Buffalo Bills: Bye week gives time for healing and revelry

The Buffalo Bills are in good shape heading into a bye week, and it will give some ailing players a chance to heal up.

For the Buffalo Bills, heading into the bye week with only one loss is sublime. The one loss came against the defending Super Bowl champions, who are a multiple decade-long dynasty, and who are playing like champions once again this season. The Bills were in the game until the very end and could have won the contest if a couple of bounces went their way.

The negative pessimistic posse who rally around “Negative Stanley” will go with the glass is half-empty theory. You will be reminded that the Bills opponents have had some of the worst kicking by multiple kickers the team has ever had the benefit of facing.

Josh Allen‘s multifarious turnovers against the Jets and the Pats are brought up and tacked on to the fact that many other tosses were in the air with punting like hang time that easily could have been picked off.

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A reader commented that I drink the Kool-Aid last week. With that in mind, I will say that just because one could find many plays, bounces, referee calls, coaches challenges to show just what a fine line between 4-1 and 0-5 could be, does not indicate a bad team.

Good teams win in many ways. Good teams find ways to win. That said, I would be the Bills fan who sees a good future and leans towards the fact that we easily could have won the New England game, leaving Buffalo sitting pretty at 5-0.

I would tell Stanley to put that in his pipe and smoke it, but he does not indulge in tobacco or other products using pipe technology. Stanley somehow smokes CLOVE cigarettes even though the Indonesia brand was banned in the USA back in 2009. Some say he has a connection who imports them illegally. Others say he bought so many of them in the ’90s and stashed them in his attic. I will never know. I will defer from asking. I am indeed OK with not knowing. But I digress……

I am not one to go through the schedule and pick wins and losses. That never plays out as predicted. I must admit cautiously that the Bills do not appear to have a schedule that would hinder a successful season. It appears an opportunity very much to chalk up a damn good record.

Perfect time for a bye week with some banged-up players who need some healing time. A bye week following a win is “dreamy”. Had we had the bye week after the New England game, the potential to not be in a great place in your head is always an undesirable potential scenario. That said, the Bills were not emotionally scarred from the Pats loss.

The Bills came to play against the Titans. Josh Allen, who was in concussion protocol for most of the week, was safely cleared by Saturday. He looked confident and prepared. He threw one pick, but it was snagged by a ball hawk and not just left floating in the air like the previous game.

Josh Allen made sound decisions and was physically golden. He claims it was the best game of his career so far. I was not certain of that, but after watching many plays over again, it may have been his crispest performance this season.

The Sabres play seven games in the time that the Bills await their next opponent.

Zay Jones being traded was predictable. He was giving up on plays. He is a good route runner, but the great hands he had in college never surfaced in the NFL. He may get a second wind in Oakland. An experienced Pro Bowl quarterback like Derek Carr can really break Zay Jones out of his funk and aid him in creating a nice NFL career.

The 5th round draft pick Buffalo received for Jones does not seem like much for a player that they traded up to the second round to select. It was not meant to be for him in Buffalo and the 5th round pick is certainly draft capital that can be used for many other scenarios other than simply selecting a player there.

I watched Duke Williams a little bit in the CFL. He was attempting to re-establish himself after some issues in college that kept him from the NFL. He was very dominant in the CFL. Similar to when the Bills took a shot at Doug Flutie, who failed as a young NFL quarterback and dominated the CFL for a decade, returning to the NFL using everything he learned to run the Buffalo offense like a general.

Duke Williams showed flashes of brilliance in pre-season. He even was making high-lite type receptions on the practice squad. He became a fan favorite very quickly and many fans were disappointed he did not make the 53-man roster.

Well, he is here now. With his hands and size, I can see Duke Williams becoming a go-to receiver for Josh Allen and doing some big things. He already started that trend against the Titans. Stay tuned. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

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