Of course, those teams had Jim Kelly and Jack Kemp, respectively, at quarterback. In defense of Marangi, his misadventures, which will be explored in greater detail later this week, came after replacing an injured Joe Ferguson in a season long since doomed.

Unless Fitzpatrick undergoes a remarkable transformation, starting Sunday against Kansas City in the home opener, so is this one.

(Image via unknowing courtesy of nj.com.)