Crappiest. Football. Day. Ever.

Man, yesterday sucked to watch football. It started with me watching the Buffalo Bills basically roll over for the Atlanta Falcons (a quite good, but quite beatable team), and then I watched the Pittsburgh Steelers fail to stop the New England Stupid Patriots, who once again did their patented "We're just good enough to not lose" schtick that has people all a-quiver over just how dreamy they are. It all made me want to vomit.

So, what of the Bills? Well, I'm still not giving up on J.P. Losman, despite his incredibly bad performance yesterday. It's still the case that the mistakes he's making are ones that experience will (hopefully) correct. He's still not seeing the whole field, he's still failing to pick up blitzers, and he's still hesitating on his throws and telegraphing when exactly he's about to throw the ball. I listened to one caller to a Buffalo sports-talk radio show call Losman a "bust", only to hear the hosts make the points that I've been making on Monday mornings at The Store: Peyton Manning as a rookie set the record for interceptions thrown in a season; the Bills were 4-12 in Jim Kelly's first year as starter. This is going to take time.

The lack of patience, of course, stems from the fact that the Bills haven't made the playoffs since 1999, coupled with the fact that in today's NFL teams can go from cellar-dwellers to title contenders in a much shorter time than it's apparently taking the Bills. But with a new guy like Losman, the results we're seeing right now are inevitable, no matter when you start him; if the Bills had kept Drew Bledsoe around and then given Losman the reins in 2006, then we'd see what we're seeing now in 2006. So I say, get it out of the way now. If there are lumps to be taken, take them now.

But that doesn't mean that the Bills have to feed the kid to the lions every week. Here's some stuff that's annoying me:

:: The lack of a really decent tight end to work the middle of the field, short-to-medium yardage, and give Losman a big target safety-valve. I don't care if Mark Campbell gets open on the sideline patterns; that's not the kind of safety-valve thing that Losman needs. He has to have a reliable big target on whom he can dump the ball when he's in trouble.

:: The lack of pass protection. Longtime readers know that I'm constantly bitching about the Bills' offensive line, but the line hasn't been any better than average in years -- probably since the end of the Super Bowl run in 1993. And while I think you can get to the Super Bowl, and win it, with an average defense, nobody's getting to the Super Bowl with an average offensive line. Trey Teague is simply not a good center. I lost count yesterday of the number of plays in which he snapped the ball, squared to meet his defender -- and then turned to see what his defender was doing, since the guy was already in the backfield. Without a good offensive line, the Bills will not be able to control the clock, establish rhythm, control the line of scrimmage, or give J.P. Losman time to study the field and apply the things he learns from watching game film.

:: Is Losman incapable of passing from a snap under center, with a four-receiver set? It seems that every time the Bills call a passing play, Losman sets up in the shotgun. Geez, you might as well have Crash Davis tell the batter it's gonna be a fastball. They need to vary the look somewhat on passing downs. It's easy for opponents to defend the Bills' passing game when the passing game is so blindingly obvious.

And then there's the defense -- the magnificent, "We wanna be the '85 Bears or the '00 Ravens" defense.

Well, I'm not going to go digging through the records, but I very much doubt that either the '85 Bears or the '00 Ravens ever allowed a team to come into their home stadium and run for over two hundred yards against them. I also very much doubt that any of those historic defenses had to rely on constant blitzing to get pressure on the opposing quarterback, and I very much doubt that any of those historic defenses would have approached a guy like Michael Vick -- who's at his best when he's running for his life -- with a defensive scheme designed specifically to make him run for his life.

I see no reason, at this juncture, to alter my original projection for the Bills. Losman will struggle for quite a while (if he's still playing this badly in November, I'll start to worry a bit), and the defense just isn't good enough to carry the Bills to the playoffs. So, to the extent that this season is playing out the way I expected, I'm not disappointed, exactly. But it still sucks to be a Bills fan and constantly feel like the team is just a year or two away from making a run.

Stupid Patriots...hate them so much...Stupid Brady....