Bills remain the masters of false hope
Among the 32 quarterbacks who have taken the bulk of the offensive snaps for their NFL teams, Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills has the second-worst passer rating.
In a league where rule changes have fostered a sharp rise in quarterback play, Allen has completed just 50 per cent of his passes, has been sacked eight times and thrown two interceptions against one touchdown, which came in the final minute on Sunday in a game that had been decided by halftime.
And through two games, Josh Allen is unquestionably the best thing about the Buffalo Bills.
He hasn’t forgotten his helmet in the locker-room, or fumbled after running into his lineman’s butt, or posted any racist things on Twitter (recently). He has been decidedly not awful, and early in this Bills season, that will have to do.
Buffalo is second-last in the NFL in points scored, and tied for last in points allowed.
Through the first six quarters of this season the Bills were outscored 75-9, at which point cornerback Vontae Davis retired. It was the football equivalent of a blind date in which one of the parties leaves the table to use the bathroom and then bolts before the entrees arrive.
If anything, the first two weeks of this season have added some important context to the franchise’s beleaguered history. When the team got off to an improbable 5-2 start last season under new coach Sean McDermott, it was all very unlike them.
Then they lost a couple of games and the coach decided to start Nathan Peterman over Tyrod Taylor at quarterback and that was very like them.
Peterman, a fifth-round draft pick, threw five picks in a blowout loss to the Chargers and it looked like the Bills had blown a chance to return to the playoffs for the first time in two decades.
But wait! The Bills scuffled to a 9-7 record, which looked like it would leave them just out of the playoffs (very Billsy), and then they were saved by a last-gasp touchdown in Week 17 from Andy Dalton and the Cincinnati Bengals, which knocked the Ravens out of the post-season picture and allowed the Bills in.
This moment of unrestrained joy was very unfamiliar to Bills fans, but now we see it for what it was: false hope.
Gifted a return to the playoffs for the first time since 1999, the Bills promptly scored three whole points in a loss to Jacksonville, then McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane apparently remembered they initially planned to be bad last season, so they went right back to that.
Instead of building on the unexpected playoff appearance, the Bills traded Taylor to Cleveland, signed career backup A.J. McCarron to be the stopgap quarterback and made a bunch of trades to get high enough in last spring ’s draft to nab a quarterback of the future, which turned out to be Allen.
They inadvertently set the rebuild back by a year, and gave their fans a taste of the good life, before cold reality slapped them in the face again. It is all, yes, very Billsy.