Some people are fans of the Buffalo Bills. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Buffalo Bills. This 2015 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: The Buffalo Bills
Your 2014 record: 9-7. REACH FOR GLORY!
As you recall, the most amusing thing about the Bills’ 2014 season was when head coach Doug Marrone exploited a contract loophole that guaranteed him $4 million just to leave the team. And the best part is that Marrone overplayed his hand, took the money, and waited for another head coaching job to come rolling in, only to end up marooned in Jacksonville as a lowly assistant. This is how it works in Buffalo: everyone ends up embarrassed. Only Doug Marrone could find a way to make an extra $4 million and still end up looking like a fucking idiot.
Anyway, Marrone’s desertion allowed the Bills to fulfill their destiny by hiring this man…
Your coach: HOW THE FUCK YOU DOIN’, BOYS?!!!
“Listen men, I have one goal and one goal only, and that is to LEAD THE LEAGUE IN PUNCHING. No one is EVER out-punching us, you hear me? If they score, you punch them right in the dick. We will cockpunch our way to a fucking title! ARE YOU WITH ME?!”
Only in Buffalo. Only Buffalo could Rex Ryan be welcomed as a conquering hero after averaging six wins per season over the past three years. I love Rex Ryan as much as the next fan, but a retread is a retread. Rex joins the seemingly endless list of retread coaches employed by the Bills: Wade Phillips, Chan Gailey, Joe Don Baker, etc. He just happens to be more fun than the rest of them. But you’re still only winning six games, man. Losing to New England doesn’t feel any better just because you made Tom Brady’s hand bleed.
Also: Rex STILL doesn’t know shit about offense. It’s 2015, and this man is openly talking about running the ball 50 times a game. WITH LESEAN MCCOY! Does Rex know that’s not how you use LeSean McCoy? LeSean McCoy does his best work in space for a pass-first offense. The poor bastard is gonna get murdered by Week 3 all because Rex mistook him for Earl Campbell. Shit, McCoy is hurt already! Does Rex even know what the quarterback of a team does? You guys are gonna love Rex and HATE his coaching.
Your quarterback: Matt Cassel. Matt fucking Cassel. Matt Cassel. You traded for Matt Cassel. All that bold talk from Rex and look at your goddamn QB situation. You are going to miss Kyle Orton so, so badly…
That’s about as good as it gets in Buffalo, kids. I picture the entire city fighting over a single old hamburger in an alleyway dumpster.
By the way, Matt Cassel is far from your only option at QB this season. EJ Manuel is still around. Let’s see how EJ is progressing!
Sounds about right. Bills fans are already talking themselves into Tyrod Taylor. That’s where we are, and it’s only August. Jesus.
What’s new that sucks: Percy Harvin! IK Enemkpali! Richie Incognito! Aaron Kromer! They’re all here: hazers, punchers, convicts, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers AND METHODISTS!!!!!!! This year, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the Bills fans punching each other in the parking lot and the Bills themselves. It’s gonna be fantastic. If the Bills can’t win, they may as well act like they’re in the second-lamest production ever of Suicide Squad.
Offensively, McCoy is bound to score more often at his private orgies. Harvin hasn’t been a dangerous receiving threat in over four years. The team drafted Karlos “Mystery Nut Surgery” Williams to fill the hole left by all of C.J. Spiller’s injuries. New tight end Charles Clay will be picked up and dropped by your fantasy team 50 times over eight weeks. And in those rare moments when Buffalo QBs can accurately deliver the ball to Sammy Watkins, he will drop it.
Also: Kiko Alonso was traded away for McCoy. Do not blow anyone for his jersey if offered.
What has always sucked: As always, the Bills remain the saddest franchise in pro football. Imagine living in an Arctic Circle weather station year round. Now imagine having a random stranger visit you in the middle of winter. You’re elated, right? REAL HUMAN CONTACT. You’re just overjoyed someone finally found you. That’s Buffalo. Take any warm football body—Orton, Rex, whomever. In the regular NFL world, they’re average schmucks. In Buffalo, they are SAVIORS. It’s like they showed up at your igloo door with fresh candles and a barrel full of whale oil.
People literally die at the Bills stadium. Half the home games need to be relocated during the season due to sudden onset Lake Effect sky avalanches. The new offensive line coach just beat the piss out of a kid over a lawn chair. The backup safety got his DMs doxxed by a porn star. J.J. Watt scores more TDs than their offense. Opposing fans troll them with laser pointers. The collective dignity of this team and this town was sold for a buck off Craigslist years ago…
Christ. I don’t even know what to say anymore. The Bills are our eternal harvesters of sorrow.
What might not suck: It’s Rex Ryan. You’ll play defense just well enough to wish you had an offense to go with it.
Hear it from Bills fans!
Kelsey:
If you’re reading this, it’s too late.
Leo:
I was in 3rd grade when the Bills last made the playoffs, I now have a real job and college debt.
Pat:
Our coach had to stop playing our 1st team defense in practice so that our shitty QBs could go a half second without getting sacked.
A:
Collin:
The first game I had ever been to in 2012, I left my seats to use the restroom at halftime. After standing in line for 20 minutes with my bladder about to burst, I finally got into the bathroom, and it was PACKED to the brim. Immediately to my left, I see a young kid washing his hands (his parents, nowhere in sight). Next to this kid, a grown man who was fat and bearded with terrible tattoo’s and a Terrell Owens Bills Jersey was pissing into the very same sink as the child washing his hands. NO ONE SAID ANYTHING TO STOP THIS. The image of that poor kids face is forever burned into my memory. He looked terrified, confused, utterly disgusted and will likely need years of therapy to recover from the psychological damage this scene was causing. Yet, no one in there stopped it from happening.
So, I yelled at this shitty excuse for a human, “Hey, what the fuck are you doing, man?! You’re basically pissing on this poor kid!” He looks back drunkenly with one eye half closed, contorting his disgusting physique in my direction and yells; “Hey, Hey, Heyey!” and like a pack of mind warped sheep, the crowd of drunken Buffalonian men reply in unison with their cacophonous chant “LET’S GO BUFFALO!”
This is my third year as a season ticket holder.
Jesse:
I’m a Bills fan that lives in New England. I just pulled in my driveway and was I was greeted with this. My neighbors (front running Pats fans) used the chalk my kids left out on the driveway. I couldn’t get mad at them, because I know they’re right. It’s gonna be a long season.
Zack:
The new owner made his fortune in fracking.
Randy:
Fuck the Bills with a Rob Ford-sized dildo.
Michael:
I just got through hating our head coach when he was with the Jets, but have managed to tell myself I was mistaken and he’s really a genius just needing a fair shot.
Bill:
The Bills are playing the Jets in week 17. It is all but guaranteed that Rex Ryan and the 9-6 Bills will be playing Chan Gailey, Fitzmagic, and the 3-12 Jets in Buffalo with a win-and-you’re-in scenario and several chances at symbolically expunging past demons. They will lose by 38 points.
Thomas:
The British burned this city during the War of 1812- I am pissed they haven’t come back to finish the job.
Matt:
All 3 QBs have just as much a chance of starting all 16 games as they do getting cut before training camp ends.
That doesn’t stop Tony in Cheektowaga from thinking we’re going to the Super Bowl this year.
Jake:
I’m 20 years old - 21 in November - and literally have no memory of ever watching my favorite team in a playoff game.
Dan:
All Bills fans have Stockholm Syndrome. I am honestly convinced that Greg Roman is going to scheme Tyrod Taylor into some hybrid of Colin Kaepernick, Joe Montana and Jesus Christ himself.
Fuck JP Losman
AJ:
Every year with fresh, ill-fated optimism pumped in by our inept management, I feel like a paraplegic telling all my friends I’m going to climb Everest.
BS:
Andy:
I’ve never seen more people make complete pigs and asses and fools out of themselves more than at Bills games.
Aaron:
From 2003 to 2010 the Bills drafted THREE Running Backs in the 1st round (McGahee, Lynch, Spiller), even though everyone knows that’s the easiest position to find talent in any round. (Or no round, Fred Jackson was an undrafted practice squad player!)
None of those 3 RBs are still on our roster. Meanwhile in that time span, we cut Joique Bell, gave away Marshawn for a 4th rd pick, then gave up a 4th for Lesean McCoy’s backup, Bryce Brown, only to give up our best LB to bring in Lesean, who at age 27, already has more career carries than Freddy Jackson and is declining faster than Radioshack stock.
Kerry:
They traded the 2nd pro bowl player they’ve drafted in this millennia for a running back on the decline who was so disgusted by the idea of coming to Buffalo they had to rework his contract so that he’ll be guaranteed to be overpaid into the next millennia.
Brad:
My friend and I were texting about the Bills for this upcoming season. He has completely bought into the team this year, and when I mentioned that they still don’t have a quarterback, his response was “Matt Cassel is the best QB we’ve had since Drew Bledsoe.”
That statement is 100% accurate and also one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read.
Edward:
- The #BillsMafia is worse than FSU Twitter
- OJ is still on the Wall of Fame
- We have the worst QB situation in the league (a league predicated on needing a great QB to contend) and the rubes who go to our dump of a stadium just set season ticket sales records because Rex said he wanted to “build a bully”
- Sometime soon our billionaire owner is going to demand hundreds of millions in public dollars for a new stadium in the city half the fans will hate because they can’t sit in the suburban parking lots drinking Fireball out of the finger holes of a bowling ball
- A simple Mylar balloon floated into the power lines during a game against the Chargers in 2008 (an NFL game being played in the 21st century, mind you) and knocked out power to the entire stadium for a quarter and a half
- The last time we won a playoff game, Don Shula was the opposing coach
- We gave our cheerleaders a handbook which in part detailed how to deal with menstruation, and forced them to take a “jiggle test”
- Labatt Blue is terrible
Tim:
Fuck Doug Marrone with T.O.’s key to the city
Jon:
Mike:
My first NFL game was as a nine year old when my Dad took the whole family to Rich Stadium. The fat drunk sitting next to me spent the entirety of the first half trying to get me to kiss my sister, who was 11, “because she’s cute.”
Matt:
As you may have heard, the city of Buffalo is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. In fact, there’s a lot of new construction on the waterfront; the Canalside development boasts a large boardwalk, free concerts, a canal system that turns into ice skating rinks in the winter, and HarborCenter, the Terry Pegula hockey complex. However, all of this development was done without paying attention to the underlying infrastructure, so even a moderate rainfall flushes the South Buffalo sanitary sewers right into the river, and the shiny new boardwalk is now adjacent to a slick of “floatables” and sewage.
This is a perfect metaphor for the Bills. They’ve got a loaded backfield, linebackers for days, possibly the best defensive line in football, a receiving corps that would make Dan Fouts cum in his pants, and nobody who can throw the goddamn ball.
We always forget the basics.
Reid:
I have a pair of Zubaz and two Zubaz hats that I wear regularly. I also have a Zubaz neck tie for formal occasions.
Richard:
I just got an email from the Bills inviting me to celebrate Cyrus Kouandjio’s birthday (Our rookie tackle who was so bad he couldn’t get any playing time on one of the worst offensive lines in the league) with 10% off tooth whitening at a local Buffalo dentist.
Ryan:
I have a signed Ryan Fitzpatrick shirt that is currently shoved into the back of a drawer.
John:
All Bills fans know, deep down, that Rex is only here because Atlanta said no.
Andrew:
I think every Buffalo game I’ve ever been to has involved urine.
My first game was against Miami in December. The only memories I have from that game was how shitty the Ralph looked and how awful the weather was. It was freezing rain and to keep warm I had a couple of beers. When I had to go to the bathroom I found a line roughly 100 men long. One guy just whipped his dick out, in the stadium concourse, and pissed all over the wall. Literally nobody said anything to him. I decided that maybe somebody should do something so I asked him what the hell he was doing and he replied, “I’ve been pissing on the Ralph for the past damn 20 years and I ain’t gonna stop now”. People then cheered him. We of course lost that game.
In my next game a very friendly gentleman decided he wasn’t going to wait for a urinal, so he was just peeing in the sink instead. Since nobody wanted to go near him a bunch of people just left without washing their hands, despite there being other sinks.
The best moment though has to be a late season game a couple years ago. Two buddies walk up to the pee trough and start doing their business. The guy on the left accidentally drops his glove into the trough, you know, the one filled with inhumane amounts of piss? He makes a sad “Ohhhh” as he leans down to get it. His friend, hammered, says “Huh?” and leans over, while still pissing, and drenches his friend’s entire arm. The first guy either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Maybe he just wanted to keep warm?
I was also there for the Johnny Manziel game last year. Fuck Johnny Manziel.
Submissions for the 2015 NFL previews are now closed. Next up: The Kansas City Chiefs.