Jim Burns needed a boost. Nervous and wind-swept, standing smack in the center of the Bills logo at Ralph Wilson Stadium’s midfield on Sunday, Burns pulled a false start as egregious as any Demetrius Bell has committed.
A Buffalo native and U.S. Army major, Burns drew a blank during the first few bars of the national anthem and stopped.
Silence. Crickets.
That’s when the slightly less than 70,000 diehards stepped in, giving Burns the next line in unison. He listened, collected himself, then re-started as the crowd chanted loudly behind him.
Apparently, it takes a community to raise a child, and sing the Star Spangled Banner.
Unfortunately, it takes a real football team to excite that community, even one that’s so passionate it waits with bated breath to hear the team’s first-round draft choice, mentally carving a spot on the Wall of Fame before they’ve played a single snap.
Buffalo loves football. Maybe that’s why it’s not enamored with the Bills.
For the first time in recent memory, the attendance at Sunday’s 31-10 drubbing started with a six. Large pockets of empty seats scattered the corners of the upper bowl. They had company in the fourth quarter, after a failed fake punt and a Ryan Fitzpatrick interception pushed the franchise closer to yet another losing season.
That’s not to say those in attendance weren’t boisterous; they sustained their singing through the anthem to give Burns a rousing send-off. It was one of the day’s loudest cheers.
Unfortunately, little about the on-field product warranted such enthusiasm. The Bills’ defense was good through the first quarter and a half, but couldn’t keep Matt Schaub and Co. from eventually getting its engine revved up.
And on offense, a team geared for one big stab at a playoff berth continued to stab itself in the leg.
And its fans in the heart.
The Bills have lost seven of their last eight regular-season games at the stadium whose namesake got his Hall of Fame ring at halftime. He made a joke about rings, hinting that he’d never gotten one after a Super Bowl. Those in attendance feigned a smile, knowing full well that his decisions impacted that lack of jewelry.
There are occasional bright spots, like the play of Jairus Byrd who continued his assault on the record books with his sixth and seventh interceptions of the season, but watching the Texans hang 31 on the board after benching their leading rusher and losing their leading receiver to injury showed where the home squad truly sits.
Things are ugly, the prospects for the future don’t get any brighter, and fans are starting to make other plans on Sunday afternoon. Nobody believes this team has a playoff run in it, even though it sits just a few games out of the wildcard.
An interesting condemnation came from Texans’ defensive coordinator Frank Bush following the game, looking like a guy who hadn’t lost a wink of sleep leading up to a matchup with Lee Evans, Terrell Owens and Marshawn Lynch. Instead, Bush insisted the defense played one of its best games by “keeping it basic.”
That’s all it takes to beat an offense that couldn’t muster a first down for 26 minutes after halftime. For a team that again threw the ball as many time to Derek Fine as it did to Evans. For a team that bucked the conservative nature of its head coach by trying a wild fake punt/reverse to Justin Jenkins that essentially ended the game, simply because it couldn’t conjure another way to find a spark.
The Bills head into the bye week a Leodis McKelvin opening-night fumble from .500. They insist they haven’t given up on the season.
But after another in a long line of stinkers at home, you get the feeling their fans have.
