Bills followers are once again caught in the middle
COMMENTARY
It’s hard to believe we’re about to say goodbye to another Bills season. The years go by much too fast. One minute you’re pondering the final cutdown in training camp, the next minute you’re lamenting another year without playoffs.
After awhile, the years run together. Seasons resemble one another. When you follow a team for decades, there’s a natural urge to compare. When this team was rolling along at 5-1, I’m sure a lot of fans were flashing back to 1988, when the Jim Kelly teams began to take off.
Now, as we prepare for another fruitless finale, I’m having flashbacks to the 2002 season, another year that began with high hopes and ended with an embattled head coach trying to lead his team to a .500 record.
It was the second year of Gregg Williams, the first with Drew Bledsoe. At the midpoint, the Bills were 5-3, the talk of the league. Bledsoe was an MVP candidate. There was talk about Williams as Coach of the Year.
Things fell apart in a hurry, starting with a home loss to the Patriots –the game where Williams punted from New England’s 32. Before long, Williams was on the hot seat. His game-day blunders were a big issue. His coordinators were under fire.
Everyone agreed the Bills played hard for their coach. Sound familiar? They went into the final game with a 7-8 record and beat a bad Cincinnati team. That was the last time the Bills won a season finale. Ralph Wilson brought Williams back as a lame duck. In ’03, the Bills got worse and Williams got fired.
So here we are today, staring at the same sorry scenario. Dick Jauron’s team brings a 7-8 record into the season finale against the Patriots. His players say they love him. If they upset the Pats, it will be hailed as an endorsement of the coach.
That’s how far we’ve come in six years. Wilson says he wants continuity.
He already has it. It’s almost as if he never changed coaches. It’s been one continuous run of mediocrity. Wade Phillips, Williams, Mike Mularkey, Jauron. Paste on a new face, same results.
When you aspire to mediocrity, that’s what you get. When Wilson refuses to pay for the top coaches, he establishes a lower standard. Then, when the team turns in a second-rate performance, the owner says he doesn’t have the talent.
That’s how .500 can be sold as an achievement. Why not? This is Buffalo, where we’re supposed to be thankful to simply have our sports teams, just as we’re expected to be grateful for the snowplows, even when they show up five days late.
Two years ago, the Sabres had the best record in the NHL. Now the players are content to play well in one-goal defeats. They’re a borderline playoff team that can’t win half its home games. But it’s sold as a promising transition.
The Bills fall to pieces, losing seven of eight. After two of the losses, the players openly question the play calling. Then they beat Denver and tell us how much they love Jauron.
Jauron couldn’t get to 8-8 in either of his first two years as Bills coach. Now he gets another chance at the magical .500 mark. Just imagine the marketing possibilities. He is a sub- .500 coach for his career. So I guess you could sell 8-8 as progress. Sure, it’ll be nine years without playoffs, the longest drought in the AFC. But give him time, and a few more players. One of these years, he’ll beat the Pats in a game that really matters.
Some day, maybe the Bills will return to the time when making the playoffs, not making it to .500, was the standard.
Andre Reed and I had a discussion some years ago, just before the Bills released Reed, Bruce Smith and Thurman Thomas. Fans don’t know how good they had it, Reed said. You’ll never see anything like the Super Bowl teams again.
Those years seem so long ago now. As time rushes by and Wilson continues to settle for a lower standard, the great years seem more and more like luck, like a happy accident.
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