Please, Make It Stop

I can tell you the exact moment I stopped paying much attention to Buffalo's most recent international embarrassment -- 11:25 left in the second quarter.

The Bills, their defense having been made to look ridiculous by Seattle's rookie quarterback, Russell Wilson, were already down 17-7.

On third-and-5, Ryan Fitzpatrick -- in his fourth season as Buffalo's starting quarterback --underthrew C.J. Spiller.

On a screen pass.

If a single play can encapsulate everything that is wrong with a football team, it is a quarterback who has already badly misfired on several throws one-hopping the ball to his star running back.

On a screen pass.

Just as well. I had to drive someplace out here in Genesee County at 5 p.m., anyway. Listening on the radio was not an option, either. Seems the Bills' flagship station, WGR 550, cuts its wattage then, even in the midst of the team's official broadcast (I wonder if advertisers get a discount on time purchased after their spots can no longer be heard 25 miles east of Buffalo).

By the time I got home, it was 40-17. Just in time to see Earl Thomas intercept Fitzpatrick and run 57 yards for Seattle's final touchdown.

In 2000, the Bills lost four of their last five games to finish 8-8, missing the playoffs for the first time in three years, just the fifth time they had failed to qualify for the postseason since 1987.

And Wade Phillips got fired.

Buffalo won the last game with Phillips as head coach, blasting Seattle, 42-23.

On Sunday, a drastically different Bills team was toyed with by the Seahawks, 50-17, putting both the playoffs and a .500 record mathematically out of reach.

Yet somehow, the thought of Chan Gailey returning for a fourth season -- one more than Phillips got from Ralph Wilson -- is not unthinkable.

But it should be.

Back in 2000, Buffalo's owner was furious with his team's late-season skid, showing Phillips the door when the coach refused to fire inept special-teams assistant Ronnie Jones. Today, the level of Wilson's direct involvement at age 94 is unclear, with general manager Buddy Nix evidently in charge.

Nix has shown similar loyalty to Gailey, at least in his public utterances. Really, though, what else is he going to say?

It's hard to imagine Wilson or Nix making a coherent argument for bringing Gailey back, either based on Sunday's disaster or his body of work as a whole.

Despite spending $100 million on Mario Williams and their two most recent first-round picks on defensive players, the 2012 Bills gave up at least 50 points twice and 45 or more four times. Not even the one-win Harvey Johnson-coached teams of 1968 and '71, nor the two-win twins of '84 and '85 were that permissive.

Putting on a more feeble display than the 45-3 loss to San Francisco in October would not be physically possible, considering that the 49ers compiled more than 300 yards running AND passing. The Bills certainly tried on Sunday, though, making the option as performed by Russell Wilson and Marshawn Lynch, a staple of Seattle's offense all season, look like an innovation never before seen in the history of football.

Perhaps out of necessity, Gailey built his offense around Fitzpatrick from the beginning of his tenure. In three-and-a-half seasons as the starter (he took over for Trent Edwards midway through Dick Jauron's final campaign, which you may have forgotten if you're lucky), Fitzpatrick has had one stretch -- the first seven games of 2011 -- in which he was anything more than mediocre.

Since that 5-2 start a year ago, the Bills of Gailey and Fitzpatrick have won six games and lost 17. There is no metric by which they are now a better team than they were at any time in the last two years. Gailey's game-planning and Fitzpatrick's ineptitude have combined to marginalize Spiller, whose emergence as one of the NFL's most dynamic offensive threats stands as the lone highlight of a 5-9 season.

You might have missed it, but Spiller ran for 103 yards on Sunday. He reached 1,000 yards for the season, reaching that milestone in fewer carries since anyone since Beattie Feathers, who hit the mark for the Chicago Bears in 1934, when everybody wore leather helmets and no facemasks.

Thankfully, Gailey's judicious use of Spiller in games of actual importance mean he should be plenty fresh for the upcoming glorified exhibitions in Miami and at home against the New York Jets.

The next two weeks promise to be among the most pointless in franchise history.

Like the Bills, the Dolphins and Jets are playing out the string.

Miami fans, at least, get to watch Ryan Tannehill's continued development. It is worth mentioning that the Dolphins -- like Seattle, Indianapolis and Washington -- have won more games with a rookie quarterback than have the Bills with Fitzpatrick, who is winding up his eighth NFL season.

The Jets, meanwhile, give their dispirited base a look at Greg McElroy, who replaces Mark Sanchez -- much to the dismay of Tim Tebow, apparently.

Though New York is apparently ready to pull the plug on a first-round pick who took them to two AFC title games, Buffalo management is either much more patient or apathetic. Fitzpatrick will presumably start at quarterback for the Bills, even though everyone who has seen him play over the past two years knows exactly what he can and cannot do. Not that the Bills have very appealing alternatives, since Tyler Thigpen is, well, Tyler Thigpen and Tarvaris Jackson has yet to be part of Buffalo's active game-day roster.

The Bills do have a shot at finishing second in the AFC East if they win out, as well as improving on last year's 6-10 record. Which would mean little more than a slightly tougher schedule next fall and a less-appealing draft position in the spring.

This is the point in a clearly lost season when owners who are interested in real improvement consider firing the head coach, especially when that head coach has run up a 15-31 record over three seasons in which his team has won precisely two games against teams that reached the playoffs that season (New England, meanwhile, has won 12 such contests over that span, including three over foes already qualified for this year's tournament). That dismal total will not improve this year, since each of Buffalo's five wins came against opponents who will also be watching the playoffs on television.

But they're not going to do that, either.

As for the folly of Buffalo's annual "home" game at the Rogers Center, we will turn things over to Toronto Star columnist Cathal Kelly:

At various points, the crowd chanted for the Seahawks, the Jays and the Argos. They cheered when Seattle ran a fake punt late in a laugher. Maybe that's not a crime, but it's at least a misdemeanor against sportsmanship. But they cheered anyway.

They cheered every dropped ball and pick-6. They took sadistic glee in watching the "home" side crumble.

At least someone had a good time.