It's the coaching! No, it's the QB! No, it's the kicker!

OK, now that several days have past since the Buffalo Bills ended a pretty surprising 9-7 season with a disappointing 29-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, I note that lots of folks in Buffalo are still trying to figure out what went wrong in that game. It's interesting how, in a town like Buffalo where football is pretty much the only game in town (even moreso what with the Sabres locked out along with the rest of the NHL), the level of anger at a Bills loss as evidenced on the sports talk radio shows is at the same level on Thursday as it was on Sunday just after the game's conclusion.

Anyway, what happened in that game? How did a team that had been on a six-game winning streak lose at home in a game where a victory would have put them in the playoffs to a team that had nothing to play for at all, and thus gave its backups extensive playing time?

My answer is: coaching. I don't want to disparage Mike Mularkey and his coaching staff, since they certainly did better in a single year than Gregg Williams ever did in three, but he was still a rookie head coach, and it showed in the last game -- especially when compared to the effort of Steelers head coach Bill Cowher (who, incidentally, has been with his team longer than any other coach currently active in the NFL). So what was the difference between the two coaching efforts? One team was ready for adversity, and the other was not.

One theme that has come up repeatedly in the newspaper articles and the talk radio shows is that when Bills kicker Rian Lindell missed a short field-goal in the third quarter, the Bills completely lost the momentum of the game. They never played well again, even though the missed FG still left them one point ahead of the Steelers. Simply put, the Bills were not prepared to deal with adversity in the "big game" situation.

The Steelers also faced some adversity in the third quarter. Leading 16-10, Tommy Maddox threw an interception, which the Bills immediately ran back for the touchdown that gave them their only lead in the game. Did the Steelers, suddenly down by a point after a bad throw, panic? Did they lose focus? Did they give up? No.

So one team was ready for adversity, and the other wasn't. That goes back to coaching. Not the "X's and O's" stuff the coaches do, and not the game planning, but the pure leadership and setting of the tone that constitutes the most important part of a coach's job.

The Bills faced quite a bit of adversity this season, and Mike Mularkey deserves a great deal of credit for steering them through it. But he couldn't get them through one last bit of it in a game they should have been able to win. Bill Cowher, on the other hand, was able to inspire his backups to play like they meant it in a game whose outcome had no bearing on his teams' playoffs one way or the other.

On the basis of this one game, I've been reconsidering Cowher as a coach.