SPECTACULARLY AVERAGE: THE STORY OF THE 2008 BUFFALO BILLS

by Neate Sager, Out Of Left Field

The best super-obscure analogy for the Bills is that they're the NFL equivalent of Black Label beer back in the day.

This sort of ties in with the Bills' Long Relocation to Toronto. Up here in Canada, there's a writer named Russell Smith. One night a few years ago I caught him on TV late at night, on one of those public television shows you never seek out but sometimes happen upon late at night when you're flipping through channels, wondering, how you wasted your life.

In Smith's telling, Black Label was the beer for arty 20-something crowd he ran with in Toronto as a young man. It was cheap, plus it was 8% alcohol, meaning you could get a nice buzz on every so often and still fit into your leather pants the next day. It offered a kick and kitsch all at once. That's what comes to mind with the future Toronto Bills, seriously.

There is a certain need on my end to keep tabs on the Bills, if for no other reason than the jokes. They haven't been to the playoffs since the Doug Flutie/Rob Johnson nightmare at the start of this decade. Personally speaking, I also pure flat-out loathed them during their glory days in the early '90s and seldom had one good thing to say about them. (Pointing out that the K-Gun offence was basically just CFL football with an 11-man offence was a sure-fire way to piss off associates who favoured puffy Bills windbreakers, as was the style at the time.)

It's only taken a Music City Miracle, the outsourcing of the team's fanbase to Southern Ontario and a looming relocation to Canada (every 200 years, we just have to devastate Buffalo, just because) to whip up some genuine support for the Bills. There's a certain nostalgia about following the Bills, because I'm old enough to be a sad bastard, plus, there's the off-chance that this edition might actually do something, like go 10-6 and squeak into the playoffs.

Passing game
It also makes sense to have two versions of this, one for when man-moving left tackle extraordinaire Jason Peters is moved to end his holdout and one for if the stugots actually sits out the entire season. The left tackle makes that much of a difference for the Bills, especially since their quarterback, Trent Edwards, and his receivers -- underrated Lee Evans, high-leaping rookie James Hardy, slot receiver Josh Reed and little Roscoe Parrish (pictured), go together like the living room n furniture in your first post-college apartment.

Hardy looks like a fantasy football sleeper and the Bills' passing game is bound to improve from third-worst in the NFL (the pass defence was fourth-worst, yet still these guys were a couple plays from a winning season). Oh, and J.P. Losman is now at the stage where he can be considered the ninth-best backup QB in the NFL by Sports Illustrated. Of course, bear in mind, that was one spot ahead of Rex Grossman. All backup quarterbacks are excellent backup quarterbacks, anyways. The good part about Trent Edwards is he won't make a lot of mistakes -- his paradigm game is probably to have an interception-free day with maybe one TD pass.

Running game
Marshawn Lynch ran for more than 1,100 yards last season. He'll be good until the Bills burn him out from overuse in three or four years. His blocking group is decent without Peters, exceptional with him. Sorry, I'm not much for rhapsodizing about the running game.

Pass defence
Forget Bruce Smith -- where have you gone, Bryce Paup? You stop the pass by adding pressure, not coverage. Aaron Schobel is the most reasonable facsimile of a pass-rush threat, and he's got no one who can draw double-teams away from him when it's third-and-10. The Bills need to start getting some heat on opposing QBs, rather than being vanilla.

Their cover guys -- Terrence McGee, Jabari Greer, the rookie Leodis McKelvin -- rate pretty well. It's just that no one can stick to good receivers on every passing play.

Run defence
The Bills picked up Marcus Stroud for the middle of their defensive line and signed weakside linebacker Kavika Mitchell away from the Giants. They'll probably continue to play the run well, and the linebacker Paul Posluszny is going to bear watching after his rookie season was a write-off due to a broken arm.

Special teams
The coverage and return teams are probably worth close to one win a season for the Bills. Rian Lindell and Brian Moorman have to be one of the league's longest-running kicker and punter tandems; Ralph Wilson Stadium might have been built around them for all we know. Parrish led the NFL in returning punts last season and McKelvin will also provide a threat.

Wrapping up
McKelvin had a kickoff-return touchdown in the pre-season game in Toronto, which provides a somewhat awkward way of seguing back to the Big Inevitability. Bills owner Ralph Wilson is still breathing and the buzzards from Toronto are already circling, waiting to move the team to Toronto, where the luxury boxes will be full, but the only tailgating on gamedays will be officially sponsored and require you to pay a cover charge.

There will be blood on Toronto and Southern Ontario's hands when the annexation of the Bills is completed, but try to not see this simply as shameless opportunism from the Rogers Communication oligarchy, even if they are already dancing on Wilson's gravesite. It's been almost 200 years since Buffalo was torched in the War of 1812, so Canada is long past due to devastate that town again.

The Bills look like a good young team -- hence my renewed interest, even though I cheer for the Minnesota Vikings. They're nothing spectacular, but they might be able to rides their defence and special teams to a 10-6 record and an AFC wild-card berth. In other words, they might look average and nondescript, but they get the job done, and they pack a wallop -- just like the Black Label of yore.