The Barrister

These fucking guys.

In the sense that yesterday's game was very different from the first two exhibitions this season, yes, things have changed and hooray I guess. In the sense that the probative value of the win against Arizona is limited AF, giving us little real sense of which Bills team will show up for the next four, eight, fourteen games this year, and that the prejudicial tendencies of the game are high AF as it threatens to elicit a too-familiar and unwelcome optimism in even the most jaded sports fan, fuck this win.

This team is fucking bullshit. Winning capably a few times a year is their recipe for the bait-and-switch, and even if they don't intend to, giving us performances like Sunday's does little else than give us a glimpse of winning football, a confirmation that the Bills can manage to play winning football here and there, and Exhibit A for why we shit bricks when winning football proves elusive as it always does eventually.

Good god this team is fucking bullshit.

Harts called this in his preview, and this Week 3 win was literally the best case scenario after an OC gets canned and the team gets an unmistakable spark as it [insert cliché regarding getting back to basics and/or getting the ball to playmakers]. Part of The Apologist's piece was poking fun at that clichéd predictability of the narrative wrapped up in throwing an assistant coach or coordinator under the bus when the HC is under fire, but this time the clichés ended up being prescient, which makes sense because sometimes that happens and those times are what keeps coaches believing that token firings can help a bad team become suddenly good.

What we had yesterday really can't be viewed through a lens other than one that recognizes the likelihood that this game was a blip; a fun blip, for sure - the kind of serendipity-laden result that permits lazy and/or blissfully hopeful consumers of the sport talk of Any Given Sunday as if the NFL was all about parity and wasn't a place where nearly half of the teams have not won a title and probably won't be sniffing one any time soon - but a blip all the same.

That all said, what we had yesterday - set against the paradigm of 74% of Super Bowls being won by 28% of the NFL's teams - was enjoyable and glorious and about all we can hope for under the soon-to-be sun-scorched and/or flooded earth. Eat at Arby's.

So let's revel in the afterglow a bit, y'all. Even in the struggle to 3 to 6 wins, a few Sundays will feel damn good.

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, who isn't spending much time on this today

I despise being right. Particularly so when the manner in which I was right was the result of (a) self-protective pessimism (that shit actually does work no matter what Apologist says; PSA that he's a delightful idiot), and (b) everything that was supposed to be good about the godforsaken syrup-less pancakes of a Bills team was actually bad whilst the things that were supposed to be bad were actually completely decent. 

Losing a game like yesterday's - a game that was completely within reach due to a pretty poor opponent on the other side of the ball - is a thing that this particular football club does very well. Not just the football club owned by the Pegulas; the club in the midst of some big PR effort to convince the fans that the sale of the team acted as some sort of metaphysical squeegee, wiping the grime of the playoff drought from our collective dashboard; the club, that we're told, was resetting the Drought Clock to zero when Terry and Kim assumed full control, that made splashes with coaching hires and shake ups and all of it. Losing a game like they lost yesterday is quintessentially Bills, hearkening back to Gregggggg Williams and Jauron and Gailey and Marrone and, yes, everything we know about Rex Fucking Ryan. All the highly polished viral videos and memes and stellar tweets and hope and whatever else this team is selling cannot change the fact that the Buffalo Bills traveled to Baltimore and laid the same kind of turd they've been laying under every coach, every GM, and both owners since I was in college and drinking a volume of alcohol that ensured I wouldn't notice for a few years.

Make no mistake about it: the loss yesterday, the way they lost yesterday, puts a lie to everything we've been told for the last few months and, yes, since the Pegulas took over. 

Does that sound harsh? Good. 

Engendering hope among a fanbase is certainly part of the job of running a football team, and when you're looking at a 16 year shit sandwich that isn't even old enough to have watched MTV when it was still pretty ok, there's a portion of that hope-farming that will always be a risk. Talking meekly about your chances doesn't help put butts in the seats, and talking big about your chances risks that those seats will be chock-full of butts and assholes screaming for your head when that big talk blows up in your face. 

The Bills don't owe us anything, in any event. Their promises of wins and success and progress didn't form some sacred contract no matter how much we'd like to take their chump asses to court and air out the putrid crotch rot of their failures. That's not how this works, nor should it be. Thing is, neither do we owe them - not Rex not Sammy not Roman not Tyrod not Shady not Terry not Kim and certainly not Russ "Burns When He Pees" Brandon - the kind of allegiances that would be required to look at a game like yesterday and declare "it's just the first game, they have time to turn it around." It doesn't matter that the team is likable, it doesn't matter that there is talent arguably waiting to be uncorked and powerbombed onto the NFL. I mean, God bless you if that's where your head it at; I'm incredibly jealous and interested in the xanax you've been pilfering from [insert personal relationship here].

Of course they have time to turn it around. And of course I have a shot at sitting on the Supreme Court later in my career. Possibilities are just that, and they're not doing it for me anymore. I'm simply not there. "It's just the first game" implicitly disregards what this team has specifically shown us, both yesterday and myriad times prior, and from an outsider's perspective there's just no evidence that this particular club - these players, these coaches, these executives and managers - have the stuff to fix what ails it. 

Could I be wrong? Sure. Absolutely. I'd be thrilled if I turn out to be a ball of acid reflux and hyperbole (both true) that doesn't know shit about shit (likely true). I'd be thrilled to look back at this pessimism and laugh at how silly it all was because just around the corner was the Big Turnaround that we were all promised. Things change, and I'm only seeing the surface of the product; if this was just a bad game on the road to a winning season, great, sangrias for everyone. I'm the guy the kept forgetting the game was still happening every time I got up from my laptop to snag another beer and inevitably started chatting with the horde of Giants fans in my buddy's backyard; I have no claim to a higher plane of understanding on this, though if you need to discuss comparative religion or financial markets while watching me roll a cigarette, I got you. 

But, after watching the Bills' final drive, positioned to snatch a win against a Ravens team that had basically been a rotting drainpipe on offense for the entire game, only to see them fizzle in the exact same way as every team that's come before them? We really buying their hope this week? Get the fuck out of here. Sure, they'll snag some impressive wins and they might even do it soon. That's what they do in between shooting themselves in the foot for the millionth time. This team once again, directly and with blessed immediacy, made it impossible to view them through any lens than the same one we started using sometime between Music City and Sammy's drop. At a certain point this club has to stop simply restarting the Effort Train with moves that have amounted to little else than shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, only way sadder. At a certain point, who the fuck knows when, someone at this club has to make themselves accountable for the kinds of games like yesterday; games that reveal scant character among the players and the coaches, and leave fans marveling at the disconnect between ambition and production out of One Bills Drive. 

Games that all the PR in the world can't wipe clean. 
​

The Apologist

Football is back. Have we mentioned that yet here at DGWUS? We’re rather excited. The slowest segment of the sports year is over and football is back to bludgeon us into submission. And if last Thursday night’s opening salvo was any indicator, this year could get ugly real fast. Both the Barrister and I have already told you how we feel about this coming football season as a whole, but now it’s time to dig in and focus on our opening opponent, the Baltimore Ravens.

Last year was a rough one for the Ravens. They only won 5 games, they started four different QBs, their running back lost half his season to a gruesome broken arm, Suggs was out, and, well, NO ONE felt sorry for them because Ray Rice. That was only two seasons ago. You’re not off the hook yet for employing that guy. Also, you won a Super Bowl like 3 years ago and missed the playoffs for only the 2nd time since 2008. Zero sympathy from this side of the aisle.

But really not much has changed in the city by Chesapeake Bay. John Harbaugh is still mad about everything. The only receiver you recognize is still Steve Smith. Ray Lewis still gets to judge people’s life choices because he has two Super Bowl rings and he used to dance when he came out of the tunnel. We’re still discussing the “eliteness” of Joe Flacco every. single. year. because God forbid we just say, “He’s the Eli Manning of the DC Metro area” and stop caring about him. (Seriously. He’s 31, he’s been in the league since 2008, and people still treat him like he’s a project they’ve had stashed on the sidelines. He’s just a guy who plays quarterback pretty well. End of debate.) Oh! And all of their success over the last 20 years still should belong to Cleveland. So, you know… Baltimore.

I’m sure the Bills are eager to end all the offseason chatter and get the game started. There has been plenty of speculation this offseason about the personnel and coaching decisions they’ve made. Was it a mistake to bring in Rob Ryan? Can Tyrod Taylor take “the next step™”? Is this the year Sammy Watkins becomes a household name? Will Reggie Bush be a difference maker? How much are we going to miss Mario Williams? Aren’t you getting tired of all these questions?

Let's do this.
​

The Apologist

Football is hard. Absurdly hard. Hard to watch, hard to play, and hard to justify. It's become easier for people to explain why they're not getting their kids vaccinated than why they continue watching football. St. Louis is still paying off the debt on their now unoccupied football stadium. Every team only just figured out they should stop paying Greg Hardy to play football (but apparently the Pats should kick the tires on Ray Rice ... good God, Lupica). Teddy Bridgewater's career might have ended while pretending to play. And if his career is over, he'd be considered LUCKY by most NFL retirees' standards. Calvin Johnson just quit at the peak of his powers because of course he did. But it’s become like complaining about your taxes. Yours are too high? Join the club. Pay ‘em and move along, you’re holding up the line. The NFL is everything that's wrong with humanity and capitalism? Sure, but you're still gonna keep watching.

So all existential crises aside, the hard part of football I'm here to discuss is winning and, more importantly, it's correlation to our enjoyment of the game. For better or worse, that's what makes all the other parts of football tolerable. Calvin Johnson might still be playing football if the Lions weren't, well, you know... the Lions. But as fans, complaining about wins, or the lack thereof, has become a competitive sport in its own right. Who has more to complain about? 31 teams end every season disappointed. Yeah, sure, but look at THIS bullshit team I have to deal with. Hell, even the people who cover the league are creating storylines to complain about.

​Simple math says the teams we root for are more likely to fail at their ultimate goal than succeed. But who REALLY has it worse? Is it worse to be at the bottom of the barrel looking up? Is it worse to float in middling mediocrity, missing out equally on big draft picks and big moments? Or is it truly worse to come this close to your goal only to have it ripped away from you?

I've been asking myself this because, from my vantage point, ​Bills fandom has reached a particularly masochistic level this offseason. My friends have been competing to see who can expect less from this team than the other. A recent text exchange raised the question of what their record would be this season and I was the only person who thought they would win more games than they would lose and it wasn't even close (the "best" prediciton was 7-9). This might seem like an obvious, understandable sentiment to some people, but it really got me thinking. It feels like enjoying the game and not enjoying the game are on equal footing now. And to be fair, watching the Patriots so you can talk shit about Tom Brady does sound like more fun than watching whatever it is the Tennessee Titans are going to try and accomplish this year. Particularly when it comes to your own allegiances, I understand where this instinct comes from. If you think you’re going to be let down, why not lower your expectations as far as possible so that the let-down is more tolerable?

The problem is that this hypothesis has been proven false again and again and again. We can tell ourselves all we want that they’re going to lose this Sunday, but if they jump out early and take a lead into halftime, we will get excited. We will have hope. We will also have that knot in our stomach, but that’s the whole point. That’s why we watch. As soon as I stop feeling things during these games, I’m not sure why I’d watch them anymore. If all I wanted to do was have a logical, measured experience of football, I’d drop all allegiances and tune into whatever game is being called by Joe Buck. Sad!

So if I’m gonna have my heart ripped out and my mind turned into a scene from Falling Down, then I’m gonna go into it with the best of intentions. Or to use a different hacky reference, if we’re all going to wind up in the Pit of Despair, then damnit, I’m gonna expect the best on my way down.

I mean, this IS supposed to be fun right?! For fucks’ sake, remember when we weren’t going to have a team at all anymore?!?  By the grace of God, fracking, and Terry Pegula, the Rams are in LA and the Bills are talking about a downtown stadium. But like a real one this time. Our team was saved, but somehow our doomsday expectations stayed six and a half feet under. I’m not saying everyone should be expecting a record over .500 like I am, but where is the proof that we’re one of the worst teams in the league? Seventeen teams finished last season with worse records than ours. One of the ones who finished above us, our divisional rivals the LOLJets, spent the entire offseason trying to convince others that they had convinced themselves that they could do better than Ryan Fitzpatrick. Hell, the Super Bowl champions TRADED for Mark Sanchez. (Seriously, how many teams would cut their quarterback in a heartbeat to get their hands on Tyrod Taylor? If the Eagles were able to get a first round pick for Sam Bradford, a quarterback whose ceiling we’re all painfully aware of, what could the Bills have gotten in exchange?) Somehow Raiders fans have more faith than we do! For the life of me, I can’t understand it.

I know it’s a somewhat weak argument to make: Being optimistic is more fun. But that’s how I feel. If you want to wallow in self-pity and disappointment, don’t let me stop you. In fact, maybe stop reading right now, because it only gets sunnier from here. Translation: DON’T RAIN ON MY PARADE, GOD DAMNIT! THE BILLS ARE BACK AND I’LL FUCKIN' SHOUT IF I WANT TO!

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.)