The Scizz

Greetings and Salutations Berls fans! After a three week hiatus from the Bills previews I have returned more confused than ever! What is this team? To me right now, they seem like another 8 – 8 team that will show a glimmer of hope here and there, juuuuuuuust enough to keep us invested, yet ultimately breaking our hearts. Same old song.
It’s been an early season of “What If’s?” all around. What if Buffalo had all their weapons like Sammy, Shady, and Los Williams for every game? What if Tyrod was able to go last week? What if the offensive line could learn how to play football? What if defensive “genius” Rex Ryan sent his front four to destroy the QB more often? (Which any human with even a minuscule knowledge of football knows should be happening by the way.) Hell, what if Fred Jackson was never relea….GOTCHA!

What this all leads back to is that the one game I was the most confident about winning this season, now seems like it has the potential of a disappointment akin to last year’s loss to the Raiders. How has this happened? I have no real answers, but what I can say is that I don’t give a fuck how they do it, but they need to win Sunday morning in London. Maybe they need to sign Bullet Tooth Tony to start shooting players in the knee caps during warm ups. I’m just spit balling here.

The Barrister

Anything. Write any fucking thing about this team

Most words about this squad, right now, bum me out. Not because the team isn't fun or pretty good or promising. The team is all those things. Yet it is impossible to love with any semblance of sincerity. It is entirely too racked with frustrating moments and massive disappointments. It is a franchise, in no small measure, that will bite your fucking leg off as you sleep, leaving you to wake with an unshakable disbelief that no fucking way is it possible that they've duped us once again. 

To be a sports fan is to be a sucker. A patsy. A fool unable to see or feel the hand in your back pocket as you are distracted by some shiny promise purposefully set in front of you so you don't notice what's happening behind. Incidentally, this is what I learned from the 10 minutes of the classic Will Smith film Focus I watched the other night. Figured snagging one metaphor for the pointless existence of my life as a fan was enough of that awful awful fucking movie.

Of course, sometimes it's not that at all. Apologist texted me sometime Sunday night / yesterday morning (unable to check my phone which is FUCKING SIX INCHES FROM ME HASHTAG LAZINESS HASHTAG FAT) and said "just write the Bills recap like you're talking about the Mets." Man, is that a difficult ask. Conflating the most joyous part of my sports-watching life with the most milquetoast is not an exercise I want to get to. Nevertheless, the suggestion illustrates a crucial point - sometimes we aren't asked to be patsies, we aren't asked to fork over our money and time and devotion in exchange for absolutely no return into our existential personal cash register of feelings. Sometimes we give all those things and get back something substantial, a series of unforgettable moments paired with actual, real, visible success. Sometimes we get a return on our investment that isn't the result of our rationalization; isn't a construction of our eager need to turn force a shit sandwich down our throats so that we might be able to salvage some pride. Sometimes teams give you enough actual victories that you aren't lining up to the lunch counter at Eataly or some such nonsense place for a helping of moral ones. 

Obviously, we can't tell at the outset whether we'll be rewarded for our enthusiasm and optimism or whether we'll be left to make what we can out of an awful sports product. 

The Bills, our Bills, make it pretty easy to bet on the inevitability of failure. Luckily, it's all second nature at this point, so I'm not about to let these assholes strip away the fun this year ... I've gotten pretty good at making do. 

Let's recap this turd burger and then talk about beer and stuff:

The Apologist

​Last weekend in Nashville, the Bills desperately needed a win. It didn’t matter how they got it (luckily). They were missing their two best playmakers on offense along with their second best running back. But a loss would’ve meant a week of trying to explain a season circling the drain. The Titans aren’t as bad as their record might suggest, but they’re bad. Fortunately for Buffalo, Tyrod Taylor decided to have his breakout moment as a Bill. It wasn’t his best game, but we may look back on it as his most defining. Leading an offense with no rhythm, no protection, and seemingly no other options, Taylor put everything on his back and ran head first into the Tennessee defense. The result was a gutsy, if ugly, 14-13 win. The only QB to run for more yards in a single game so far this season is Russell Wilson. On the season, he trails only 3: Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, and Cam Newton. I’ll take it.

Of course one of those runs resulted in a sprained MCL, an injury we’ll clearly all be wondering about for the rest of the season. Taylor finished the game on the damaged knee and has already proven himself as a capable pocket passer. He doesn’t have to run to be effective. But this issue is clearly the biggest come Sunday. We saw what happened with LeSean McCoy when he tried to hurry back from a hamstring injury. If Tyrod could be the quarterback of the future, do we really want to risk his health against a team tied for fourth in sacks? Just how much does this one game matter? Then again, I’m sure the question the Bills are asking themselves after that last game is: can they win without him?

A couple weeks back, I read an article about how the Cincinnati Bengals deserved more respect for their 3-0 record. The writer, Andrea Hangst, made the argument that the Broncos, Patriots, and Packers were getting far more credit for their identical starts, but… well… I really don’t know what she was talking about because it’s THE BENGALS!

Seriously, has there ever been a less intimidating 5-0 team in the history of football? I actually tried to look it up. And I was reminded of another team in recent history that actually went 6-0 before failing to even make the playoffs. Can you remember who that was? I’ll give you a hint…

The Apologist

Buffalonians have always been a feast or famine fanbase. Either we’re headed for a championship or we’re one of the worst teams in the league. We should trade every spare part we’ve got to get that missing link or tank the season for the next big thing (Oh hey, Jack!). This is what happens when you’ve watched a team fail for most of your life. Not to mention seen the team’s ownership dangle off the precipice once or twice. It’s hard to say wait till next year when you’re not sure if next year will come.

That’s not our situation anymore. The Sabres are staying. The Bills are staying. (Can we please stop with the "Is Terry a good owner?" Who cares. They're staying.) We have a next year and a year after and a year after that… unless Goodell manages to sink the league. That’s a real possibility. Let’s come back to that.

To be fair, it's hard to stay logical after a game like last week's. As the Yachtsman would say, the Bills snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and in horrifyingly sloppy fashion. The offense had two first downs in the entire first half. The defense was flagged for two personal fouls on the same play and were collectively two penalties shy of tying a team record for infractions in the same game. Carpenter hit a 51-yarder, then shanked one from 30. All in all, it was a total mess. But it's still just one game.

The Bills have two wins and two losses. The victories have looked like what you’d expect from a playoff team: dominant defense, explosive offense, tight special teams. And the defeats have featured all the tell-tale signs of a pretender in contender’s clothing: brain farts on defense, an offense that can’t stay on the field, and sloppy play from all involved. It’s the kind of inconsistency that’s not really all that shocking for a team that had a complete overhaul of their coaching staff and ownership group over the past year. So which team will show up this weekend in Nashville?

The Outlander

Last time I wrote here, it was regarding the depressing, soul-sucking death march to 30th place and the hand-wringing, moral crusading, negative nancies and militant pragmatists that came with it. It was by far the least amount of fun I’ve had following this franchise for the last twenty-five years or so, and that’s selling it short; it was not fun at all. There was zero fun outside of the occasional gallows humor that comes with some of the worst hockey players in franchise history hockeying together at once.

Yet I’ll remember April 10th. I went to Orioles opening day with my girlfriend and her friends, a miserable 50 degree day where the Blue Jays crushed the home team - much like they would to clinch the division title less than six months later - before we started barhopping. Shortly before some hardcore browning and blacking out between the two of us respectively, in the last final seconds before my phone died, I refreshed my score app continuously to see the Sabres lose to Columbus. It was glorious. Aside from the guarantee of McEichel, it was such a relief to just be proven right after doubling down on the certainty of 30th the entire season. As any borderline narcissist knows, things like that are victories in themselves.

The Sabres, regardless of the reasons for excitement that I assure you I’ll get to, are in a peculiar position they haven’t found themselves in for some fifteen years: that of afterthought. This is Bills time, and it will continue to be Bills time until that team’s season has either run its course or stomped on our hearts (nice start Sunday btw), forcing us to return in November or December to the team that has been our salve, our dependable solace for more consecutive football seasons than we’d care to address. It is that dependability, that wins help numb the pain of a previous Sunday’s disappointment and even losses (it’s a long season and what do you want, they were dead last two years in a row) help get us through the time in between those Sundays that for now just seem like such an insufferably long time.

I feel for many of us born in a certain window, who came of age in Western New York at a certain time, have felt more connected to the Sabres than the Bills mostly due to results. On my 15th birthday I watched from my Grandparents house as the Sabres took a 3-1 series lead over the Leafs in the Conference Finals. Two nights later my Mom dropped a friend and I off at the old Tops on Young in Tonawanda (now a Big Lots/Subway) just as Game Five started. The store played the game on the PA system and we got to hear RJ’s voice call the comeback victory and trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. To pass the time throughout the night, a large group of fans taught us Euchre, a game I’d play pretty much every lunch period for the rest of high school.

Despite being numbers three and four in line, the antiquated system at Tops was too slow when the tickets went on sale. Didn’t help that the two middle aged guys in front of us bought four tickets to each home game but when it came our turn, my friend got one ticket to Game Three, me one ticket to Game Four. I was dropped off at the foot of Washington Street while my Mom and Grandfather went to Coca Cola Field to watch the game on the scoreboard. I’ve been to many games afterwards and maybe seen better teams, but the noise when Sanderson scored on a breakaway in that game (the only home Cup Final win in forty years) was the loudest I’ve ever heard that arena.

I was hooked. Seven years later I was on the precipice of graduating college and was #blessed enough to have some of the best weeks of my life tied into the most exhilarating run a Buffalo team has given us in a generation. I got to watch Game 1 against Philly in the last row of the arena, where my first hug was not my girlfriend but the stranger who shared his nachos with me (and brought HIS girlfriend). I got to watch the Sabres murder that finesse team day drinking before a house party, I got to watch Game 1 against Ottawa at a Quad Party at Canisius, Game 3 from the Bonaventure Golf Course Clubhouse with over a hundred folks jammed four rows deep behind the bar to squint at the one small TV in the corner. Game 5 was the night before graduation, slip n’ sliding down a hill in the rain afterwards, warming up that chill at a bonfire until 5am with fifty friends who just didn’t want morning to come before my girlfriend told me “Matt you graduate in four hours.”

I listened to the Drury game in a tiny townhouse bedroom at Penn State, Property book open but used only to rest my elbows as I leaned as close to my speakers as I could, hoping for a miracle that, for once, came. I watched the mad rush to the postseason in 2011 in a dive bar in Barre, Vermont and welled up when the Flyers inexplicably played for a tie. And April 10th this year I high-fived people in Baltimore over a loss, the meaning of which they couldn’t understand. But it started long before all this.

The Barrister

The title says everything you need to know. Rest well, little bird. Maybe Apologist can swing you whatever he uses for his unholy resurrections ... motherfucker has died a couple dozen times at this point. Coming back from the dead is to Sammy as having an apartment smelling roughly of marinara and lube is to Joe Buffalo Wins.

I'm not going to bother previewing this shit - you're not gonna read it, I have awful soccer to be watching, a 3 year old's birthday to go to in about an hour, and it's not my fucking job, man. Scizz is dead and I'm in mourning and all I can really muster is a promise to continue eating cheese curds and salami sticks for the next sixty hours. 

That said, we still have hordes of fantasy football-playing jamokes out there that need some advice, and I'd feel bad not passing this along. Also, Dane co-hosted Loudmouths on SNY last Friday, which is amazing, so everyone should find that shit online and watch.

Fantasy Football Diamond in the rough and Fugazi of the week:

In a new feature for the previews, Scizz's buddy Dane aka Speedz Keyno (check his great podcast here, and twitter here) will feature some fantasy football takes, well, let's have him explain:

Diamonds in the Rough are guys who have warts and may not be expected to produce all season, but who have a favorable matchup or gameflow this week... Sometimes ya got to dig for it!

Fugazis? What's a fugazi? It looks nice and shiny - like something you want to spend some money on... But it's a fake, a fraud. You buy that, you're a real dunceski.

Hey Scizz – So Terrance Williams proved to be a SUPER Fugazi but hopefully the DGWU readers are checking our twitter page for the DFS lineups and getting paid! There’s more heat coming in our week 4 podcast – now’s the time when you can really make some moves to help win your league! I think Bills fans will be happy with at least one of my calls this week…On to week 4.
 
Diamond 1 – Karlos Williams. Let’s Go Buffalo! Karlos is the only RB in the entire league with a TD each of the first 3 weeks and it’s gonna continue against a Giants team that can’t even stop Arts and Crafty Tono Romo (those “Crownies” look good though). He looked great getting 12 carries for 110 against Miami, and I heard somewhere that Rex has a running big playbook. With Watkins banged up and early reports saying Shady may rest against the Giants this week, this is the place to go to win that DFS money! The G-Men are giving up 411 yards/game (good for 31st in the league), and ironically enough are gonna be focused on limiting Tyrod. Book it!
15+ Touches, 130+ Total Yards, TD
 
Diamond 2 – Melvin Gordon – The Chargers just haven’t shown up in their last 2 road games, but it’ll be a different story back at home against the Browns this Sunday. Gordon has looked good on a few long runs, had another called back on a penalty and is ready to break out. Danny Woodhead’s touches have gone down each week since the opener, and in a game where I expect San Diego to be ahead in the 2nd half Gordon will take advantage of a Cleveland run defense that is dead last in the league giving up 159 yards/game and 5.01 yards/carry. The badger fans will be proud and jumping around like it’s the 4th quarter at Camp Randall.
21 Carries, 142 Yards, TD
 
Fugazi 1 – Michael Vick – This is not the Michael Vick you fell in love with playing Madden back in the day. This is not the Michael Vick who once went into Lambeau and beat the Pack in sub-40 degree temperatures. This isn’t even the Vick that had a great stretch with Philly a few years back. This is a Michael Vick who didn’t have a job in late August, admitted that he didn’t prepare as a backup with the Jets, and had a QB Rating of 68.3 with more turnovers than touchdowns in 10 games last year. Now he dives into one of the NFL’s fiercest rivalries against a desperate Ravens team on a short week?!? The Ravens defense will attack like a fighting dog, Antonio Brown’s streak is officially in Jeopardy, and they’ll all be LeVeon a Prayer this week.
<250 Passing Yards, <30 Rushing Yards, 1TD, 3 Turnovers
 
Fugazi 2 – Megatron – This one is pretty simple. The Lions O-Line can barely keep Stafford upright. That means he’s getting the ball out quicker to guys like Golden Tate, Ameer Abdullah, and even Eric Ebron. Calvin has only been targeted deeper than 15 yards THREE TIMES ALL SEASON! The days of Stafford just chucking it up and letting Megatron make a play seem to be over under Joe Lombardi, and add to that he’ll be the focus of Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, and the LOB in Seattle on a Monday night…This won’t end well and Jon Gruden will tell you about it!
<7 Catches, <80 Yards

That's all for today. 

​Bills 37, Giants 14.