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Bills Will Get To The Promised Land

ORCHARD PARK – Let’s pick up where we left off last week.

On the one hand, there’s a sense that the Buffalo Bills, five years after breaking the long playoff drought, remain understandably new to winning. Although this seems to be a very good team that is on the verge of being a great team, the team seems to be not quite past the verge.

On the other hand, being on the verge is an enormous improvement over the playoff drought. And if the Bills play as well as they can on both offense and defense, there’s a sense that no one can beat them.

Of course the consequent in the previous sentence – “there’s a sense that no one can beat them” – depends on the antecedent: “if the Bills play as well as they can on both offense and defense.”

It’s no secret that the antecedent didn’t come to pass during the American Football Conference divisional-round playoff game at home on Jan. 22.

To put it in simpler terms, nothing broke the Bills’ way.

Nothing.

Absolutely, positively nothing.

Meanwhile, everything broke the Cincinnati Bengals’ way.

Everything.

Absolutely, positively everything.

As a result, the Bengals defeated the Bills, 27-10, which is misleading, because it wasn’t really that close.

This game, according to Wikipedia, is only the fourth home-playoff-game loss for the Bills. The others were during the 1963, 1966, and 1996 seasons.

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Maybe the entire Bills’ organization was understandably exhausted from the 2022 regular season. Among the difficulties was having to dig out from a snowstorm and travel to an out-of-town stadium for a home game, because the weather at home didn’t permit playing at home. And then there was the trauma of almost losing teammate Damar Hamlin – either on the field or in a Cincinnati hospital – after he suffered cardiac arrest during the Jan. 2 Monday Night Football game against the Bengals in Cincinnati.

The latter would be especially understandable. If it hadn’t rattled the Bills and the entire Bills’ organization to the core, one would have wondered about their humanity.

Meanwhile, the Bengals deserve credit. On Jan. 22, they played very well. And for the reasons explained in last week’s column: As disappointing as the loss is, if the Bills had to lose another game during the 2022 season, it was good that the loss was to the Bengals, with whom and with whose fans the Bills and their fans now have a kinship, born of difficulty, that far transcends winning and losing.

As this column noted three weeks ago, decency, character, and faith prevailed during Monday Night Football in Cincinnati on Jan. 2. We should all remember that the next time any false prophets of decency, character, or faith present themselves to us. We should tell them to watch Monday Night Football.

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Whatever the reason for the loss, sometimes in life it just happens that nothing breaks one side’s way, and everything breaks the other side’s way.

The Bills and their fans know this. They have been on both sides many times.

Many, many times.

So have the Bengals and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The AFC has three premiere teams: The Bengals, the Bills, and the Chiefs. It doesn’t take a football genius to understand that in any one season, at most two of them can make it to the AFC championship game, and only one can make it to the game thereafter.

For the 2022 season, the Bills aren’t among the two and won’t be the one.

Nevertheless, there is much to be thankful for and cheerful about.

As noted last week, the current Bills’ team may well be the best since the inception of the franchise in 1960.

The current Bills’ team and the Bills’ fans will get to the promised land. The question isn’t whether. The question is when. And how many times.

If you don’t believe this column, believe one of the National Football League’s best coaches ever, ever, ever, who this season said that for the next decade, the road to AFC East title goes through Buffalo.

At Hilary and Randy Elf’s wedding reception, Mrs. Elf, who was moving from Southern California to Western New York, committed – at the reception DJ’s, not her husband’s, prodding – to rooting for the Bills.

COPYRIGHT ç 2023 BY RANDY ELF

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