R Stillers 26, Bills 3

Heavens, this was one of those games where you're left scraping the bottom of an incredibly low barrel to find good things to say. Yeesh, that was bad. Oh well, at least my second favorite team, the Steelers, won.

Woo-hoo!

:: Terrence McGee runs the kickoffs back nicely.

:: The Bills at least play hard. What always bothered me when they stunk up the field during the Gregg Williams/Drew Bledsoe era was the way they just looked lethargic when they were getting clobbered. The current crop of youngsters actually look pissed when they're getting beat down badly. Not that this augurs anything in particular for their future, but hey, I'll take Lee Evans losing his cool in the waning moments of the fourth quarter and committing two consecutive unsportsmanlike conduct penalties over Drew Bledsoe's monotone insistence in the postgame interview that he's "so mad he doesn't know what to do".

:: Brian Moorman's a good punter.

Meh.

:: The Bills' offensive line. Pass blocking was still bad, run blocking was occasionally adequate. The Jason Peters/Derrick Dockery side was supposed to be very strong, but they allowed lots of pressure to get through.

:: Defensive effort. "Bend but don't break" will eventually get you killed, if your offense can't put points on the board, but those guys put forth the best effort they could. Sadly, it's not even close to enough because their talent level just isn't up there.

:: JP Losman. Again, he wasn't a factor one way or the other. He didn't have a bad game, he didn't have a good game, I'm not sure that he even had a game. The guy has got to start making plays once in a while. Two games, and aside from a couple of nice runs, no plays made from QB. Right now he looks worse than he did last year, if only because he doesn't look any better. If this keeps up, we may be looking at some extended playing time for Trent Edwards before this year is out.

D'oh!

:: Defensive results. I praised their effort above, but a boss of mine used to say, "Don't confuse effort with results". They got pounded hard, giving up over 400 yards for the second straight week. Rare pressure on the opposing QB, and when they do get pressure, it rarely results in a sack. The middle of the field is always conceded to opposing receivers. Sure, they work hard, but the results are more than 400 yards and 26 points yielded.

:: Offensive results. Three points, which resulted from a drive that began in Steeler territory after a McGee kickoff return. Receivers don't get open. Losman can't find anyone, and seems more and more to lack the finesse needed to make those really difficult throws. No good tight end play. The offensive line still falling apart and never looking to really exert any kind of control over the line of scrimmage.

Next up: the Bills travel to New England, which will likely be able to take a week off from cheating in order to beat up on this team. Somehow Aaron Schobel will get his usual two or three sacks of Tom Brady, since he always seems to play well against Brady, but that will be that.

Wow, this is shaping up to be a bad year.