Dare to dream
End of Bills’ long playoff drought may be in sight after win over Miami
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — After kicking the Miami Dolphins out of the playoff hunt with a 24-16 win on Sunday, it’s on to New England for the Buffalo Bills. And a chance at history. Well, relatively speaking. A win for the Bills on Christmas Eve against the hated Patriots not only would go down as the luck-chewed franchise’s biggest victory of the 21st century, it would bring Buffalo to the cusp of its first post-season berth of the young millennium — a long dreamed-of day that would end this region’s great shame, an ignominious streak of 17 consec utive NFL seasons without the Bills making the playoffs. It’s the longest active skid in the league.
After Sunday’s games, Buffalo, Baltimore and Tennessee all had 8-6 records. Two of the three appear likeliest to snag the AFC’s pair of wild-card playoff berths as non-division winners.
If the Patriots beat the Bills this coming Sunday, however, as almost everyone will predict this week, then to make the playoffs as one of the two AFC wild cards, the Bills would have to defeat the Dolphins again, this time in Miami on New Year’s Eve in their regular-season finale and hope other Week 16 and 17 AFC results go precisely their way. If not, the Bills’ dreaded drought would hit 18 years.
Probably few here among the 62,202 ticket buyers who chose to brave a grey, snowless but bitingly cold day at New Era Field (-6C and windy) were thinking so pessimistically. Just about everything favoured the local team over the decisive first 2½ quarters, when the Bills raced to a 24-6 lead against a wildly unpredictable Dolphins outfit that had clobbered the Patriots just six days earlier.
These plucky Buffalo players of over-achieving first-year head coach Sean McDer- mott are two games over .500 with two games left — a bar only two other Buffalo teams this century have reached (in 2004 and 2014).
Miami dropped to 6-8, effectively out of the AFC wildcard chase. Dolphins quarterback Jay Cutler was terrible. His longest completion before the fourth quarter was 13 yards and he threw three way- ward, desperation-drenched passes that got easily intercepted in the second half.
Sunday’s was a rare late-December game with meaning for the Bills, in which just about everything went exactly right the majority of the time.
Buffalo won its sixth home game of the season, something the club hadn’t done since 1999 — its most recent playoff season.
“That’s huge,” McDermott said. “We talk a lot about defending our dirt.”
Who’s to say with things can’t go Buffalo’s way through New Year’s Eve? Asked if he’s breaking from his one-week-at-atime focus and discussing the position his team is in, regard- ing playoff prospects, when practically nobody but employees at One Bills Drive believed the club wasn’t trying to tank in 2017, McDermott said:
“I think we embrace people talking about us. That’s good in that type of light. We embrace that. That said, we have to focus on our process and what has gotten us to where we are, and then continue to grow.”
Frankly, this Bills team is not stacked with talent at any position. Whether it wins or loses, it seems to do so convincingly. Such as on this day.
Against the sloppy Dolphins, McDermott’s Bills displayed characteristics emblematic of good teams in big games, at least while building a three-score lead before the final quarter. These Bills actually played past their potential on both sides of the ball and, even more than that, played with poise when it mattered most — attributes sorely missing in these parts in win-or-else games earlier this century.
The Bills scored a touchdown on their opening possession and never trailed. Hell, they didn’t even commit a single penalty in roaring out to a 21-6 halftime lead.
Strangely, even though the Bills’ rushing attack wasn’t particularly effective — 116 yards on 30 carries (3.9 average) — Bills QB Tyrod Taylor eviscerated Miami’s over-committed defence with passes off run fakes. By halftime, he’d done most of his aerial damage: 165 yards and a TD on 12-of-18 passing. Taylor also added 42 yards rushing by game’s end and another TD.