Un-slack motherfucker: “Tell us one thing you hope people say about you”

The beer: Camp Pennant Blackout Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout
The record: 11–2
The headline: “It’s never been enough.” – Love Battery, “67”

The commentary: People say? Reader(s) say(s)? Here it is: “That dude blogged every goddamn week of the season.” So far, so good and so well avoiding the temptation to roll the bye week into next week’s review. You’re welcome.

Here’s my man Fred Kirsch on Thursday’s Patriots Unfiltered: “We’re back to meaningful games in December!” You’re fuckin-A right we are! Not like those Chiefs, those still-terrifying Chiefs, testing fate by mocking this “six seven” children’s sensation. Not more so than, say, one’s teenage daughter shouting “Six seven!” from the back seat upon hearing a Deep Tracks DJ identify Axis: Bold As Love as the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “second album of ’67.” One kid’s meme is another’s burning bra.

I’m running out of time here since I might get dragged (“dragged”) to a brewery craft fare before gametime and, likely, resort to Paramount Plus’s delayed-start feature. Wanna copy and paste another Yahoo article and throw in a few reactions to defend fair use?

After Chiefs blocked Buffalo’s way for years, are the Patriots back to box out the Bills… again?

[Vibrating.]

There’s a darkly comic, laugh-to-keep-from-crying feel about the Buffalo Bills these days.

Har! Har!

Their four Super Bowls, no-rings history is so well documented that “the Buffalo Bills of…” is shorthand for any repeated close-but-not-quite effort. They spent the first two decades of the 2000s staring up at the New England Patriots, winning exactly zero division titles between 1995 and 2020. Once the Patriots imploded, the Bills conquered the AFC East, five times and counting… only to slam against the immovable wall of the Kansas City Chiefs, season after season.

Hey, at least Trump was too poor to buy the team. The roster would be packed with Norwegians.

And now that the Chiefs at last are foundering on the rocks…

I mean, they are still in contention…

…now that the road to the Super Bowl runs past the wreckage of Kansas City…

Contention! Stop fucking around!

…look who’s back, once again ready to ruin yet another Buffalo season: the newly reconstituted, very dangerous, eleven-wins-and-counting New England Patriots. It’s enough to make Buffalo fans dive headfirst into a table, without any pregame lubrication to numb the pain.

Yes, but is it enough for them to buy up billboards on Route 1 if the Bills even up the series today?

Everything was looking so good this season for the Bills. Buffalo began the year with a massive come-from-behind victory against Baltimore, then ran off three more wins to get to 4–0. And then, a full-on face-punch from the Patriots, a 23–20 loss on a last-second field goal at home.

It tickle me down to my toe-oes!

Since then, Buffalo has struggled to put together any kind of consistent attack, oscillating between notable wins (Kansas City, Tampa Bay) and incomprehensible losses (Atlanta, Miami). Buffalo hasn’t won more than two straight games since September, which really doesn’t seem like a sustainable formula for success.

They’re 9–4, for crying out loud.

The Bills enter this weekend in the number six spot in the AFC playoff hunt, and it’s very much up in the air as to whether this is a good team with too-frequent lapses or a bad team bailed out by its generational quarterback.

Can both be right? There are no sure locks this year.

This weekend ought to bring more of an answer. The 9–4 Bills…

See??

…visit the 11–2 Patriots…

Unbelievable, really.

…for one of Sunday’s marquee games, a battle for both playoff positioning and, maybe, a divisional title. “It’s not going to be easy, this is a very good football team,” Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel said of the Bills earlier this week. “There’s a reason they’ve won this division five years in a row. A lot of respect for them. They’re never out of it.”

Today’s game is huge and Vrabel nailed it: I’ll stop worrying about the Bills once they’re eliminated from the playoffs.

That’s true, but Buffalo has a way of making things tougher on itself. The Bills needed to rally from fifteen points down to beat Baltimore in the season opener, and from ten points down last weekend against the Bengals. […] Buffalo’s real problem is turnovers; the Bills are just 1–4 when losing the turnover battle, as they did in week five against New England. Also of note: Buffalo is much better at home (6–1, with that one loss to New England) than on the road (3–3, to be updated after this weekend).

Thanks for clarifying that a road win, loss or tie will necessitate an update of the Bills’ road record. Jesus.

New England, on the other hand, is playing a proverbial “hat and shirt” game—as in, a playoff clincher, what would be its first postseason appearance since 2021.

Shit, but it feels longer. To root for anyone but the Patriots, Chiefs and Eagles in the last twenty years must be terrible.

In one of those we’re-all-getting-old stats, New England hasn’t hosted a playoff game since the 2019 season, Tom Brady’s final year with the team. The Patriots have played just one postseason game since then, a 2021-season wild card 47–17 road blowout to… these Buffalo Bills. It’s not too much to say this is the biggest game in Foxborough since that day four years ago.

If you’re one of my many reader then you’ll recognize the malaise—“Fire Belichick” was real and, honestly, belated, with Keith Morris and I having it up to here with abuse. “I want Belichick nowhere near this rebuild for the next year or two.” That’s exactly as long as “Handy” Bob Kraft felt otherwise before handing a pile of shit to overrated tackle machine Jerod “Fire Mayo” Mayo in 2024. I’m not crazy to believe it never needed to get so bad post-Brady.

After Sunday, Buffalo faces Cleveland on the road before finishing out the regular season at home against the Eagles and Jets. New England goes on the road against Baltimore and the Jets, then wraps the regular season against Miami. That slate would seem to indicate there’s not much margin for error for Buffalo this weekend to stay in the divisional hunt, and a wide-open opportunity for New England to claim that first-round bye.

11–2 Broncos’ remaining schedule: three home games (Fred: “Of course!”) against the Packers, Jaguars and Chargers plus one in Kansas City. You are what your record says you are and you can only play the teams on your schedule—I like our chances.

Plenty on the line for both teams… plus a weather forecast calling for snow flurries and a high of thirty-one degrees.

Advantage: Bills. Rats.

Bundle up and tune in, this is going to be a good one.

Well, it depends on the outcome, amiright? Anyway, there isn’t one friggin mention of “Red Ass” Sean McDermott in the whole thing—no wonder he’s avoided everyone’s hot-butt radar. He loses today and (given the chance) again in January and it’s thin lakeshore ice, buddy, for how you’ve wasted Allen in his prime. As much respect as I’ve lost for Belichick since before Brady left, the Bills would be better off having hired him two offseasons ago. Too bad! Thin ice.

I never make score predictions for some reason, which prevents me from participating in the Patriots (Unfiltered) Pregame Social Show, but let’s start now to celebrate a return to meaningful December football. Guardian editorial style for the win: Buffalo Bills 27–29 New England Patriots. Count it!

Up next: Bundle up and browse those holiday crafts as quickly as possible. Cheers!