This one hurts

[Scott McKee]

I have agonized and suffered experiencing the inevitable little deaths associated with being an avid sports fan over the years;  always hopeful of contacting and residing in the saturating joy and utter relief of a championship season.  

 

A championship is yours always.  It is timeless and in those too numerous instances when your boys are up against the breaks, you can always take comfort in the duality that your team was once, and always will be a champion. 

 

I have chosen to limit my sports heart to baseball only over the past few years.  One, because baseball is a superior game to any that has ever been played, and two, to avoid the defeats that gnarl your guts and keep you awake into the wee hours.

 

Nothing is more assuring than a Sabres loss.  There is something to say about the constancy of the status quo.  When the Bills lose my attitude can normally be summed up with, "oh, well", rather than the anguish I felt dying with them so many years ago.

 

This latest Bills loss is different. It stings, and I'm not use to that.

 

Other than the playoffs, which my Phillies seldom see, baseball loses hurt only briefly even though I fret throughout every game as long as Philadelphia remains in mathematical contention for the postseason.  Baseball is a marathon. Its long run through three seasons affords the fan a  blessedly short memory.

 

Baseball is the fairest game of all the major sports.  Each team in every game is guaranteed twenty-seven chances to score before the game is over.  Only Mother Nature, the most powerful force on our planet, can alter that immutable truth.

 

Baseball's fairness is one factor that leads to my stomach hurting after yesterday's Bills loss.  We never got our last ups.

 

There are many NFL rules I don't understand -- the basic requirements of a simple catch evade me when only a short time ago I knew them as if they were etched in stone and brought forth from the mountain -- but I understand the NFL overtime rules, and, I agree with them. But it is still hard to digest an entire season with all of its punishing hits, injuries, aches, pains, practices, film sessions, study and infinite combination of occurrences boiling down to one culminating coin toss.

 

In a year where the Bills slayed one half of their personal two-headed dragon while the other half was left contemplating why, with their season on the brink, the league's best receiver was only covered by one defender, and with the Bengals shocking the number one seed Titans, and the Packers flailing in the snow, this felt like the year the Bills climbed to the top of the mountain and claimed their spot in football immortality.

 

I have a long memory with sports.  Listening or watching a baseball game in August I can recall similar situations from games in May or April, even from games years in the past. 

No one has seen a game like yesterday's Bills loss.  We lost a game as big as any played in franchise history because we couldn't navigate our way through a measly thirteen seconds.  Thirteen lousy seconds!  Twenty-year olds coupling with super models last longer than thirteen seconds.  Try  accomplishing anything in thirteen seconds.  That said,  thirteen seconds of ineptness by the Bills defense resulted in thirteen seconds of glory for the Chiefs which resulted in pure chance extending an entire team's and long suffering fan base's pain.  The heroics of Josh Allen and Gabriel Davis, and the hopes and dreams of the Bills and their fan base, gone in the flash of thirteen seconds and the random pounds per square inch of a thumb flicking upward paired with field irregularities resulting in a call of heads. Yes, there were certainly other factors that led to the loss, but those thirteen seconds have burned themselves into Bills fans psyche's forever with only a Super Bowl win acting as a salve.

 

There is a silver lining.  

 

The Bills have the most talented football player since Barry Sanders.  He is a freak of nature.  He makes plays never seen before and only imagined by video game designers. He leads on and off the field.  He does and says all of the right things all of the time.  He seems almost too perfect. As Buffalonians we are always waiting for the other shoe or cleat or skate to drop.  With Josh Allen we have something we have never had in any player in our city's history, perfection on and off the field.  Even Dominic Hasek wasn't as dominant as Allen has been. Allen routinely posts feats never accomplished in the history of the game, or accomplished only by a Mount Rushmore of NFL quarterbacks. Yes, he throws occasional interceptions.  Yes, we lost to vastly inferior teams in Pittsburgh and Jacksonville which resulted in the team playing on the road this week.  But please keep in mind, in only his second appearance in the playoffs, he threw nine touchdowns in two games -- something that has never happened before -- and he led not one, but two go-ahead touchdown drives late in the fourth quarter, the last with only one minute and change remaining in the game; impervious to the pressure cooker atmosphere of Arrowhead.  He is ours and there isn't a team in the league that wouldn't mortgage their futures and sell their mothers to have him, save one.  

 

If we figure out how to beat the one team who wouldn't sell their  souls for Josh, we will win several Super Bowls before number 17 hangs it up.

 

Knowing very personally what most of you are experiencing today with your team failing again all too well, I tip my cap and salute your unwaivering devotion.  If I am an observer of football, you live and die in the trenches.  While I choose not to involve myself as deeply anymore, what you do week in and week out of the NFL season is to be commended. In the words of the Cubbies faithful, "we'll get 'em next year."

[jojo wilczewski]

Goodday.
It was a great and exciting game that did come down to 13 seconds! Almost perfect offenses that good defenses could not stop. I was saying “ last man standing” the entire game and that’s the way it ended.
Thank you Buffalo for one of the most exciting games ever. Kelley could not take it anymore during the fourth and left the room to go bake a cake she was sooo anxious…
It was a good day
Jojoproud

[Frank Stachowiak]

A beautiful summary of a fan's frustration.  Mine too!  Can someone forward this to the Buffalo News?  It needs to be read by all Bills fans.

[Stephen Glassic]

Arguably the most exciting game in NFL history and most likely the biggest roller coaster ride ever for both Bills and Chiefs fans. The multiple whiplashes at the end were dizzying. Unfortunately, the Chiefs fans got a ticket to the next ride.