De Pugna (Fight On) Latin
“Fight on my men,” says Sir Andrew Barton,
“I am hurt, but I am not slain;
I’ll lay me down and bleed a-while,
And then I’ll rise and fight again.”
― Thomas Moore
Made famous in recent years by Hall of Fame NFL coach Marv Levy. He read this poem to the Buffalo Bills after losing their 1st Super Bowl. As history shows. The team rallied behind these words for years and three more consecutive Super Bowl appearances to come.
My Feelings After Tonight’s Loss…
On 1/23/2022 AFC Divisional Playoff Overtime Buffalo Bills Loss to the reining two-time AFC Champions the Kansas City Chiefs, 42-36…
It’s goddamn heartbreaking…
Not once, but twice Josh Allen thought he had won the game for the Bills. There were 25 points scored in the final two minutes of gameplay. It was back and forth in major dramatic effect that will be mentioned in the record books for decades to come. Some of the things that happened in the final two minutes would make someone think they really were trapped in the Matrix…
I am emotionally drained…
It’s not even 11 pm yet and I am dead tired. I just wanted to get my emotional response to this on paper before bed. I will add/subtract some here as I want a few days after the initial build of the blog to process this and for things to settle down a little. I want to hear from Josh Allen and Coach McDermott. This has been a near three-year journey. Now the last three NFL seasons have ended in a heartbreaking playoff loss.
This will build character, but it also adds to the pressure. Now the sports media will say that next year is “go to the Super Bowl or bust,” and that isn’t how the game is played, even though the Bills believe it to be “Super Bowl or Bust” each year. I just think that now, moving forward, our team has seen just about everything the Football Universe can throw at it in order to prepare a team for a championship.
Not even Tom Brady had to deal with this level of disappointment in the larger scheme of things. A lot of the greats went through it: Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Brett Farve, John Elway, all had to deal with playoff and Super Bowl struggles of the past. Sometimes they recover, balance shit out, and go on to win championships. Both Farve and Elway won Super Bowls after tasting playoff defeat. Elway had three Super Bowl losses before he won two in a row and one against Farve.
There really isn’t anywhere else to go from here but UP… We have won the division, twice in a row. We have beaten back the great big closet monster in New England. Now we have hit bottom with Kansas City/Mahomes. We have now lost to them twice in the playoffs in a row the last two seasons.
How do I feel? Well, how you would feel if you thought you won the game, but there is 13 seconds left. So, common sense says you kick off the ball, in play and make the clock start. The Bills go ahead and kick it through the end zone for a touchback. Chiefs get the ball at the 25-yard line and no time came off the clock.
Then the Bills play very loose defense that allows Kansas City to gain nearly 50 yards in 10 seconds. They kick the field goal and the game goes to overtime. We lose the coin toss with an exhausted defense and we give up a touchdown.
GAME OVER… How the FUCK do you feel?
About the same as I did when we lost those Super Bowls. Just terrible. Emotionally drained. Like if it was me on the field. When I played football we lost a lot of games. None of those losses felt like this one does. This will sting for a little bit.
I feel like Josh Allen will grow from this. He just went from being a really good player to one of the best players in the entire League.
Rest Of The NFL Is Now On Notice…
The Buffalo Bills Are Here… We are not going anywhere for a little bit, at least the next ten seasons. We’ll eventually get our defense right. Yeah, we were number one in yards and points, but we really didn’t play like a number one defense against great offenses, elite-level Quarterbacks and that is what “great” defenses do…
Great Defenses Dominate… They beat down great offense. The history of the league shows it to be true. Our defense is good… Really good, but it isn’t great and it had chinks in the armor all year.
We played it as if we didn’t have those chinks and this is part of the result of that. The other part is situational football. Coach McDermott refused to field questions about the specifics of the decision-making process for those final 13 seconds and just chalked it up to, “we need to do better…”
I get that… However, it is sort of a big deal… It should be addressed, not overly harped on, but at least have a little bit to say for yourself, as the coach is the captain and the captain is responsible for everything, everyone, every situation on his ship. They also have to answer for all that too. The sheer fact that he didn’t want to address it is why I feel a little dumbfounded by it.
The only question he would field in relation to that last 13 seconds of the game was related to a reporter asking about; “why not just have all your Defensive Backs just tackle the receiver or “hold” them off the line till the ref threw that cheap 5-yard holding penalty?”
Time would have run down and the Chiefs wouldn’t be able to get that time back. Sure, it’s cheap but no different than using the rules established to win a football game. Like the Chiefs winning the coin toss and driving right down the field on a tired defense that did play their asses off, but fell short on being able to stop the Chiefs in the fourth quarter and overtime.
All coach McDermott would say is; “we discussed it…” All other questions on the subject got the same response of; “I am not going to get into the specifics of that.”
Well, why not coach? If he thinks it’s a negative thing to the team I get that. Then he should assume 100% of the accountability because I doubt he cares what I, the media, and the fan base think about him, personally. He cares about his team and rising above this to go on to win Super Bowls.
So if that is his reasoning, I would accept that, but just say it man; “We messed up. We didn’t think about this clearly enough before we put our defense back on the field with 13-seconds to go…”
The Buffalo Bills were not a very good situational football team this season. It goes back to the Houston Wild Card Playoff game two years ago. It continued the following season at Arizona in the “Hail Murray” game. Happend in last year’s AFC title game when the Chiefs spanked us.
We fell apart in the second half on Monday Night Football at Tennessee this season. Now we see this happen again. I am not sure who to blame. I do not wanna play the blame game here. I love our coaches, even Leslie Frazier… He’s an old-school guy. A pretty good defensive coach, but he has made some pretty big mistakes as a defensive play-caller. Why he choose to rush four guys with 13 seconds knowing that all Mahomes was gonna do was hike the ball, turn, perhaps a pump fake and throw underneath to gain as much yardage as Buffalo would give him. He wasn’t gonna just sit back and wait for his receivers to go further downfield. They were playing field goal the whole time.
It was pretty obvious and I openly admit that my football knowledge of X’s and O’s is not as sound as it was when I was a player. However, some stuff, most stuff, still stands out to me.
We do need to address this, eventually. If he wants to go coach the Dolphins, let him. He isn’t going to win there, no one is going to win there when they keep firing/hiring a new coach every 3 years. Miami is straight trash these days and until the coaches they hire and players trust the organization the culture will not change.
I am not saying Leslie Frazier cannot coach, he clearly can. However, I do not believe that he can win as a head coach and NO ONE can win, consistently in Miami, so why leave?
I am fine with him staying here as our DC, but the man needs to learn how things are done in the NFL in 2022 mentality of video game stats, strategies… Those last 13 seconds were heavily mismanaged and it probably should be addressed in some fashion so we can put this loss past us and get back to work.
The late/great John Madden, RIP, once said, “All a prevent defense does is prevent you from winning.” The prevent defensive reasoning is by conceding to the offense many easy gains for short yardage, but no big plays. Well, that isn’t what happened. What happened was; “Hey look, the Bills defense is giving us about 20 free yards before they can get hands-on Hill. Let’s take them and call a timeout really fast.”
The Bills even used a time-out between each play to make sure the defense knew what to do. At no time did the coaches ever think they could be wrong about the situation. That is my only beef with this whole thing. I just wanted our coaching staff to come out and say; “Hey guys… We fucked up… We made the wrong call and didn’t know how to get out of it, so we doubled down on the prevent and it fucked us again. Right here, right now we promise our team, our players, our fans, that we will never prevent ourselves from winning a game or a chance at a championship, in this fashion, ever again.”
Coach McDermott prides our team on situational football, but all the examples I just laid out here, um, the quantifiable data, (analytics), says otherwise. All I wanted was coach McDermott to come out and say that; “even though we pride ourselves on being very situationally aware of what is happening in the game, on the field, that we fucked up. We were not prepared, situationally, as to what we needed to do to not give the Chiefs anything, and to run that 13 seconds down as much as possible.”
If they would have just done the five hard holding penalties till the clock ran down too much it would have won the game. It also would probably cause just as much drama as there is now and we’d all be saying; “rule changes next year, so that can’t happen again.”
Over, saying we need to change the overtime rules in the playoffs. I’d like to see a change anyway just because it’s the playoffs. If we got that much crazy football, why not let them finish it in a more fair and dramatic way.
Now I am not sure what that should be… I do not know, maybe play a ten-minute 5th quarter and whoever has the lead after that period, wins the game? If they are tied after ten minutes, do it again. Keep doing it till someone wins. No extra points either. Safeties, Field Goals, Touchdowns, and Two-Point conversations only. Whoever is winning at the end of the timed period wins the playoff game.
No, crazy shootout-type situations from the 25-yard line. Just keep it basic and keep the flow of the game. The only other serious rule change I’d like to see moving forward would be on special teams. Not just for the playoffs, but all the games. Give the kicking team a choice to either kickoff, punt, or dropkick. Give the kicking team a fair chance to give the ball to the other team in different ways than just the standard kickoff.
Special teams played a huge role in this year’s Divisional Playoffs. With all the holding calls on special teams, especially on kickoff, kickoff return, and punt return nowadays I feel the NFL needs to change things up to make it more of a challenge than with what we are getting on the field in this area.
Early Monday Morning Blues Rolls Around. 3 am in the morning and Bills fans came out in droves to welcome the team home. We win and we lose, together… One Buffalo baby… /p>
Bills Mafia Welcomes Buffalo Bills Back From Kansas City
This is so awesome and really classy move on Mahomes part too at the end. I didn’t see that live I was so upset, beyond upset actually. I was actually sadder at the end of this game than when I was in the ER, you, know, dying n’ shit… That is how bad it was. Now I understand better the emotions of the fans of that first Buffalo Super Bowl loss. I was only 12, but if I were an adult then, that loss probably feels like how I do now. Those final 13 seconds are my generation’s “wide right…” One Buffalo…
All those old Super Bowl losses were because Buffalo had this great offense that no one could stop, but in the big games, a great defense, could and did… History does tend to repeat itself, One Buffalo… Our defense is still very good, but not this dominating defense that completely shuts down everything. They are not the ’85 Bears or the 99’ Ravens. No, we were bend but don’t break all year, but did tend to break against pretty good offenses and elite Quarterbacks. This was consistent, all year long… One Buffalo…
In all our losses, when our defense needed a stop or make a play, they couldn’t get the job done. This loss was the same case. You ask our offense to go and do that, well the numbers speak for themselves, especially in this game. Josh Allen put this team on his back this season and in this game. He showed us all he has some “Kelly Tough” material in him.
Like Thomas Moor wrote…
“Fight on my men,” says Sir Andrew Barton,
“I am hurt, but I am not slain;
I’ll lay me down and bleed a-while,
And then I’ll rise and FIGHT AGAIN.”