NFL Week Five: Doormats no more?!

The Buffalo Bills defeated the Cincinnati Bengals yesterday, which is the good news. What's the bad news? They needed overtime to do it, at home.

I'm not sure what to feel after this game. There's a certain sense of "Geez, if they gotta work that hard to beat the Bengals, they can't be that good at all!" But then, the Bengals really aren't as bad this year as they have been, and they may actually be making the first step up from perennial doormat of the NFL. A lot of times, when an awful franchise finally starts rebuilding successfully, they first go from being the bad team that everybody wants to play to being the bad team that nobody wants to play. The Bengals played a tough, physical game yesterday, and they showed enormous compusure in doing so.

(Incidentally, in yesterday's Buffalo News, the amazing -- meaning "stupid" -- sports writer Jerry Sullivan complained about the fact that the Bills had spoken in pretty positive terms last week about the Bengals as an opponent. "They're still the crappy Bengals!" whined Sullivan as he scoffed at the idea that the Bengals are a team on the rise. Sullivan apparently can't grasp the idea that maybe the Bengals are improving, maybe the Bills know it, and maybe even if they do still suck, the Bills simply didn't want to go on record in the media as saying something like "These guys suck and we're going to kill them." You know, part of that whole "sportsmanship" thing. Hmmmm....Jerry, Andrew....maybe it's a "Sullivan" thing. [Apologies to any readers who may be named Sullivan.])

So anyway, what to make of yesterday's victory? Well, I'm the kind of football fan who looks for stuff to be optimistic about. Maybe, just maybe, head coach Gregg Williams and offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride have finally realized that just because you don't gain fifteen yards the very first time you rush the ball in the first quarter does not necessarily mean that your running game is stuffed. In the second half, when they finally decided to go back to basics and just put bodies on bodies and simply run the thing, good results happened. And their re-commitment to the run also allowed Eric Moulds to get open on a couple of very key plays, most notably a fourth-down that, had it failed, would have cost the Bills the game.

I'm starting to wonder if Gregg Williams was recently the victim of some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion that compels him to do idiotic things on special-teams plays. This time it cropped up when the Bills had a 13-7 lead in the fourth, and the defense had forced the Bengals to punt. Fairly simple idea, right? You take the punt, and then put in your power running game to eat up as much clock as possible. Even if you go three-and-out, you still take two minutes off the clock and put the Bengals into a desperation mode. But what does Williams do? He OKs an attempt to block the punt, which results in a roughing-the-kicker penalty that keeps the Bengals' drive going. Cincinnati scored the tying touchdown on that drive. It seems that Williams insists on doing something amazingly dumb once in each game.

The Bills' defense has been receiving criticism lately, unfairly in my eyes. They are allowing more rushing yardage than I would like, but opposing teams are requiring a lot of carries to do it. I'd still like to see more pass rush; they only had one sack yesterday. But they are still allowing less than fifteen points per game, and they haven't had the luxury lately of playing with a lead. The defense has kept the Bills in the game each week, which is fine by me. If your team's offense is incapable of putting up more than fourteen points per game, which is what the Bills have averaged in the last three games, then you'd better have the equivalent of the 1985 Bears' or the 2000 Ravens' defenses if you expect the D to win for you.

I should also note the almost complete disappearance of second-year receiver Josh Reed. The guy simply isn't producing right now, and it seems to me that it might have been unreasonable for the Bills to expect him to seamlessly replace Peerless Price in just his second year. Receivers tend to take several years to really blossom in the NFL, and I think fans tend to forget that even with Price's amazing year last year, it took him until his fourth year to put up those numbers; fans also tend to forget that Eric Moulds didn't come of age until his third season, so much so that prior to that third year, the local paper actually labeled Moulds a "bust". Josh Reed is still on pace to have a better year this year than either of Eric Moulds's first two seasons. Thus, I think the Bills should move Bobby Shaw into the number two spot, and allow Reed to continue to develop and regain his confidence.

One last thought about yesterday's game: the TV play-by-play guy, Dan Criqui, was awful. He couldn't go two sentences without reminding the home viewers of how the wind was a factor yesterday (and it was; the winds at Ralph Wilson Stadium can be treacherous), and when the Bengals scored to take the lead, he actually announced that they were going to win. Not "The Bengals have put themselves in position to win", not "The Bengals might win", but "The Bengals are going to win today!" Oy.

Anyway, that's that. Next week the Bills go on the road to pay a visit to their winless division rivals, the New York Jets.

:: Until yesterday, I had never seen the "Get the field goal, recover the onside kick, get the touchdown" strategy actually work in the last two minutes of a game. The Redskins almost pulled it off, but the two-point conversion failed. Bummer. (Not that I was rooting for the Redskins, but it was such a cool comeback that I wanted it to succeed and then have the Eagles win it in OT.) It figures that Donovan McNabb would have a pretty unimpressive game the day after I insist that he's not overrated, but hey, that tends to happen. Last year I vehemently defended Drew Bledsoe in a post, and he promptly went out the very next game and went something like 10-for-60, fifty yards, and nine interceptions. Or something like that.

:: Does Rams owner Georgia Frontiere wake up in the middle of the night with cold sweats as the realization that forcing Dick Vermiel out as her head coach maybe wasn't the best idea? I'm just wondering.

:: OK, which of these teams is the least likely to be "for real": Dallas, Seattle, or Carolina? Yeesh!

:: It's funny how every year in the NFL there is one division that can possibly be taken by an 8-8 team. All hail the AFC North!