Buffalo Rumblings
The Bills are riding high and enjoying their bye week, which allows us the time to be frank about these latest Reacts results
I’ll just get this out of the way and say that I’m not all that confident in this week’s SB Nation Reacts results. Schadenfreude, shenanigans, tomfoolery, trolling... whatever you want to call it — it feels very much in play this week. Otherwise, how in the (insert favorite curse word) do you explain just 61% of Rumblings voters being confident in the direction of the Buffalo Bills?
I had already been taken a bit back after last week’s result in what I saw to be a low 78% approval rating, but I understood the hesitation. I even predicted that this week’s figure would be markedly different based Buffalo’s Week 12 effort. But I suspected far more people to be on board with the team after they knocked the Kansas City Chiefs off their unbeaten pedestal, which had grown to 15 games strong. The Chiefs hadn’t lost since last Christmas.
Speaking of holidays, we’re at the doorstep of Thanksgiving and Bills Mafia has plenty to be thankful for this year. There’s zero drama hovering over One Bills Drive this week, which is far different than how the bye week played out in 2023. Buffalo Rumblings covered all that here, and here, if you need refreshers on what happened around last season’s bye week.
Yet here, things took an unexpected turn. I’m left thinking a few things...
Success in professional sports can be difficult to manage at times, whether you’re the one directly impacting it or those left to bask in its glory. There’s nowhere to go but down (even if it takes retirement by Tom Brady), right?
I’m not ready to believe that Bills Mafia are so jaded that they’re willing to ignore this team’s history in the 21st century. It’s possible more fans than we realize have zero connection to the Super Bowl-era Bills, and don’t fully comprehend just how difficult it is to accomplish what they did even if they never won a Lombardi trophy. Those Bills were really good, but far too often they struggled with luck in the biggest moments.
But this is about the already historic tenure we’re smack dab in the middle of with Josh Allen and Sean McDermott — a pair of dudes who are without a doubt fully dialed-in about what’s at stake this season and beyond.
I’m not trying to convince any Bills fan to change their tune if they are unhappy. It’s anyone’s right to be so even when it doesn’t make sense to the larger crowd. I welcome those opinions critical about the day-to-day minutiae, because it means someone’s looking deeper into the situation (most of the time). Understand that I don’t want and do not expect this to be a rose-colored, 100% approval week in and week out. Hive mentality rarely works in these exercises.
But this?...
