The Barrister

Back when we wrote a bunch, we had a habit of doing weekly Bills previews and recaps using bits of pop culture as thematic fulcrums. Mostly out of laziness. Also because it allowed us to crib Drew Magary without directly cribbing Drew Magary. 

With six weeks of football left (barring COVID-related season-stoppage, which is not outside the realm of likely outcomes) and the Bills sitting pretty atop the AFC East at 8-3, it seemed time to slip back into old routines in the hopes of sharing a laugh or two. And with American culture awash in very real and very absurd outgrowths of ignorant bigotry and violence, with a side of pathetic, zealous buffoonery, there's no better piece of pop culture to use as my fulcrum than HBO's Watchmen. HOLY SHIT what incredible television. Bonus points for teaching a generation of Americans about the Black Wall Street Massacre because I know for fucking SURE that they aren't teaching that shit in most high schools. If you haven't watched it yet, let me know and I'll slip you my buddy's HBO Max login just kidding Joseph I would never. 

As for the football, well, the Bills are a good football team! A friend of mine who also writes for this site and has a worse habit of pissing people off than I do insists that this is a mediocre football team but I disagree. I am happily eating crow this year as Joshua Withrop Allen and Sean Reginald McDermott remind us that nobody is perfect, especially not football fans. 

More on that below, as well as Power Ranking Trump's election lawyers, cannabis reviews from the Bay State, and some other stuff, too, probably!

THREE REASONS THE BILLS WILL SMASH TONIGHT:

1. The aforementioned Joshua. 

I don't know that I've truly expressed the mea culpa that I feel is due from my corner of the internet, what with me being so very wrong about Josh Allen. The Bills are 8-3, Allen is playing not-quite-mistake-free-ball-but-honestly-pretty-close, and more than anything - a point that can't be overstated, truly - the Bills are uproariously fun under the leadership of this big goofy kid with a rocket arm. When the Allen stans started demanding apologies from those who dared question Josh's greatness in years past, it was obviously ripe for me to start shitposting because that kind of discourse is juvenile nonsense, but honestly that kind of black-and-white approach to what we're seeing from Allen sells him short. When I watched #17 play over the course of his first two seasons, it was impossible to see a reliably likely path from his abilities under center to anything approaching success.  

Seeing Allen find that path despite how improbable it seemed in those first 20 or so starts of his career, and seeing now not just a winning football team but one that pulls hilarious, creative and - crucially - productive offensive production out of his reckless cannon of an arm is art. 

The job that Allen and the coaching staff have done to refine his accuracy is nothing short of unbelievable, and I could not be happier to have been wrong about this one. Does he have super annoying tendencies that may be his undoing in the playoffs like some sort of hubris-ridden Greek drama? Maybe! And that's the fun of it because we get to find out while he's running an amazing version of the option and lateraling to receivers who are dropping dimes for six. 

2. The coaching?

Another mea culpa coming, though it's slightly more muted. 

I like Sean McDermott as a football coach. I also think football coaches are patently ridiculous people. 

It's a profession steeped in cliché and that makes it an easy mark for criticism on the internet, and as this season plays out with Allen's numbers and the defense re-finding itself just in time for a playoff push, and the club playing truly enjoyable football under truly shit circumstances, the strength of McDermott's leadership is self-evident. He's a walking cliché and thus the easiest mark of them all, but he's also a master of those stereotypical coach tendencies. The end result is a group of football players who, by all accounts and the evidence on the field, are thriving during this pandemic season. 

The thing about clichés is that they exist for a reason and sometimes - not all the time, dear god no - but sometimes they're spot on, and in a season with few or no butts in seats, all things being equal, a team that is having a fun ass time playing together has a competitive advantage. 

Clap it up. 

3. The early-season chumps figuring it out. 

Two chumps in particular - AJ Klein and Tyler Bass - have been on my mind a lot in recent games as a couple key guys whose play has improved pretty dramatically and have produced some big moments in those wins. I won't get too deep in the weeds on either of these guys, but their play in recent weeks has been a boon to their respective units on the field. I don't read enough Bills news to really have a sense of what was wrong with Klein in his first 8 games of the season, but his numbers the last two games have been ridiculous. That kind of productivity down the stretch will be massive - especially the tackle numbers - as teams try to run on us in December weather. 

As for Bass, he's a rookie so calling him a chump is unkind but the dude was trash on the only metric that matters for a PK in the NFL: getting it through those big yellow things. That he has settled into a solidly reliable option for McDermott is a relief, if an expected one. He was never going to remain as bad as he was the first few weeks of his rookie season; whether he's good remains to be seen. But holy shit does he have a vicious right foot. 


THREE REASONS THE BILLS WILL LOSE:

1. I'm having a few friends over to watch on a projector around a firepit and it'll require no small amount of effort that is only really justified by a Bills win and the last time I did it was for the Chiefs loss and also the universe hates me. 

After that heading, well, this is pretty self-explanatory, I should think.

2. Bad Josh Allen

For a third year starter of any pedigree, while the dumb mistakes of your early career may rear their ugly head more infrequently, they haven't been put to bed altogether. One of the things I love about Allen is how his mistakes are simply something to overcome, and a challenge he's seemed to accept as part of the job description. His bounce back is very real after mistakes, but all the same some of the bizarre decisions he makes have the very real opportunity to cost us games.

3. San Francisco's Defense

I watch very little football that isn't the Bills, but the internet tells me that the 49ers are recently healthy at important spots on the defensive side of the ball - Richard Sherman, primarily - and that they're a solid unit against both the run and pass. SF is very much in the hunt in the NFC West, and they have the experience of having to relocate home games to Arizona to either bond the squad together or split it at the seams. If they can consistently jam up the Bills' plans on offense, it could be a tough and ugly game. 


Shifting gears....

This next feature has been ruminating for a couple weeks now, both in my brain and in reality. The kind of truly hilarious set of American circumstances that insists on one-upping itself on a near-daily basis. 

I write, of course, of the slow burn coup d'état that the Trump White House/Campaign/Organization is attempting, and I use each of those terms generously. To suggest that they're going through the motions of their various legal challenges would, again, credit the Trump team with knowing what motions are appropriate for this chosen strategy. They do not. For over a month, it's been clear that our Big Boy President got beat by Joe Biden and the only reason anyone pretends otherwise is because there's a sociopathic narcissist who still has the nuclear codes and he never learned how to admit failure despite a career absolutely steeped in it. Last I checked, and I stopped checking a while ago, Biden beat that ass to the tune of 6 million votes and something like 6000 electoral votes (don't look it up), and the death rattle of this administration has long-since transitioned to pathetic, frivolous litigant mode.

​Reverting to the mean, in other words. 

One of the themes that I have taken to heart the most over the tenure of Trump's Presidency is how unremarkable it is to see a deeply stupid fascist at work. The most prevalent lie we're told about successful fash dictators is that they're all geniuses. It's the kind of lie that excuses the rest of us for our inaction, since the destructive force of an evil genius madman requires equally genius, strong forces to stop it. So instead of asking questions about the passive ambivalence of well-intentioned Europeans - and Americans - in responding to Hitler's actions despite the fact that he was clearly a vicious idiot, we unconditionally praise the forces that eventually brought the great and powerful Hitler to heel.

The Trump Operation, from top to bottom, both the private and public sectors of the enterprise, is one most-prevalently marked by operational failures. It's only gotten worse as the administration's lifecycle has marched towards its inevitable conclusion, with any and all staffers holding a modicum of competence have been pushed out by a President who not only demands fealty to himself, but also to his various flawed beliefs about the world. Stating aloud plain-as-day facts about the world is the type of thing that can bring you in the crosshairs of this baby-brained fucking loser, which is why White House staffers who are looking for work are being fired for daring to suggest that Trump won't be sworn in as President in January, why Chris Krebs was surreptitiously fired for not publicly denouncing voting security lapses that didn't​ occur, and why John Bolton is suddenly the stupidest person Trump has ever worked with as soon as he suggests Trump lost an election in which he was dragged and whipped in a burlap sack by a guy who just six months ago was barely able to form complete sentences in public. 

Surprised, I am not, therefore, that the parting legacy of the Trump administration is this post-election loss insistence on digging deeper into a field of Ls and ensuring that our lasting memory of this humongous shithead is going to be how funny it was to watch him and his ragtag legal team go into court after court and get absolutely worked. And because I've had the idea to apply some longstanding Fire Joe Morgan principles to the various legal updates that have come into the news since election day, I wanted to take some time to riff. For you. Out of love. 

Today will be the first installment, so if you have suggestions for further rankings and/or have tidbits you want to share about Trump's hilarious legal fuckbois, @ me on Parler.

Caveat: this list isn't exhaustive and I can't really claim any sort of accuracy in what may seem like reporting here. This is me cobbling together tweet drafts and my basic knowledge of the last two weeks of legal news with some google searching and, as needed, blatant fabrication for the sake of jokes. 

I feel like the picture is all I need to put here, but also that's superficial and prejudice to simply assume that my perspective on Marc here is justified by his punchable face and the look in his eyes that screams "YES, I KNOW, I AM FIRING MY HAIR STYLIST AS SOON AS WE'RE DONE HERE." 

Marc Scaringi was just added to Trump's legal team in PA this week, having replaced Linda Kerns, a Philly lawyer who revised Trump's federal lawsuit in PA to remove the request that 682k ballots be thrown out because they were processed without campaign monitors present because that request was entirely based on a lie. Kerns and others have moved to withdraw as counsel due to the apparent conflict. Can't have that! So, Scaringi was pulled into the fray and the early reports were that he would be adding that claim back to the lawsuit, because, sure it's unethical to plead claims that are entirely unsupported by the factual record as it exists in the actual world, but it's also unethical to do so as part of a large scale political grift aimed at extracting the most value out of MAGA donations as possible. With Marc Scaringi, you get what you pay for. 

Marc's first big moment on Team Trump's Litigious Fuck Squad was a five hour oral argument on the PA case yesterday, and let me tell you, he thinks it went GREAT and he thinks Rudy Giuliani is an amazing litigator. He licked Giuliani's boots hard and he licked them good after Rudy did what Rudy does best and made the President's legal position more precarious. Marc is fitting in just fine.

Did I mention Marc Scaringi is a conservative talk radio guy in Harrisburg, ran for Senate in 2012, was a staffer for Santorum? I feel like that's relevant here. 

Anyway, unlike the lawyers he is replacing on the Trump legal team, Mr. Scaringi runs an election law practice that makes him well-suited for the task of representing Trump's interests in these election challenges, and certainly makes him a great judge of whether Giuliani nailed it during Tuesday's hearing. What's that? [mumbles into earpiece] Sorry, strike that and reverse it. Scaringi doesn't know shit about election law and runs a two person firm with his wife, specializing in commercial law, and the lawyers pushed out of the PA team were actual election lawyers. Read: Scaringi has no fucking idea what's going on here. You can add "practicing in an area of law in which he has absolutely no experience" to the list of ethical breaches. 

Maybe he should just start a band and call it "Mark" and avoid the judicial oversight.

Then again, if he did that, we wouldn't get this kind of compare and contrast AP English problem.

HYPE TRAIN SOUNDTRACK

I don't have to justify this. Ever.

DROPPIN Rs AND SMOKKIN Ls

With more states legalizing the good shit lollipop, our matron saint Mary Jane, and with my current residence in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts about three years into its post-prohibition journey to the land of milk and honey, let's talk buds. I'm not sure what this space is going to be used for beyond just telling funny stories or dropping recs for strains or delivery mechanisms, but I guess that's enough? 

Anyway, one of the strains I've been gravitating back to - both in flower and vape forms - is my now-beloved Alaskan Thunder Fuck, aka ATF. Leafly's write-up, which tracks strongly with my experience, describes ATF as "usually present[ing] large, beautifully frosted buds with incredibly strong odors of pine, lemon, menthol, and skunk. Known for possessing a relaxing yet intensely euphoric high, it is also described as having a “creeper” effect as well as pronounced appetite enhancement." Also, it's a fucking GREAT name. 

Sativas are where I spend most of my time under the influence (distinct from the 1:1 medicated edibles that I take for anxiety management) and ATF is one of the best I have ever had. (I also dig that the vape oil manufacturer I have been finding for sale at my local shop makes oil that is very true to the flower's flavor palette, which is a testament to it not being fucking wretched black market knockoff garbage that was literally killing people last year.) If you like your high to be one that gets you energized and creative (if a little unfocused), rather than sinking into your couch like a useless slob, sativas are always going to be the go-to. Not that there's not a place for indicas and also being a useless slob every now and again, especially when dealing with chronic pain, insomnia or loss of appetite, but it's more of a special occasion kind of thing for me these days.

FINAL SCORE PREDICTION:

Bills 34, SF 17. 

I don't see the Niners scoring a lot tonight, and honestly you are out of your goddamned mind if you thought I was going to come back for a game preview for Monday Night Fucking Football and not pick our Bills to run roughshod over just about anyone in the league. LETSFUCKINGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
​

The Apologist

​I thought about not using the above image. I thought about not discussing Colin Kaepernick's protests. I thought about not writing anything at all. I think a lot about lots of stuff, most of which is trivial, but this feels important. The following are my thoughts on this and no one else's.

Gun violence is bad. Police brutality is bad. Racism is bad. I know, I know. I'm really going out on a limb here. These are things that many young Americans believe. Kaepernick is sharing this same belief. That is why Kaepernick is taking a knee during the national anthem. Not because he hates cops or America. Because he knows they can be better and he wants us to talk about it. The fact that he is willing to jeopardize his career and his personal safety to do something that he believes will improve this country for his fellow man is brave and commendable. 

What gets tricky is when beliefs clash with symbols. The American Flag is a symbol. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a symbol. What they represent and how they make you feel is entirely yours and yours alone. You may know a great many people who feel similarly to you, but no one can possibly feel EXACTLY the same way that you do when they look at the stars and stripes and hear the words of our nation’s anthem. Your idea of these symbols and how they represent America can be completely different from someone else’s idea. And that’s ok. THAT idea is what this country was founded on. That two disparate sides can find a way to compromise and coexist for the betterment of all.

I grew up in Buffalo, NY, in a middle-class white family with all the perks and #priveleges that entails. I have no idea what it must feel like for an African-American to see yet another story of an unarmed black man being gunned down in the streets. No one in my immediate or extended family has ever served in the military or policed the streets of a city, county, or state. I don’t know what that sacrifice makes you feel when you look at the Stars & Stripes and listen to the story of conflict that symbol survived. But to me, that song and that flag and the country that it represents is an idea that we are constantly, all of us, striving to be better. That no matter our disagreements and our struggles, we will listen to each other and work together and make compromises and keep trying. Our nation is not now, nor has it ever been, perfect. But as long as people are willing to talk to one another, we’ll keep improving. It’s only when we ignore each other and make our neighbors out to be enemies that we lose what makes us special.

I don't like bringing politics into this environment. I'm sure it's not why you come here. I'm guessing Colin Kaepernick feels the same way. I'm sure he'd like nothing more than to not have to do this anymore. It'd be easier not to do it. But some things are worth the struggle. Some things have to be said.

The Apologist

How is it that this team still looks flabbergasted to be trailing late in a football game? Seriously now. How is it that in the 16 years since the Bills played football in January that no offensive coordinator has had a specific plan laid out for “what to do in case of trailing by a touchdown”? Are we not considering this possibility? Do the Bills opt not to run through the two minute drill because they think they’ll definitely be leading when they reach the last minutes of the 4th quarter?

I’m not kidding. How can we possibly not be ready for this scenario? Last Thursday, with the clock winding down and the Bills down by one score, what did we see? Shot after shot after shot of Tyrod Taylor staring at the sidelines with his hands in the air, clearly unable to grasp what it was that Greg Roman wanted him to do next. Did we think there was no way we’d be trailing the Jets by the end of that game? Did we take any plays with the words “no-huddle” on them and set them on fire? ANSWER ME!!!

Alright… alright… I’ll be fine.

Thanks to all of these questions and more, I’ve reached the acceptance level of grief over the firing of Greg Roman. I have not, nor will I ever, watch film or scour through player quotes to get to the bottom of this, because it’s pointless. That’s what ESPN is for. Also, none of that ever really tells you anything. Would anyone like to look at old footage of Belichick coaching the Browns and see if there are any correlations to what he’s doing now? I didn’t think so.

Of course, I am in no way trying to compare Belichick and Roman. All I mean is every time a coach is fired, we rarely ever find out what the true cause was and it's always difficult to say who was really at fault. What we do know is that magically a bevy of stories will emerge about how people didn’t get along with them or their playcalling was too complex or they were simply in over their head. It doesn't matter if it's the coordinator, the head coach, or the ball-boy. Whatever the reason, everyone still left on the team will point at the guy walking out the door and say in unison, "There goes the source of all our troubles."

Coordinators, specifically, are always fired because their gameplans were too complex. And the person who is replacing them is going to get “back to basics.” Always. Whenever a new plan is installed, midseason, it’s about simplifying things. To be fair, it would sound ridiculous if Lynn had come in and said, “These guys better get ready for some homework because I’m adding 50 new plays to our playbook.” But you’re definitely gonna hear a lot of quotes like, “We just need to get back to having fun” and “Coach (Insert name of guy who’s probably going to get fired soon too) is just letting us go out there and do what we do!” This, of course, is total horseshit. If you’re lucky, you get a boost for a game or two, but it never lasts. Remember when Dan Campbell was maybe the guy to turn the Dolphins around? Exactly.

Messing with coordinators has become the easiest knee-jerk reaction for head coaches or general managers when the spotlight is getting its hottest. I’ve lost track of how many times Mike McCarthy has relinquished and retaken the job of play-calling for the Packers. And somehow people like me still fall for it. Oh yes, dear reader, I say all this, but my optimism has not left me completely. Within two days of finding out Roman was gone, I was on the phone with my Dad saying things like, “I meeeeean, if Lynn can get the running game going again and take some of the pressure off Tyrod…” I’m hopelessly hopeful. Let’s do this.
​

The Barrister​

(NB: Apologist will follow this with something more upbeat for the "has yet to succumb to crippling angst over their preferred sports teams yet" crowd, so feel free to skip this, but in the meantime it's time to flex some muscles and get a little stretch in. It’s been a while. Clear eyes, full hearts, can definitely lose it's actually likely.)

At a certain point after I left New York City to inexplicably put down some roots in the Garden State, after I decided to scale my day-to-day to a new place and new routine, new people and new options, I started thinking a lot about the legacy that our interests and priorities leave with us. This is often little more than self-indulgent introspection, for sure, but when you have some extra commuting time on your hands and most of that is sitting down on a regional train service that makes the NYC subway look like a frenetic cattle car complete with all the physio-fecal smells you come to expect, it's not the worst thing to make an effort to use the time to your advantage. It’s a pretty dumb habit in a lot of ways, most notably because I’m liable to get hung up on certain problems or anxieties at inappropriate times, including times when I'm by no means alone, which makes the whole exercise self-defeating sometimes. 

By way of example - which is not needed to illustrate the point but since when is necessity a prerequisite? - this past weekend I went to a small wedding with some old friends and as I navigated the evening with my too-good-for-me wife, the pitfalls for an extroverted over-sharer like myself were everywhere. By the time the after-party kicked into gear, my BAC checking in at a respectable clip and my six foot two inch frame questioning its close relationship with me given my inability to sit still during a Bruno Mars song, I was in a really good place. And when I say good, I obviously mean that I was telling way too many stories about shenanigans both past and present, talking about work way too much and making new best friends that I most surely will never see again.  As my too-good-for-me wife is bound to remind me, frequently, people don’t really care about my shit. The friend of the bride did not love me hijacking a conversation to talk about markets and self-interested fucks who ruin our economy, but that’s where my head was at after the handful of Finger Lakes Rieslings, I was having a moment and needed to work through it, and also I totally apologized later and we ended up having a hilarious night and homegirl is on that list of great humans and new best friends that I will definitely forget to keep in touch with. 

To put it a different way, introspection is not really a team sport, by its nature, but man do I like to triage my bullshit out in plain view. I totally get that people aren’t necessarily on board, especially when they’ve known me for all of twenty minutes, it’s just that I don’t really care.

In the midst of these indulgent bullshit problems I let consume me as I seek a less arduous, more interesting way to get through each day without feeling some vaguely defined weight on my shoulders, constructed by a job that delightfully lays waste to my health and well-being and a home I feel like is being held together by duct tape and hasty prayers to no one in particular, the decisions about how to cut through that bullshit to prioritize the to-do list I have on my plate become a matter of imperatives.

Me? I like to put down markers in my memory, emphasizing what’s important and what experiences get earmarked for consideration at some later date. It’s entirely hokey to discuss, yet nevertheless plainly true for me that life is far easier to manage when you place markers into the dirt along your personal timeline and attempt to categorize information in some useful way. Whether laid down in hindsight or in real time, those notches in our history provide a point of reference within the series of stored memories, making it easier to look back and make sense of the progression of time; easier to lean forward with some degree of well-defined perspective on how our past is prologue.  

​So, I suppose, we choose what matters to us and we likewise choose to put down those markers to help us make sense of those valued portions of our life. We power rank the fuck out of our varied interests and dreams and the varied people and places and institutions we consider our own, and in the end we sort the information into buckets and probably power rank the buckets as well. In the first one you get all the non-negotiables, the stuff you can’t live without, and in the last bucket are the frivolities and dreams and luxuries, and somewhere in between is where the shit gets really complicated.

A bunch of nonsense, non-formative moments can be swept under the rug of our subconscious: the time you chatted up someone at a bar out of boredom; the passing moment on a dance floor during yet another wedding reception of yet another friend/cousin/sibling/child; the 18th time you watched a team you love play a milquetoast field-goal-riddled game against some milquetoast squad from some (as it turns out) usefully pathetic city.

A career, a friendship, a love affair, a family? Your list will be different than mine, but when we rank our priorities, when we decide to carve out space in our journey (or not) for those things and let them impact our days in the short-term (or not), the way we sort through our experiences and internalize a memory or a feeling takes on varying degrees of importance. We remember names of family members and concepts necessary for our jobs and how our spouse smelled the first time our kid fell asleep with us on the couch; we probably don’t remember the name of the guy we bump into sometimes on the train, or the way a friend we see twice a year takes her coffee.

And then we have football.

(And yes, I’m aware that I overthink things. If you’re new here, a hearty welp to you. Welcome to the Jungle, we’ve got fun and games and our teams are basically gout.  If you’re not new here, settle the fuck down, and yes that means you Joe Buffalo Wins. I’m sure you have some amazing tweets to ping me with soon, bud, and I’m sure they’ll be really well-phrased.)

The Barrister

Here we are. I dohwanna.

That said, the certainty of it all, a little less than twelve hours away from inevitable defeat and numbing heartbreak, may be the only bright side we have. Dare not hope because why fucking bother, right mom?

Existential crises put aside for a moment, I fucking hate the New England Patriots all the fucking same, and so do you. I hate their fans and their fans' stupid faces and their fans' stupid sense of superiority at having lucked into the best team in the modern NFL despite being a wretched collection of human beings that couldn't be bothered to show up for the better part of two decades when the team was trash with a side of cock chowdah. I hate all these godforsaken southern and central Mass accents and the fact that everyone comes from a town that makes you feel instantly stupider when you say it out loud. I hate their love of shitty Dunkin Donuts coffee and their claim to progressive social policies despite the fact that their sports teams were all basically governed under Jim Crow until Jimmy Carter was elected. I hate their interstate and their awful drivers and their stupid fucking bumper stickers and their insistence on showing up to MetLife for a Jets/Bills games shrouded in a jersey bearing the number of the biggest asshole who ever played the game so goddamn well. I hate how great this fucking team is and remains, against all odds, and how even when the NFL has them dead-to-rights on one thing or another, they skate by because the only law firm with more idiot lawyers than Paul Cambria's office is whoever the NFL hires to do their legal work. I hate how this fucking team and their fucking fans walk through football season like they own the place because - and this is what I hate the most - they fucking do. They've carved the Patriot Way out of a amalgamation of Boston Creme Donuts, liberal arts degrees, shitty beer, terrible grammar and poor personal hygiene, and the fact that it has happened to work is so fucking maddening I cannot stand it. It's not that they're trash or that they cheat (though they do enough) or that I think they're not that great. It's that THEY ARE THAT GREAT AND MORE.

​Fuck.

They're the team that makes me more fucking butthurt than any team in any sport, and here we are. 

​Again, I dohwanna.

THREE THINGS TO BE TERRIFIED OF:

1. Gronk. Obviously. 100%. The Bills have not had an answer for this guy ever. Edelman being out is largely irrelevant because we still have no answer for the primary weapon at Tommy's disposal. Gronk will score a million points and I will smoke a million weed, wait what?

2. A Quasi-Theocratic Hyper-Nationalist State under Donald Trump. This scares me way more than the Patriots so I figure it's best to confront this one head on. TERRIFYING, fam.

3. Dying alone. Think about it. 


THREE THINGS TO ACCEPT WITH OPEN, LOVING ARMS:

1. That new Missy Elliot video. Shit is fire. There are a lot of hip hop acts from my younger years getting a reboot these days and that's a fantastic thing. Missy, Black Star, Tribe was just on Fallon. 19 year old me is fat, an idiot, and also high as shit right now, but also pretty pumped. 

2. Family. Christ, y'all. It's Thanksgiving this week. That's insane and also pretty rad. Drink some whiskey, eat some fowl and some pies, and maybe try to convince your mom to smoke a joint with you. Don't think too much about the Bills. 

3. On the off-chance that the Bills win, well, we'll all feel better than we have in months. Don't worry that this is sad and extremely pathetic. Roll with it. Just don't get too blue if the result goes as it's likely to go ... lotta season left for the Bills to build us back up and then lose in Week 17, missing out on the Wild Card on a tiebreaker. Talk about silver linings.  


DRINK OF THE WEEK:

This ish just won Whisky of the Year in the Whisky Bible's ranking and I intend to find and drink a considerable amount of it between Thursday and Sunday morning. Good job, Canada. Your whisky is tasty AF and so is your new Prime Minister. Me-ow. 


Apropos of Nothing:

My Prediction:

Pats 46, Bills 17. 

This is not going to be pretty, so least we can do is have a nice little evening with a hoppy beer or six at our side, a dutch rolled for halftime sadz, and knowledge that it'll all be over soon at the ready. 

Go Bills.

The Apologist

​Any scenario involving the Bills breaking their 15 year playoff drought begins tonight with a win in East Rutherford, New Jersey. This will be a homecoming for Rex Ryan and the biggest test of his progression thus far as head coach. The stakes couldn't be any higher facing off against his former team. A victory puts the Bills at 5-4 and gives them an edge in a potential tiebreaking scenario that could be a huge factor when they face the Jets again in Week 17. A loss does the opposite and forces Buffalo to win at least 5 of their last 7 games to keep even a mathematical hope alive for the playoffs. Not to mention it would be a blow to the psyche of a coach and team that has yet to find consistency 10 weeks into this season.

While last week's game against the Dolphins was enjoyable, it didn't exactly leave anyone brimming with confidence. The offense put together their best game of the season, but the defense allowed Ryan Tannehill (who botched a snap for a safety for the second straight week) to throw over 300 yards while also giving up 100 yards on the ground. Lord knows we'll take a win every way we can get it, but the team faces much stiffer competition this week against the New York Jets. Their running game has been lacking lately, but Ryan Fitzpatrick is arguably a better quarterback than Tannehill and Brandon Marshall is indisputably one of the best wide receivers the Bills will face this season. If the defense continues to give quarterbacks enough time to read a book and find an open man, there is no season-scenario involving a trip to the playoffs.

Of course, none of the above is what anyone's talking about this week. All anyone can talk about is Rex Ryan. And that is totally by his design. While fans of any team he coaches for will have to put up with bad flags and questionable strategies, we don't lack for entertainment along the way. This week has been no different. From wearing a Clemson helmet to a Q&A to naming IK"Oed Geno's Jaw" Enemkpali a captain, Rex is doing everything in his power to take the weight of this game and put it all on himself. And that's exactly why guys like playing for him. The players know if they win, he'll let them steal the headlines for the rest of this week. If they lose, he'll keep all of the blame on his shoulders. It might not always be effective, but at least it's fun.
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The Apologist

Remember when this was supposed to be the breakthrough year for Joe Philbin & the Dolphins? Or how confident we were about our chances of making the playoffs? Oops. Seasons that once felt so promising for both teams are feeling far less so coming off the bye week.

I was asked to and failed to write a recap after that Jaguars game because… well… sometimes I don’t feel like extrapolating some buried meaning from a giant pile of shit. And really, how much could have possibly wanted to read about that mess? After that awful stench in the second quarter when the Bills surrendered 20 points in a matter of minutes, I’m fairly certain I wasn’t the only person thinking of different ways to spend my Sundays for the next couple months.

But of course, the Bills being the Bills, rather than letting me cut the Yahoo feed and be done with it, E.J. & Co. rattled off 21 unanswered points, the defense grabbed a pick-6 to take the lead, and suddenly the postseason was back on!

For about 1 minute until Blake (F*%$KING!) Bortles rammed the ball right down our defense’s throat. I don’t care if we got flagged for one bad call or twenty. If the Jaguars drive 84 yards on you, it’s not the ref’s fault, it’s yours.

So here we are. 3-4. Not good, but not out of it. And here come the god damn Dolphins. And they don’t even have the decency to still be as shitty as they were when we faced them in Week 3! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SUCK LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO!!

So, no playoff talk can be taken seriously unless we take care of business this Sunday at the Ralph.

 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 Scizz

First off, I’ve avoided much of twitter and football all week, so this week will be a very abbreviated version of my preview. But Speedz and Greasico will be dropping their weekly knowledge as is. Now back to the Bills….

​Last week sucked. There is no other way around it. The team and fans have now been forced back down to Earth, as Brady has torn apart our heart and souls once again. Part of me is beyond disappointed, but the other part is just happy its over and looking to see what happens this week. If anything, how they play Sunday against the Phins will be a great show of what to really expect from here on out, especially after the Jets dismantling of the Colts. So hold onto your butts and let’s take this ride together.​

The Scizz

Well that was unexpected. I mean of course I picked Buffalo to win last week, and of course this year has felt very different with all the changes to the organization, but a dismantling one of the top teams in the AFC never seemed plausible to me. Wow. Just wow.

But haven’t we been here before? As Barrister pointed out in his recap earlier this week, every year the Bills start with a big win we get excited. 2011 and 2014 all started out the same way. Hell, even 2013’s opening loss at home gave some of us hope. So is this year truly different? Is this the year the Bills get over the hump and make the playoffs? Or will I be writing this same week two opener next year (the answer to that is no as I’ll be sick of writing these previews by week 5, phoning it in until week 8, and then finally just deleting the Barrister’s number from my phone altogether).

The best part is that this week we can at least sit back and take in an easy win at home against the….wait what’s that? The Bills play who? MOTHERFUCKER!

Of course it has to be the Pats. Here to crush my dreams and inch me closer and closer to actually stalking Tom Brady and attacking him with a rusty butter knife. 

BUT THEN AGAIN, maybe this is a blessing? The Bills off a huge win get Tom Brady and the Pats in week two, nice and early in the season to see what this team is really made of. If they win, we can all stay hopeful, if they lose (or in most Bills/Pats scenarios lose BAD), we can all come back down to Earth a little and realize there is still a ways to go. Either way the hype is real and I can’t wait for it to be Sunday. Here we go……