Goal Post Mortem
Jan. 23rd, 2023 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThe 2022 football season ended for us last night, about 20 miles away and 60,000 pounds of misery from here. In many ways, the Bills took the same path that the Mets did three months earlier. After one of the most successful regular seasons in their history, they were kept from the top spot and a first-round bye by a team they routinely beat but who got very hot at the end of the year; after they were then given a championship path still passing through their home stadium, the season came to an abrupt end on a final weekend being beaten by an opponent lower in the standings but more motivated at the end.
The pundits will pundit for months about what went wrong, and what can be done about it. Many think it will be downhill from here, given the size of some contracts the team will face next year and the likely departure of at least a few of their star players. That, at least, is a problem limited in baseball. But the things that came to my mind about what went wrong really come down to these three:
*Adversity.
When you take note of all the bad things that happened to this team after the last season ended just about a year ago with the shock of “13 seconds,” It’s amazing the team got as far as it did. The off-season was marred by the mass shooting in Buffalo’s Black community. Although I’m sure none of the team's players shop at that Tops, the emotional impact on the fanbase and the players was immense, and their response in the ensuing weeks was laudatory. Early in the season, fans got to witness a horrific on-field injury that led to a player being pulled off the field in an ambulance. He quickly recovered and was back on the active roster soon after, but lost in the flashing lights was that one of his other teammates also went down in a less spectacular injury, and he wound up lost for the rest of the season.
Yet that was nothing compared to the news a few weeks later that Von Miller, the big off-season acquisition specifically brought in to address the teams biggest weakness on defense, also suffered a season-ending injury. Again and again, the “next man” stepped up and the Bills entered the final two games of the season with playoffs assured, their division clinched (and with it a guaranteed home game), and a chance to have their entire postseason slate of games up to the Super Bowl played at home in January snow.
And then the even less imaginable thing happened, as one of those “next men up,” Damar Hamlin, went down with what might’ve been a life ending cardiac injury. Again, the team, the community and even the opponents had to rally around the incident, worrying as reports came in and then cheering when his prognosis kept getting better. The game wound up suspended and then canceled altogether, denying Buffalo but also Cincinnati the chance to clinch an overall best conference record and with it the hosting of the AFC title game next weekend. That "honor" went to Kansas City, which lost to both teams during the year, solely on account of them having played and won one additional game.
As a consolation prize to the Bills, the league voted to hold a Buffalo-KC title game on a neutral field- Atlanta, it eventually turned out. Bills Mafia bought all of their 20-odd thousand allocated tickets to that game as soon as they went on sale last week, before even playing the game yesterday that would punch their ticket to it. The visiting Bengals turned that enthusiasm into bulletin-board material; they also were not put off in the least by the billboard material put up by our hometown bank's to welcome them to town for the game:
Our fans, meanwhile, sounded much more nervous about this game than they usually are- despite the stadium crowd providing a large and loud home-field advantage, and despite a depleted roster on the other side. I could feel it was going sideways as soon as the Bills defense took the field: Ed Oliver, one of their top linemen, had to sit out the first play because he forgot to put on his helmet. In my memory, that invoked a similar moment in one of the 90s Bills' Super Bowl losses to Dallas where it was future Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas who lost his headgear before the game. The results of this one proved eerily similar.
* Millimeters and seconds.
All the strategy and planning and grunting of behemoths aside, much of American football turns on ridiculously small measures. For the Bills, yesterday's game, like many this year before it, turned on the tiniest of them. Long passes missing a receiver's hands by a fraction of an inch. Cincy scoring a much-needed touchdown midway through the game when their time to get the play off had plainly expired by at least a fraction of a second. In most games, these chances and calls will balance each other out for both teams, but remember, this is a team that the Cigarette Smoking Man has a grudge against. For all we know, he may even control....
* The weather. This was the weirdest aspect of the loss. As you may have heard, it gets cold in January here, and it snows more than a little bit. Oddly, except for the 2-3 big blasts in November and December, it's been warmer and less snowy than usual this winter. The worst of 2023 has been the lack of sun; even without much snow on the roof, our solar panels have only produced more than 10 kilowatts on one day of January so far. You'd think this would favor the players who live in it, practice in it, are much more used to it. Yet all I heard during the game yesterday was that the Bills players were having trouble maintaining their footing and gripping the ball. The Here Kitty Kitties seemed to have no trouble at all, but that may have been more a function of the home defenders doing very little to stop them. Whether it was planning, motivation or depletion of the roster (several more Bills, especially on defense, missed or went out injured during the game), this was the first time all year they really didn't come to play up to their usual level. This is a team that won 13 of the 16 games that counted during the year, lost the other three by a combined eight points, and was on an eight-game winning streak going into this match. But we're into the one-and-done portion of the schedule, and that sudden sloppiness couldn't have come at a worse possible time.
Strike that. It could have, if they'd somehow won this game, marched to Atlanta and advanced, only to have Philly or San Francisco demolish them in the Super Bowl. Better we got it out of our system now.
Usually forgiving fans and media members have been hard on this result during the post-game analyses. FIRE EVERYBODY! is the war cry. Even the superhuman quarterback, who had only a slightly shitty day on the job compared to everyone else, seems to be getting a rep as a loser who can't finish the job. In time, those feelings will pass, and come the week after Labor Day they'll be in a 32-way tie for the NFL lead. Hope will return to Orchard Park. The Here Kitty Kitties will not, though we will play them in Cincinnati sometime next season.
The pundits will pundit for months about what went wrong, and what can be done about it. Many think it will be downhill from here, given the size of some contracts the team will face next year and the likely departure of at least a few of their star players. That, at least, is a problem limited in baseball. But the things that came to my mind about what went wrong really come down to these three:
*Adversity.
When you take note of all the bad things that happened to this team after the last season ended just about a year ago with the shock of “13 seconds,” It’s amazing the team got as far as it did. The off-season was marred by the mass shooting in Buffalo’s Black community. Although I’m sure none of the team's players shop at that Tops, the emotional impact on the fanbase and the players was immense, and their response in the ensuing weeks was laudatory. Early in the season, fans got to witness a horrific on-field injury that led to a player being pulled off the field in an ambulance. He quickly recovered and was back on the active roster soon after, but lost in the flashing lights was that one of his other teammates also went down in a less spectacular injury, and he wound up lost for the rest of the season.
Yet that was nothing compared to the news a few weeks later that Von Miller, the big off-season acquisition specifically brought in to address the teams biggest weakness on defense, also suffered a season-ending injury. Again and again, the “next man” stepped up and the Bills entered the final two games of the season with playoffs assured, their division clinched (and with it a guaranteed home game), and a chance to have their entire postseason slate of games up to the Super Bowl played at home in January snow.
And then the even less imaginable thing happened, as one of those “next men up,” Damar Hamlin, went down with what might’ve been a life ending cardiac injury. Again, the team, the community and even the opponents had to rally around the incident, worrying as reports came in and then cheering when his prognosis kept getting better. The game wound up suspended and then canceled altogether, denying Buffalo but also Cincinnati the chance to clinch an overall best conference record and with it the hosting of the AFC title game next weekend. That "honor" went to Kansas City, which lost to both teams during the year, solely on account of them having played and won one additional game.
As a consolation prize to the Bills, the league voted to hold a Buffalo-KC title game on a neutral field- Atlanta, it eventually turned out. Bills Mafia bought all of their 20-odd thousand allocated tickets to that game as soon as they went on sale last week, before even playing the game yesterday that would punch their ticket to it. The visiting Bengals turned that enthusiasm into bulletin-board material; they also were not put off in the least by the billboard material put up by our hometown bank's to welcome them to town for the game:
Our fans, meanwhile, sounded much more nervous about this game than they usually are- despite the stadium crowd providing a large and loud home-field advantage, and despite a depleted roster on the other side. I could feel it was going sideways as soon as the Bills defense took the field: Ed Oliver, one of their top linemen, had to sit out the first play because he forgot to put on his helmet. In my memory, that invoked a similar moment in one of the 90s Bills' Super Bowl losses to Dallas where it was future Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas who lost his headgear before the game. The results of this one proved eerily similar.
* Millimeters and seconds.
All the strategy and planning and grunting of behemoths aside, much of American football turns on ridiculously small measures. For the Bills, yesterday's game, like many this year before it, turned on the tiniest of them. Long passes missing a receiver's hands by a fraction of an inch. Cincy scoring a much-needed touchdown midway through the game when their time to get the play off had plainly expired by at least a fraction of a second. In most games, these chances and calls will balance each other out for both teams, but remember, this is a team that the Cigarette Smoking Man has a grudge against. For all we know, he may even control....
* The weather. This was the weirdest aspect of the loss. As you may have heard, it gets cold in January here, and it snows more than a little bit. Oddly, except for the 2-3 big blasts in November and December, it's been warmer and less snowy than usual this winter. The worst of 2023 has been the lack of sun; even without much snow on the roof, our solar panels have only produced more than 10 kilowatts on one day of January so far. You'd think this would favor the players who live in it, practice in it, are much more used to it. Yet all I heard during the game yesterday was that the Bills players were having trouble maintaining their footing and gripping the ball. The Here Kitty Kitties seemed to have no trouble at all, but that may have been more a function of the home defenders doing very little to stop them. Whether it was planning, motivation or depletion of the roster (several more Bills, especially on defense, missed or went out injured during the game), this was the first time all year they really didn't come to play up to their usual level. This is a team that won 13 of the 16 games that counted during the year, lost the other three by a combined eight points, and was on an eight-game winning streak going into this match. But we're into the one-and-done portion of the schedule, and that sudden sloppiness couldn't have come at a worse possible time.
Strike that. It could have, if they'd somehow won this game, marched to Atlanta and advanced, only to have Philly or San Francisco demolish them in the Super Bowl. Better we got it out of our system now.
Usually forgiving fans and media members have been hard on this result during the post-game analyses. FIRE EVERYBODY! is the war cry. Even the superhuman quarterback, who had only a slightly shitty day on the job compared to everyone else, seems to be getting a rep as a loser who can't finish the job. In time, those feelings will pass, and come the week after Labor Day they'll be in a 32-way tie for the NFL lead. Hope will return to Orchard Park. The Here Kitty Kitties will not, though we will play them in Cincinnati sometime next season.