CURTIS HENRY
Sports Editor
Where were you when you were watching the game on Sunday?
“I was in a bad place,” said Liam Kelly, a Fredonia student. That just about sums it up.
It seems as though 2016 has been a new verse to the same song that Bills fans have grown accustomed to hearing. Sitting at 5-6 or 6-5 after week 12 for the seventh time in the last decade and with hope springing eternal for a late playoff push, the Bills flopped in a December game in Oakland for the second time in three seasons. While this one doesn’t have quite the same sting that the 2014 loss had — the Bills were then 8-6 and the Raiders were 2-12 — it’s still another painful addition to the Bills’ list of worst losses since the turn of the century.
The 38-24 defeat drops the Bills to 6-6 on the season, and they’ve lost four of their last six after starting 4-2. Not helping the Bills’ chances were the Chiefs, Broncos and Steelers, all of whom were victors in their respective Week 12 matchups.
Bottoms up, Bills fans. The outlook is bleak, and no one’s gonna blame you for downing a couple Labatts (or, you know, 20) to cope with this one.
This was supposed to be the year that the Bills ended the streak. This team was supposed to be different. After the Week 6 victory for Buffalo over San Francisco, the Bills sat with a 72 percent chance to make the playoffs. Then games began to slip away; close losses to Miami, Seattle, and this blown game against Oakland all buried Buffalo’s postseason odds. Six games after the 4-2 start and the Bills are at 6-6; their playoff odds are a measly 9 percent.
While the Bills do have opportunities to win tiebreakers with both Miami and Pittsburgh on the upcoming schedule (both teams are ahead of Buffalo in the Wild Card hunt), Buffalo needs either Kansas City (9-3) or Denver (8-4) to falter down the stretch, and in a scenario where either of those teams ends up at 9-7, the Bills would have to run the table to go 10-6.
Possible? Yes. Realistic? Not in the slightest.
Sorry, Bills fans. This squad has been disappointing, and no one is going to blame you if you spend the next four weeks drinking to forget the last 17 seasons. We’ll be back in 2017 to circle the wagons all over again. You can count on it.