Note to management: a terrific marketing 2010 slogan could be:
“Your Buffalo Bills: Mediocre Since 2006.”
Maybe not. But, it would be truth in advertising.
The remarkable thing is that the recent mediocrity is reflected only by the team’s record: so many things about its performance the past two weeks have been – what’s the technical expression? – “piss poor.”
And yet, they won BOTH games, and I can’t help but be happy about that. Wins always make me happy; but I’ll give them this, they’re testing the outer limits of my capacity to feel that way. The Jets and Panthers games go beyond “winning ugly.” The old expressions are no longer sufficient. We’re talking “winning fugly.” Add the Browns game to the equation, and it’s becoming a way of life, win or lose.
Then again, I actually read a Buffalo News article that referred to this past week as a “signature Dick Jauron victory,” and I don’t think it was written in jest. So, maybe the proper expression is “Winning Jauronly.” Keep it up, coach, and you’ll join the pantheon of Al “Just Win, Baby” Davis and Herm “You Play to Win the Game” Edwards. Of course, you’ll need to jazz up your post-game press conferences a bit.
Has any team ever won successive games while being so dramatically outgained? On the road? I suspect we drugged the other teams’ QBs the past two weeks. And why Carolina handled any number of sequences the way it did – including the final minutes of the first half – I have no idea.
Not long ago, I stumbled across one of those old Bob Hope movies. I’ve never been a Bob Hope fan, but the scene I happened to catch has always made me laugh: for reasons I can’t recall, Bob was hiding in someone’s shower, and the person he was hiding from turned on the shower, not noticing someone was in there. With no place to hide, Bob did something a three-year-old might do while playing hide and seek: he covered his face with his hands, as though by not being able to see the other guy, the other guy would also be unable to see him.
And it worked! the other guy enters this tiny shower stall and never sees Bob, who’s standing behind him, head buried in his hands. It was ludicrous to think that Bob’s hare-brained scheme would actually work, but it did.
It reminds me of our team’s performance these past two weeks. For no rhyme or reason, their hare-brained scheme and faulty execution is getting it done, as if playing in some alternate reality in which you win because you want to, and for no other reason. And now, a .500 record at the halfway mark is fully viable.
It’s all marking time until the inevitable staff changes next year, but you know what? Winning fugly, or Jauronly, beats losing. My advice: modify expectations, enjoy the wins that come our way…and be thankful the league doesn’t award style points.