Media Day: Every Picture Tells A Story. Don't It?

The wonders of modern technology have made a writer of anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection. And a photographer of anyone with a remotely modern cell phone.

Even amidst the tsunami of words and images made available by a few keystrokes, though, you can still pick out the real thing immediately.

And Neil Leifer, who made the image above for Sports Illustrated, is the real thing.

You might not recognize the name, but if you became a football fan any time between the 1960s up until the Internet turned sports journalism from something that required seeking and often paying into a colorful segment of the popular culture landscape, you know his work.

Leifer's images were to the pre-digital age print media what Ed and Steve Sabol's NFL Films productions were to television: iconic links between the sport and its rapidly growing base of devotees.

Leifer, who shot just about every sport of significance beginning in the 1950s, has published a collection of his football images, Guts and Glory: The Golden Age of American Football. Today, Deadspin published four of the images, along with Leifer's descriptions of the situations, techniques, cameras and even type of film (for those not familiar with the non-cinematic use of the word, that's a thin flexible strip of cellulose coated with a photographic emulsion, used to make negatives and transparencies) that went into creating them.

The thing is, you don't know when during the play to shoot—you're shooting with a sequence camera, four or five frames a second. There were 36 frames on a roll of film, and it would not be uncommon to shoot about 30 rolls of film of a game. Sometimes it would be 28 or 33. A lot of it would be junk, but it's a hell of a lot easier to be a genius when you edit than when you shoot.

 So if you are a photographer, an admirer of the art, or just like you some football, do yourself a favor and check it out.

The introduction includes a link to popular online retailer, for anyone who is looking for a Christmas gift for someone who might really, really like it.

Cough. Cough.

OH, AND THE BILLS are playing the Dolphins tonight. This used to be quite a big deal nationally, but with both teams aspiring to mediocrity for most of the past decade,  nobody outside Buffalo or Miami cares much these days (and the latter is iffy at best).

The Bills (3-6), with the offseason addition of high-priced defensive end Mario Williams, weren't supposed to be this bad. And the Dolphins (4-5), with rookie coach Joe Philbin, rookie quarterback, Ryan Tannehill and many holes to fill, weren't supposed to be this good.

Jim Kelly versus Dan Marino this is not. But on Thursday night, the prime-time lights will once again shine on these two longtime division rivals in a game that will determine who stays in the postseason picture for at least another week.

THE NEW YORK JETS provided the biggest story of the week. Surprisingly enough, it involves Tim Tebow. The New York Daily News published a piece loaded with named and unnamed players and members of the Jets organization stating in very clear, understandable terms that they want no part of Tebow doing anything besides taking the rare snap in the Wildcat formation or blocking for the punter.

Left guard Matt Slauson, who has repeatedly supported Sanchez, made it clear that the fourth-year signal caller is the Jets’ best quarterback.

“It’s not even close,” Slauson said. “All the other quarterbacks know it. I have all the confidence in Mark. We don’t really have a choice.”

When asked about the team’s two other quarterbacks on the depth chart as possible alternatives — Tebow and Greg McElroy — Slauson clarified that the Jets really have only one other quarterback.

“We have Greg . . . and we have an athlete,” Slauson said.

But could the Jets win with Tebow as the No. 1 quarterback?

“Do I have to answer that question?” a veteran starter said, shaking his head.

While this comes as no surprise to anyone who has actually watched the man throw a pass, it must be jarring news to the good folks at ESPN. Or at least it would be if playing ability entered into the network's news judgment.

And I like Tebow, from what I've seen of the guy. Too bad he's not a better quarterback.

SPEAKING OF THE JETS, they reached the conclusion this week that Aaron Maybin is not very good at playing football.

If his playing career is over, one highlight, besides the half-dozen sacks the Bills 2009 first-round pick recorded last season with the Jets, was getting the full Rick Reilly treatment from the hackiest hack who ever hacked.

I'm no art critic, but perhaps Maybin has something to fall back on. Kind of tough to make nasty cracks about someone who has lost a child, as detailed in the video. I might be losing my edge.

Bills Take Another Wrong Route

As tempting -- and easy -- as it might be, you can't blame this one on Ryan Fitzpatrick.

After Buffalo's 37-31 loss in New England on Sunday, Fitzpatrick and T.J. Graham each took responsibility for the interception that snuffed what would have been one of the most remarkable, and unlikely, comebacks in Buffalo history. The quarterback acknowledged a miscommunication on WGR 550 Monday morning, but insisted he should have made sure Graham knew where he was going.

Up to that point, Buffalo had exorcised many of the demons of a once-hopeful season's demoralizing first half.

Fitzpatrick had overcome the early fumble that led to New England's first touchdown, as well as shaky protection, to regain the form that spurred a 5-2 start in 2011. He riddled New England's shaky secondary with short and medium throws, mixing in screens that maximized the skills of Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller, and bringing Buffalo to within 15 yards of avenging one of this year's most humiliating losses.

Chan Gailey finally found a balance between Jackson and Spiller, who produced 246 total yards between them.

Buffalo's defense, which only previously lived up to advance billing when working against the incompetent offenses of the Browns, Chiefs and Cardinals, again got sliced up for the first three quarters. But in the fourth, they slowed Tom Brady and Stevan Ridley enough to limit the Patriots to a pair of field goals. The defensive stand after New England reached Buffalo's 2-yard line with less than three minutes looked like a potential season changer, especially after Fitzpatrick got the Bills moving after Gostowski's 27-yard field goal.

More important than the improvement of any individual or group, though, was the way the entire team had come back. Behind early in a place that was home to so many previous nightmares, the Bills overcame not only the early deficit, but an almost inconceivable number of penalties.

The most damaging, the 37-yard pass interference call in the end zone on rookie cornerback Stephon Gilmore was worse than questionable, as Tom Brady's bomb appeared to soar far above receiver Brandon Lloyd's head and landed far past the end line. Yet it was somehow ruled catchable, putting the Patriots in point-blank range for Rob Gronkowski's 2-yard touchdown grab, which made it 24-10.

Faced with ample opportunity to meekly accept another blowout defeat, the Bills scratched their way almost all the way back, negating both the blown interference call, the other 13 mostly well-deserved penalties they incurred, Fitzpatrick's early fumble and Jackson's at the goal line.

Jesse, a frequent commenter here at We Want Marangi, nailed it on yesterday's Bills-Patriots preview/Open Thread:

"Great game," he wrote, "except for the result."

It was one play, one throw, one correctly run pass pattern away from being better than great. Coming from behind in New England to beat the Patriots, who despite their defensive flaws remain Buffalo's divisional and psychological arch-nemesis, could have been transformational.

If Graham runs the right pattern, or maybe if Fitzpatrick throws the ball anywhere besides into the hands of Devin McCourty, then gets it right in the play or two he would have had left after an incompletion, we are having a very different conversation today.

At 4-5, Buffalo would be a game behind the suddenly vulnerable Patriots for the AFC East lead. The Bills would also be in the wild-card race, clustered with San Diego, Miami and Cincinnati a game or two out, depending on whether 5-3 Pittsburgh beats Kansas City tonight.

Fitz's Pick -- as it will be known, fairly or not -- puts them three games back in both chases, presuming a Steelers win, with seven to play. Even with a friendly schedule, starting Thursday night's visit by Miami, that's a pretty heavy lift.

Heavy, but at the risk of sounding overly optimistic, not impossible. None of the seven remaining games are unwinnable. Only two of the six opponents involved (the Bills face the Dolphins twice in that stretch) have winning records.

Indianapolis is a shocking 6-3 behind first overall pick Andrew Luck. Besides Buffalo, though, the Colts' remaining schedule includes visits to New England and Detroit (where the erratic Lions are usually tougher) and two of their last three against 8-1 Houston.

Seattle is 6-4, but only 1-4 on the road, and they play Buffalo in Toronto on Dec. 16.

Aside from the Colts and Seahawks, the Bills' remaining opponents are a combined 15-30-1. If the Colts or Steelers falter even a little, there's a very good shot that 9-7 gets you into the postseason. A complete collapse by either makes 8-8 a possibility, too.

The last time the Bills had an improbable hot streak late in the season was 2004. That team did it with a defense that stuffed lousy offenses, a pretty mediocre quarterback in an aging Drew Bledsoe and an emerging Willis McGahee.

This Buffalo team has similar elements, if the defense can build on its fourth quarter against New England. With the news that Jackson will miss at least Thursday's game with a concussion, Spiller again gets a shot at showing what he can do with a heavier workload.

Of course, talking about playoff scenarios is pretty silly until Buffalo shows it can put a complete game together without allowing one facet -- like penalties, turnovers or a statuesque game plan by defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt -- to offset the positives. The Bills have managed such a total effort just twice in nine games, and those performances came -- not to belabor the point -- against the Chiefs and Browns.

They're certainly overdue, having run the gamut of ways to lose -- getting blown out in three wildly diverse styles, coming from ahead to surrender a touchdown in the closing moments, being physically dominated while keeping the score deceptively close, and now this.

Silly, yes. But despite, and because of, the way they came up short on Sunday, you can't call it ridiculous.

BILLS MVP: Fitzpatrick's only significant mistake on Sunday was putting too much faith in a rookie to do the right thing. Under the circumstances, that doesn't offset everything he did in bringing his team back.

BUT: As Tim Graham of the Buffalo News points out in his Press Coverage blog, teams quarterbacked by Fitzpatrick have now taken possession of the ball in the fourth quarter with the score tied, or trailing by one score 26 times. They have won five.

This does not instill confidence. Particularly when you consider that only nine quarterbacks have done worse in the past 40 years, according to Scott Kacsmar, who put together the numbers.

Since we're looking for bright spots today, it should be noted that Aaron Rodgers -- he of Super Bowl victory, NFL MVP and State Farm commercial fame -- has an even worse record in such situations, at 4-21.

TRASH TALKING 101: Even at age 6, Oscar seems to have the concept down cold. After questioning how his mother, a lifelong fan of all Boston-area sports teams, could possibly root against the Bills, the 6-year-old invoked the New York Giants' win over the Patriots last February.

"Last year, did you know your team was in the Super Bowl?" he asked, rather sweetly, before his tone darkened a bit. "And you lost. Ha. In your face."

As usual, at least when the Bills are involved, Josselyn had the last laugh. Although she respectfully declined to issue it.

THURSDAY NIGHT LIVE: The Bills announced this afternoon that the Dolphins game sold out in time to lift the television blackout, clearing the way for the 8 p.m. kickoff to be shown on the NFL Network and WBBZ-TV, Channel 67.

Your Bills-Patriots Open Thread: 'You Already Gave Them The &%$@#^* Game'

I'm standing outside the visitor's locker room at old Foxboro Stadium, a barely heated cement structure situated just beyond one of the end zones in the former home of the New England Patriots.


It is Nov. 29, 1998, and Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe has just tossed the ball to a wide-open Ben Coates for a game-winning touchdown with no time left on the clock.

The score is not stunning, but inevitable. The shocks have already occurred -- a ruling that New England's Shawn Jefferson caught a fourth-down pass in-bounds and beyond the first-down marker, despite clear replay evidence to the contrary (which led to a sideline huddle during which Andre Reed famously claimed one official said to another, "Just give it to him"), followed by a pass-interference call against Henry Jones on a Hail Mary lob into the end zone that put the ball at Buffalo's 1-yard line with no time remaining.

Coates and the rest of New England's offense is still celebrating in the far end zone when Buffalo's players, coaches and support staff run by and into the locker room as a rather vicious crowd celebrates a victory that seemed impossible a few moments before -- and would have been, if not for Bledsoe's remarkable ability to shake off a dislocated pinkie on his throwing hand, as well as the aforementioned calls.

I am annoyed, not because the Bills lost. I'm an Objective Journalist, after all. But the nearly complete game story and column saved on my laptop in the press box, detailing Flutie's triumphant return to New England, where he has brought Buffalo back from a two-touchdown deficit, which need only to have a couple quotes plugged in before transmitting back to my newspaper, are now wholly irrelevant.

And here comes the referee, who has come to notify the Bills that, even though the clock indicates that the game is over, the rules require the Patriots, who lead 23-21, to attempt an extra-point conversion. The game is not over, even though it is.

The ref pounds on the steel door until one of the team's civilian employees answers, then fetches Wade Phillips.

Phillips, in his first season after succeeding Marv Levy as Buffalo's head coach, appears in the doorway, his face red, his eyes wide. The official says something I can't make out from 10 feet away, since the crowd is drunkenly bellowing and he is facing away from me.

Phillips' response, however, is quite clear and to the point.

"You already gave them the fucking game," Phillips says,  "You might as well give them the fucking extra point, too."

And he slams the door in the ref's face.

The official stands there for a moment, then runs back to the other end of the field, where the Patriots line up for the conversion. With no defense opposing them, their holder flips the ball to kicker Adam Vinatieri, who trots in for a two-point conversion, finalizing the score at 25-21.

The four-point margin would not have been a big deal, except that the most common point spread was New England by three-and-a-half. So, if you had bet on the Bills, they still would have covered if Vinatieri had kicked for one. But Phillips' acquiescence made you a loser. Unless you were a writer who needed a great quote to hook a reworked column upon (even if it needed to be edited for a family newspaper).

I still believe the level of animosity Phillips endured during his three seasons as head coach -- which, it should be noted, produced a 29-19 regular-season record and the franchise's two most recent playoff appearances -- had a lot to do with his role in the bad beat absorbed by Buffalo fans who like to make Sundays a little more interesting with a friendly wager.

Such a painful loss in New England, where the Bills visit this afternoon, would be a welcome relief these days (See? There was a hint of timeliness to all this, after all). Phillips and Buffalo rebounded to win four of their last five games, finish 10-6 and earn a wild-card berth.

At 3-5, talking about such a turnaround by these Bills feels pretty silly. Especially in light of New England's 52-28 gutting of the Bills on Sept. 30. So I am not going to do it.

You can relive the "Just Give It To Him" game -- along with other highlights from the '98 season -- here, courtesy of the Internet.

Please share your memories of the days when having a horrible coach meant finishing at least .500 and losing two road playoff games by a touchdown or less, or your thoughts on what happens in Foxborough today, in the comments below.

Media Day: The Exquisite Agony Of Bills Fans

About the highest praise one writer can offer another is to say, "I wish I'd written that."


Ben Austen, a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine, spent a few days in Buffalo the week of New England's 52-28 blitzkrieg on Sept. 30, and produced this rather epic look at the often dysfunctional, but ultimately loving relationship between the Bills and their fans, and the region in general, for Grantland, the Bill Simmons-helmed ESPN spinoff.

Other than the passage excerpted below, I'll leave it to you to go and read for yourself. I don't really have anything to add that Austen didn't say better. Except that, Ben Austen, I wish I'd written that.

There's one play I'll recount. At the start of the second half, with the Bills leading 14-7, Ryan Fitzpatrick threw a short strike to a crossing Donald Jones, who managed to evade a defensive back and sprint another 60 yards for the touchdown. Seconds earlier I had walked up a tunnel leading to the 100-level seats behind the Bills end zone. A thick painted yellow line indicated that this definitely was not a spot where I was allowed to loiter and watch. Before the guard stationed there could bounce me, though, the Bills had scored, leading to a riot of emotional release. No one was wilder in his celebrations than the guard. He leapt and high-fived and ricocheted off the tunnel walls. A paroxysm of fulfillment shook his body. When his darting eyes settled on me, he pounced, wrapping his arms around my middle, elevating my lanky 6-foot-3 frame with a little three-quarter turn as he unleashed a joyous primal whoop. He looked back at the field, taking it all in. Then he lifted me again, this time more tenderly. After the extra point, I watched as the guard began to catch his breath. I could almost see his heart start to settle into its normal rhythms. He turned to me. "Ooh," he breathed, a kind of post-coital sigh. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I know that's totally unprofessional after mauling you like that. But I'm sorry."

The Glorious Plight of the Buffalo Bills

Chan Coaches Like Dick

Dick Jauron should be proud.


Yesterday in Houston, the Buffalo Bills turned back the clock with a performance reminiscent of the best-forgotten Jauron Era.

Despite being solidly outplayed for nearly three quarters in every facet of the game, the Bills, having avoided the sort of meltdowns that marked their four previous losses, still had a shot at pulling out a contest they had little business winning. All they needed was their deservedly maligned defense to stop what everyone in the stadium knew was coming and the offense to finally find its way into the Texans' end zone.

Neither came close to happening.

The defense did half its job, bottling up Houston's Arian Foster on what proved to be the decisive drive, which started with 2:55 left in the third quarter and the Texans ahead 14-9. Foster carried five times during the possession, but gained just three yards.

Foster's efforts were still productive, though, as they seemed to make defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt forget that the Texans were also allowed to throw the ball.

As he had on Houston's previous scoring drives, Matt Schaub parlayed Buffalo's concern with Foster into both more-than-adequate time in the pocket and wide-opoen receivers.Schaub completed all six of his throws, covering 65 yards. The last, to backup tight end Garrett Graham, gave the Texans a 12-point lead and, given Buffalo's offensive issues, the game.

The Bills had long since abandoned any attempt to throw the ball downfield. Two slow-developing screen passes gained as many yards. When Ryan Fitzpatrick finally aimed past the first-down marker, delivering a well-thrown ball to Scott Chandler, the usually reliable tight end, of course, dropped it.

Buffalo's run defense finally wore down, getting pushed backward for more than six minutes, with Foster tearing off increasingly large chunks of turf as the Texans kept the ball until it was too late for the Bills to do anything meaningful with it.

Taken on its own, the 21-9 loss was not Buffalo's worst of the season. The run defense didn't get gashed for the long highlight-reel sprints that typified the losses to New England, San Francisco and Tennessee.

Fitzpatrick didn't embarrass himself, completing 25 of 38 passes for 239 yards and not turning the ball over until fumbling on a desperation scramble after the game had been effectively decided, anyway. The numbers were far more impressive than his performance, however. He would not, or could not, try the sort of throws that might loosen up the Texans defense. Or result in touchdowns.

And, as was usually the case under Jauron (who presently has Cleveland's defense playing just well enough to lose close games to better teams), you can't say the Bills didn't play hard. They made Foster earn his 111 yards and, with Mario Williams turning in his second-best performance since coming to Buffalo, occasionally generated a pass rush while stuffing Foster and backup Justin Forsett six times behind the line for a total of 13 yards in losses.

The offense, though, also seemed like a Jauron creation -- a steady spray of short passes, mixed with a very occasional run. Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller, easily Buffalo's top playmakers, each carried the ball six times.

“They were playing seven big guys in the box against our three wide sets and you’re trying to run them out of that," said Jauron's eventual successor, Chan Gailey. "You’re trying to throw the football to run them out of it and we weren’t able to do it. We had some passes that were dropped at times. We had some missed time penalties and it cost us offensively. We weren’t able to move it consistently and get in the end zone.”

In other words, if the other defense makes the going tough, quit and try something easier.

Gailey also seemed to forget that throwing the ball further than 15 yards down field is perfectly legal, sticking almost exclusively to screens, slants and other quick patterns almost guaranteed to gain less yardage than needed.

“Yeah, we would like to and we got to try to do that on a more consistent basis," Gailey said when asked about the failure to throw deeper. "Some weeks are better than others and sometimes they take things away from you that you don’t think they’re going to do but they did. They surprised us with a defense we hadn’t seen very much and we had to alter."

Such caution was at least partially due to the presence of Williams' replacement, J.J. Watt, who sacked Fitzpatrick once and drilled him as he threw at least another five times.

The biggest problem, though, is the inability of either Gailey or Wannstedt to "alter" when "surprised." Or when their counterparts have the audacity to adjust their plan once the game is underway.

Under Jauron, Buffalo's philosophy appeared to be to not screw up too bad, stay close and get a break at the end.

Gailey was supposed to bring a different approach, using his acclaimed offensive creativity in an effort to win games, rather than waiting for the other team to lose them.

The Bills last showed that sort of aggressive mentality during the hot streak that had them 5-2 heading into November 2011. Since then, Gailey and Fitzpatrick have been content with the take-what-they-give-us approach. Which sounds good, except that NFL defenses, especially ones as good as Houston's, don't give you much.

If Buffalo's fifth loss in eight games was not as humiliating as the rest, it was every bit as dispiriting. The Bills avoided the glaring physical mistakes and mental breakdowns of September and October. They did not disintegrate after falling behind. Williams and Fitzpatrick -- previously the two easiest, and most deserving, scapegoats -- each played well enough to finish the day on the winning side.

Still, the Bills lost. And lost decisively. In the process, they looked less like a team that had any confidence that victory was possible than one concerned with avoiding further embarrassment. Even in the final minute, needing several miracles to overcome a 12-point gap, Fitzpatrick was aiming small, running out the clock with meaningless short tosses.

Gailey said about what you would expect him to say about the loss, "we can build off this."

Midway through his third season as head coach, hearing Gailey talk about building might be the most demoralizing thing of all.

WWM MVP: Spiller provided what little danger the Bills' offense presented. It's not his fault he didn't get the ball more.

CAR COMMERCIAL OF THE WEEK: Growing up outside Buffalo, I always thought of Rush as something of a regional act -- big in Canada, the border region and probably throughout the Rust Belt. It was not until seeing the Volkswagen commercial with the guy air-drumming to "Fly By Night" that I realized the power trio to which all others aspire made enough of a national impact to warrant placement in a nostalgia-reliant advertisement 25 or 30 years after their popular peak.

Good for them. Can Triumph be far behind?

BROADCAST BLATHERING OF THE WEEK: It is mighty tempting to kick around Terry Bradshaw and his "bucket of chicken" line, but I didn't actually see or hear it as it happened, and it sounds more like an insipid inside joke with the FOX studio team than a case of racial stupidity. There is more than enough manufactured outrage out there, anyway.

So I'll go with CBS analyst Dan Fouts, with an assist to his production crew. First, a graphic incorrectly suggested Mario Williams was Houston's first-round draft pick in 2002, the Texans' first year of existence.

An honest enough mistake. So Fouts repeated it, later calling Williams "the first Texan ever drafted."

Um, no. That would have been David Carr. Four years before. I've never been one to pounce on every little mistake or mispronunciation announcers make -- talking into a microphone flawlessly for more than three hours is a lot to ask of mortals not named Vin Scully.

Doing some basic homework, though, is not too much to ask, Dan.

Your Bills-Texans Open Thread: Grasping At Maybes

A few hours before kickoff, Buffalo at Houston looks like an early-afternoon nightmare.

Last Sunday, the Texans destroyed another member of what passes for the AFC's elite, the Baltimore Ravens, 43-13.

In their last game, the Bills bumbled away a seemingly certain win over Tennessee, allowing the Titans' previously struggling star running back and 37-year-old quarterback to turn back the clock several years in the process.

On the way to a 6-1 start, Houston has scored the second-most points and only two teams have permitted fewer yards.

Buffalo, meanwhile, is 12th in points scored, but is 3-4 mainly because no team has given up more.

The Texans pound away at opposing defenses with Arian Foster, setting up Matt Schaub's short tosses to tight end Owen Daniels and longer throws to Andre Johnson.

The Bills have established no offensive identity beyond a knack for turning the ball over at the least opportune times, with Ryan Fitzpatrick's inaccuracy and lapses in judgment offsetting the short stretches in which he resembles a decent NFL quarterback.

Houston's defense swarms in the style orchestrated by Wade Phillips, the former Bills head coach and quite possibly the league's best defensive coordinator over the past quarter-century.

Buffalo, meanwhile, just sort of sits there in the passive scheme preferred by Dave Wannstedt, who early returns suggest might be the worst at his job in the NFL.

Phillips has put defensive end J.J. Watt, a first-year starter, in position to lead the league in sacks.

Wannstedt has relied heavily on the man Watt replaced in Houston, Mario Williams, with far less impressive results.

Add it up, and it looks like a Houston blowout, one that would push any talk about Buffalo making a playoff run close to the realm of fantasy.

All of which makes the NFL the entertainment giant that it is.

If a Texans runaway were, in fact, inevitable, the point spread would be 30, instead of the 10 it stayed near through the week.

Williams says his aching left wrist feels better after undergoing a procedure during Buffalo's bye week. So maybe he can finally provide the anchor that Wannstedt's 4-3, blitz-free strategy has so clearly lacked through seven games. You would think going back to Houston would fire him up. If, in fact, he is capable of such passion.

Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller both appear to be fully recovered from the injuries that hampered them and disrupted Chan Gailey's offensive plans. Perhaps Gailey has figured a way to get them the 35-40 touches he talked about this week, taking pressure off of Fitzpatrick.

Factor in a break or two, and maybe the Bills can make a game of it. Pulling off an upset would put them at 4-4 heading into New England. Even a loss there would leave them at 4-5, needing to go 5-2 against a schedule that does not include a single team that made the playoffs last year in order to have a shot at this year's postseason.

OK. That is a whole lot of maybes. But those possibilities are what keep us watching. Even when we should probably be doing something more productive. And less frustrating.

Either way, feel free to vent your joy and pain in the comments below.

Of Course, Fitzpatrick Should Look Over His Shoulder

We realize the Bills' bye week has made their disintegration against Tennessee fade into what seems like the distant past.


And that other than updates on Mario Williams' balky wrist and the alleged defensive savior's return to practice, there has not been much news coming out of Orchard Park in the interim.

But is Buddy Nix talking about the team's need to draft a quarterback of the future really earth-shaking news?

Or news at all?

Now, if Nix had drawled something like, "Dang it, if there's one thing we've learned from Fitzpatrick's performance over the last couple years, it's that we're not even sneaking into a wild-card spot with that scattter-arm giving the ball to the other guys all the time," then you'd have a story worth a media frenzy.

You can certainly read that sentiment between the lines of the Buffalo general manager's comments on WGR's morning show Friday, or to reporters later in the day,

"Listen, we have said from day one, that we want to draft a good young quarterback," Nix told morning hosts Howard Simon and Jeremy White on the team's official radio station. "I don't want to leave here without a franchise guy for the future in place. I have not said that before but I'm saying it now because its fact."

But even teams with decent quarterbacks draft their potential successors. To not do so, to go into a season with, say, Tyler Thigpen and Tarvaris Jackson as the only alternatives to the starter in the short or long term, could be considered downright negligent.

Had Nix said, "Ryan has proven that he deserves to be this team's quarterback for the next decade -- in fact, I just signed him to another contract extension," then that, also, would have been a pretty big story. As well as legal grounds for court-mandated psychiatric evaluation.

Potentially more significant was Nix's insistence that Chan Gailey will remain as head coach beyond this year, his third in Buffalo, no matter how the 3-4 Bills fare the rest of the way, starting Sunday in Houston.

"You change every three years and you never quite get there," Nix said, according to the Buffalo News.

Significant, but not especially surprising.

Front-office types simply do not speculate on future firings, especially when the coach in question was their hire in the first place. And Nix is probably being honest when he says he has no plans to replace Gailey.

If the humiliating nature of Buffalo's four losses -- three abject blow-outs, including two historically pitiful defensive efforts, and a fourth-quarter collapse against one of the NFL's feeblest offenses sealed by perhaps Fitzpatrick's worst decision yet -- continues, though, that decision may not be Nix's to make.

Buffalo's start has thoroughly stifled the team's preseason buzz, both locally and nationally. Bills CEO Russ Brandon has done a remarkable job selling a stunningly mediocre on-field product over the past few years, but not even another Williams-level signing is going to cut it if the teams continues skidding towards another 5-11 or 6-10 finish.

If anyone can sell Ralph Wilson on a front-office overhaul, it would be Brandon. Especially with rumors about Bill Polian, architect of the Bills' Super Bowl teams -- as well as the remarkably quick respectability of the expansion Carolina Panthers and the Indianapolis Colts' ascension to the NFL's elite -- shopping himself and his son, Chris, as a package deal floating around.

Polian split with Wilson over personal differences after Buffalo's third Super Bowl loss, stepping down in January 1993. Such a move would not be without precedence, though. Wilson got over getting jilted by Lou Saban following Buffalo's second straight American Football League championship in 1965, bringing the wandering coach back before the 1972 season.

That move, along with the presence of O.J. Simpson, produced three winning records and a playoff berth in four full seasons before Saban quit again. Compared to what the Bills have done since their last postseason appearance following the 1999 season, that would rate as a relative Golden Age.

He may have just turned 94, but Ralph Wilson -- who has never suffered embarrassments of this sort quietly for very long, might just have at least one more fresh start in him.