Week 6 – Buffalo @ Arizona
Sunday, October 14- 4:05 p.m.
Last meeting: 10/5/08 – @Cardinals 41, Bills 17
Outlook: Did you know Arizona went 8-8 last year? Didn’t it seem like they were way worse than that?
There’s not a lot to be impressed by on Arizona’s roster other than star WR Larry Fitzgerald, but this is a game that scares the crap out of me. Naturally Buffalo’s only two West Coast trips had to come on consecutive weeks. The Bills will likely be fairly beat up from the NE/SF combo, so it will be a vulnerable team coming to University of Phoenix Stadium in Week 6.
The Bills can’t really cover Fitzgerald, so the key will be the pass rushers getting after whichever mediocre quarterback Arizona is playing that week (Kevin Kolb or John Skelton).
Hopefully this game goes better than Buffalo’s last trip to Arizona, a game I still have nightmares about. You might remember that day as the day Trent Edwards’s career died, thanks to this brutal hit he took from Cards safety Adrian Wilson:
The Bills were 4-0 coming into that game and Trent Edwards was looking great. The Bills ended that year 7-9 and Trent Edwards became F***ing Trent Edwards, the QB who couldn’t throw downfield.
So yeah, let’s hope to avoid a similar disaster in the desert this time around.
Week 7 – Tennessee @ Buffalo
Sunday, October 21 – 1 p.m.
Last meeting: 12/4/11 – Titans 23, @Bills 17
Outlook: The Titans will make a trip to Western New York for the second straight year as they head up to Orchard Park for this Week 7 contest. Much like the Cardinals, it didn’t seem like this team was any good last year but they ended up with a decent record at 9-7.
It should be a real interesting year in Tennessee. There’s going to be a quarterback controversy with Matt Hasselbeck and Jake Locker. Very well-paid RB Chris Johnson needs a bounce-back year after an awful 2011. The defense lost CB Cortland Finnegan from a group that wasn’t great to begin with. Can they somehow compete anyway?
Buffalo will need to find a way to contain Johnson, who rain amok last year in one of the few games in which he looked decent. He rolled up over 150 yards and 2 TDs and the Bills seemed powerless to stop him. A repeat of that and I don’t see this one going into the win column for the home team.