On Sunday, the Bills (2-0) will try to reverse a humiliating 15-game losing-streak against the mighty Patriots (2-0) at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park. Since beating the Pats, 16-13 in an overtime thriller on Nov. 5, 2000, the team has lost 20 of its last 21 games to their division foe in a stretch where the Patriots have taken home the Vince Lombardi trophy three times while the Bills have failed to make the playoffs even once.
Bill Clinton was president when this dark era in the Bills-Patriots rivalry began. You could still go through airport security with a pair of shoes on. I was 27 and single. I’m now 38, with two sons, ages 2 and 4. I’ve moved in and out of the country three times, and encountered numerous life changes since the Bills’ last win over the Patriots. But the one constant has been watching my team lose to the Patriots twice each year.
After 11 consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance, my expectations for the team this season were beyond modest. I hoped they’d go 0-16 and win the Andrew Luck lottery. But the Bills threw everyone a curve by burying the Chiefs in week one, and staging an impressive comeback from an 18-point halftime deficit against the Raiders in week two, to start the season 2-0 for the first time since 2008.
Suddenly, Bills fans are allowing themselves to think big. Could our hapless team possibly beat our longtime nemesis, the Patriots, on Sunday?
Bills fans are accustomed to losing.
| Longest NFL series winning streaks all-time | |
| Dolphins over Bills (1970-79) | 20 |
| 49ers over Rams (1990-98) | 17 |
| Patriots over Bills (2003-present) | 15 |
| Dolphins over Colts (1980-87) | 14 |
| Chargers over Raiders (2003-2010) | 13 |
| Cowboys over Cardinals (1990-96) | 13 |
A recent list on SB Nation of the top 25 worst moments in Bills history puts the Patriots losing streak at only moment #24. How can fans root for a team that has inflicted 23 “moments” even worse than an eight-year losing streak against a hated division rival?
My indoctrination into the sweet sorrow that is being a Bills fan came in the 1970s during another prolific losing streak. In those days, before the era of fantasy football and PlayStation, it wasn’t socially acceptable to simply root for individual players or pick a random team in another city to support. If you were born in Buffalo, you were stuck with the Bills.
The team went oh-for-the-70s (0-20) against the Dolphins before finally beating Don Shula and company 17-7 on Sept. 7, 1980. A streak that started in the Nixon years, during the Vietnam conflict, finally ended just weeks before the election of Ronald Reagan. As I grew up, the team got better and even went to the Super Bowl during each of my four years of college. But as everyone knows, they never brought the Vince Lombardi Trophy to Buffalo and fans are still scarred from all of the team’s well-documented losing streaks.
Like any masochistic sports fans, we try to make analyze and make sense of the losing. Perhaps in trying to quantify the team’s wretched failures we can bury their demons once and for all. Dissecting horrific losing streaks is not a pleasant exercise, but here goes.
As bad as the Bills oh-for-the-70’s against the Dolphins was, an argument can be made that the current streak of losing 20 of the last 21 to the Patriots is even worse. Both losing streaks featured some close losses–six losses in each steak were by 7 points or less. The Patriots won three Super Bowls during their streak against the Bills and the Dolphins won twice.
But the Patriots have blown the Bills out by 21 points or more eight times, whereas the Dolphins did the same on just four occasions. In the worst year of this stretch against the Patriots, 2007, the team was destroyed 56-10 and 38-7. While the losses against the Dolphins came just as predictably, there was no single year in which fans had to endure two blowout losses.
And during the streak against the Dolphins, Bills fans could also direct their ire, at least partially, against the schedule-makers. The latest the Dolphins were ever forced to play in snowy Buffalo was a Nov.18 contest in 1973. And in those 10 years, the first game of the series was played in Buffalo and the second in Miami eight times. Surely the Bills would have won at least once if the Dolphins had to play in Buffalo in December, right?
What excuses can Bills loyalists like myself conjure for our team’s current stretch of futility against the Patriots? We can complain about some bad luck in two overtime losses, and how the breaks just didn’t go our way in the four losses that were by just three points or less. But the cold, hard, disgusting fact is that the Bills have been awful and the Patriots have been very good.
Are the Bills going to turn the page on this dismal chapter in the team’s history on Sunday? As a nine-point underdog, few are betting on it. But if the team somehow pulls off the upset, don’t be surprised if Bills fans pour onto the field and take out years of frustration on the goalposts.
I was eight years old when the Bills beat the Dolphins for the first time in my life. My sons haven’t lived long enough to see a Bills win over the Patriots. I hope they won’t have to wait as long as I did to see the end of a disgraceful losing streak. But if the team loses again, Bills fans will know how to look on the bright side. At least we’ll be back in the Andrew Luck sweepstakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment