CURTIS HENRY
Sports Editor
There are roughly seven days throughout each season when it isn’t overwhelming to be a fan of the Buffalo Bills: the bye week. The bye is a good time for fans to sit back and relax, and it’s a good time for teams to rest and get healthy. For the Bills, this year’s Week 10 bye couldn’t have come at a better time.
Coming off of a devastating loss to the referees — er, I mean the Seahawks — in Week 9, the Bills’ bye week is a perfect break after the team’s current three-game losing streak. An ugly loss to New England in Week 8 was sandwiched between two losses to Miami and Seattle, a pair of games that most think the Bills should have won.
The bye provides a perfect opportunity for a depleted Buffalo squad to get healthy in advance of next week’s bout with Cincinnati, another team that has underperformed to this point in the season.
Despite LeSean McCoy’s performance on Monday night, it’s hard to say with authority that he was 100 percent; Marcell Dareus is dealing with lingering injuries of all sorts. Additionally, guys like Lorenzo Alexander, Jerry Hughes and Charles Clay were only able to practice in limited capacity for the entire week leading up to last Monday’s game in Seattle, and the bye provides a perfect chance for those guys to get to full strength.
Lost in all of this is perhaps the biggest footnote of all. A bye week in Week 10 inches Sammy Watkins closer to being healthy as he attempts to return after being placed on injured reserve early in the season. Watkins is officially eligible to return from the temporary injured reserve in Week 12 when the Bills will play host to Jacksonville, and every passing week breathes new hope for the Bills’ star receiver. It was reported early last week that Watkins had gotten rid of the walking boot he has needed in recent weeks, a good sign for Bills coaches and fans alike.
However, the return of Watkins may not mean much for the Bills. The team sits at 4-5 and is out of sight in the playoff picture thanks to the strongest division in football: the AFC West. Buffalo will, presumably, have to beat out one of Oakland (7-2), Denver (7-3), and Kansas City (7-2). The outlook for the Bills ending the drought has to be less than optimistic, seeing as the three teams they’re chasing have consistently done the one thing that the Bills can’t: win the games they’re expected to.
For the Bills to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since the turn of the millennium, they’ll have to go on one hell of a run in the second half of 2016. Buckle up Bills fans, it’s (probably) gonna be a hell of a ride.