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: