Teasing In The Rain

A little more than a minute into the fourth quarter, C.J. Spiller takes the football from Ryan Fitzpatrick and heads up the middle.

From an end-zone vantage point, it looks like Buffalo's most dangerous offensive player is going to end up where he's spent most of the afternoon -- under a pile of Jacksonville defenders. But before hitting the line, Spiller veers to his left. He takes five steps as quickly as most humans take one and he is outside his blockers -- and would be tacklers.

The loyalists remaining of the 53,971 people who had tickets for Ralph Wilson Stadium are suddenly as loud as if it were a close game between playoff contenders.

Outside his tackle but still inside the numbers, he races past Jacksonville safety Chris Prosinski, who has thoroughly bought into the whole up-the-gut thing and has no chance to even try making a tackle before Spiller flashes past.

Now it's a simple race. Spiller does not lose many of those, even with the disadvantage of lugging a wet football. Jacksonville's Dawan Landry has the angle, but not the speed to take advantage of it.

Spiller reaches the 20-yard line with Landry chasing from his right and Jaguars cornerback Kevin Rutland angling in from his left. Spiller barely glances toward the sideline, but it's enough to freeze his last obstacle for long enough to sprint past him and across the goal line, causing the very, very wet crowd to let go with its loudest and longest ovation of a dank afternoon.

The 44-yard touchdown -- Spiller managed just 32 yards on his previous 12 carries -- puts the Bills ahead 34-10 with 13:29 remaining, all but guaranteeing that they will improve to 5-7 on the season.

Neither the score or the record matter much at this point, though. Avoidable losses against Tennessee, in New England and, just seven days earlier, in Indianapolis, have consigned Buffalo's season to the same collection of hazy memories of mediocrity that envelope the previous 12.

The Bills give up one more score after Justin Rogers botches a punt return, giving the Jaguars a point-blank touchdown that cuts the final to 34-18, a one-sided score that is still deceptively close.

Beating Jacksonville, which came into the day having won two of 11 contests and spends most of the day operating with a quarterback who started the year on the bench and a third-string running back, is better than losing to a team already eyeing the first overall pick in next spring's draft. It is also the kind of victory that, when the season over, will make the 2012 Bills look better than they were.

It is was the sort of game the Bills were supposed to win with regularity this year.

The defense smothered Jacksonville for most of the day, with free-agent defensive end Mario Williams forcing a key turnover and generally making the opposing quarterback uncomfortable.

Spiller and Fred Jackson complemented each other perfectly, with Jackson churning out tough yards and a series of first downs and Spiller providing the flash.

The running game denied Ryan Fitzpatrick the opportunity to screw things up too badly. He had the horrid-looking interception by former Buffalo linebacker Paul Posluszny that set up Jacksonville's first points, but the defense held the Jaguars to an ultimately irrelevant field goal. He later hit a couple open receivers for touchdowns and handed off frequently without incident, which is about all you can ask for, or expect to get, from him at this point.

The same could be said for the game itself. These Bills, as constructed by Buddy Nix and coached by Chan Gailey, have proven themselves incapable of what the sport's pundits like to call a "signature victory," i.e. a win that means much of anything to anyone besides hardcore fans or degenerate gamblers.

The Bills do not beat legitimate playoff contenders, at home or on the road. They do not beat remotely decent teams away from Orchard Park. And they do not, under any circumstances, win games against teams led by adequate National Football League quarterbacks (Editor's note: Before you think about bringing up the romp over Denver last December, please remember that Tim Tebow was still with the Broncos, months away from becoming the most beloved third-stringer in league history).

They will, however, defeat teams at and below their level, particularly at home. Thanks to the NFL's rampant mediocrity, that trait allows them to win just enough games to stay out of the very top of the draft and keeps coaches around longer than they deserve, particularly given the detachment of upper management. That Dick Jauron got a chance at a fourth straight 7-9 season might seem amazing, until you consider that Gailey is at least even money to get a fourth year without having yet finished even that close to .500.

For a short while early Sunday evening, it seemed like beating the Jaguars might actually have some relevance to the rest of the NFL. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, both 6-5 and tied for the sixth and final seed in the AFC, were trailing. If there scores held up, the Bills would somehow be a single game out of a playoff spot with four to play.

The Steelers and Bengals came back in Baltimore and San Diego, respectively, though, sparing us at least one more week of seriously considering the possibility of a team that gave up 97 points over a two-week span qualifying for the postseason.

Buffalo remains mathematically alive, of course, but only in theory.

The comebacks by Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Indianapolis earlier in the day clearly demonstrated the gulf between the Bills and the teams they are chasing.

Shortly after Buffalo finished off the Jaguars, Indianapolis rookie Andrew Luck completed a scrambling touchdown pass -- his fourth of the game -- on the final play to complete a 12-point fourth-quarter rally as the Colts all but clinched a wild-card berth with a 35-33 win in Detroit.

A few hours later, 37-year-old Charlie Batch led the Steelers to 10 points in the final 7:24 on the road against the Ravens defense.

Cincinnati's win wasn't as dramatic, but the visiting Bengals did score 10 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to top San Diego, with second-year quarterback running 6 yards for the decisive score with 4:11 left.

The Steelers, Colts and Bengals all came back on the road against teams with respectable quarterbacks. The Bills have not done any of those things in 2012. Their only wins away from Orchard Park came against the pitiful Browns in Week 2 and against an Arizona team quarterbacked by Kevin Kolb, then John Skelton -- and that only after they did everything in their power to give the game away.

Back at Ralph Wilson Stadium on Sunday, Spiller's electrifying run showed why fans sit through the wind and rain to watch a game with so little meaning.

It also gave them a tantalizing glimpse of what this season was supposed to have been.

(Note: A full slideshow of Associated Press photography from the game, including the shot used above, can be found here.)