Week 11: New England at Buffalo

When these two teams met in Week 3, we knew what was going to happen in that game. Everyone knew. The Patriots, even then, looked likely to score 38 points in every game – they did so in the first two, and then did it again against Buffalo – and the Bills were still reeling from numerous injuries and the near-paralysis of TE Kevin Everett in Week 1. We knew the Patriots would beat the Bills. We just didn’t know where things would go after that.

As this rematch drifted closer and closer on the schedule, these two teams have drifted further apart in our minds. We’ve come to like the overachieving Bills, while the Patriots’ glowering dominance has gone from merely tasteless to emerge as a bona fide danger to the future of the American experiment. Well, not really, but they’ve gotten a lot more annoying. So annoying, in fact, that we will – for just the second time this season – get all first-person-singular on you. This is me talking, and should in no way be confused for football analysis. There will probably be a little bit of that at the end of the piece, but if you follow the NFL even a little bit, you don’t need me to tell you that this game is going to be lopsided, and that the Patriots will win.

Anyway, my dislike for the Patriots is, to a certain degree, a matter of temperament. On one level, I never like juggernauts: there’s nothing there to relate to, and since the Patriots are not – as the Onion headline puts it – “the sports team from my area,” I don’t really have any love for them. In a broader sense, though, bullies who somehow act as if they’ve been wronged are, for reasons political and personal, not my type of dudes. And as Bill Belichick inexplicably continues to address the press with the same look of smoldering/confused rage that Harrison Ford brings to his “give me back my son/wife/child/soup/lhasa apso” line readings; as his team continues to hit their “it doesn’t matter” press conference marks like a bunch of beefy White House press secretaries; as the team continues to wallop opposing teams by outsized margins; as all this rolls dully, dominantly on, one thing has become clear. That is this: I dislike these Patriots as much or more than I’ve ever disliked any NFL team.

And at the same time, this other thing has been happening: the Bills, despite being destroyed by injuries – this is one instance in which the word “decimated” (literally, to reduce by ten percent) actually understates the severity of their personnel shortages – have managed to go on a totally irrational winning four-game streak of their own and somehow win me over in the process. This doesn’t mean I’m wearing an Alex Van Pelt jersey around the apartment and hanging out on Bills message boards hoping for hot Ashton Youboty scuttlebutt, and it certainly doesn’t lead me to believe for even a moment in the playoff viability of this bunch, but I like the team. (And if you’ve got a Van Pelt jersey, holler at me)

Buffalo has put together an impressive run despite markedly unimpressive rankings in nearly every statistical category (if you were curious: 31st in yards per game; 27th in yards-allowed per game). Much of this has been a result of playing weak teams – if they’d started a plate of wings, two tackling sleds and DE Chris Kelsay up front against the Dolphins in Week 10, they probably still would’ve won – but it’s also a reflection that something is working up there. The Bills have some talent, most notably rookie RB Marshawn Lynch (out for Week 11 with a leg injury) and Kelsay, a prototypically gritty defensive lineman. But as is also the case with the Patriots, the Bills’ success is clearly rooted to a large degree in the fact that they believe in each other and are playing above their individual capabilities because of that. They’re just not jerks about it, and instead of representing a bunch of odious yuppies in pre-distressed Red Sox hats, the Bills are the regional team of Western New York’s dour, bad-attitude rust belt. They’re from Buffalo, a depression-intensive metropolis that has been covered in snow since late July and where the new mayor was elected on a one-bar-for-every-citizen initiative. They deserve some good news.

Of course, they’re not going to get it this week. Like pretty much every team the Pats will face until the Steelers visit Foxboro in Week 13, the Bills will be plowed under. They’ll probably play tough – they were huge in their last nationally televised game, nearly stealing a win from the Cowboys – but they will certainly not have enough talent (healthy or otherwise) to hang with New England.

There are real-world parallels to that sort of thing, and I’m tempted to draw them, but, finally, this is a football game, and if it reflects some broad lessons about the mad vanity of power in our culture, it’s mostly by accident. That said, the previous statement doesn’t mean those reflections haven’t done much to determine which team I’ll be cheering for, or inform why. Those little moments when the fake world of sports and the real world in which we live begin to parallel one another – when we see one in the other, and can find a new level of engagement with both because of that – is what makes sports interesting, for me, as much as the athletic virtuosity on display. It’s what makes this stuff worth talking about, and it’s why those dead-eyed Patriots are wrong when they blithely mouth the words “it doesn’t matter” after every joyless win.

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