Complimentary wings at Coles prove to have more staying power than Bills

Midway through the fourth quarter of the Bills’ annual humiliation on the outskirts of Foxborough, Massachusetts, his plate piled with Buffalo’s twin culinary clichés, chicken wings and beef on weck, Tim shook his head sadly as he chewed.

Marshawn Lynch

“They’re not very good,” he said. “That’s for sure.”

Surely, I thought, he could not be talking about the wings at Coles, the Elmwood Avenue landmark whose third-floor banquet room hosted the year’s second Brofest, a local football tradition that provided this week’s Season Ticket vantage point. The mediums had a surprising zing to them. The barbecues were robust without plunging into excessive sweetness. Both varieties were perfectly cooked and plump, but not “too big,” usually the favored weapon in Tim’s critical arsenal.

As I tried to chew enough to voice my objection to his evaluation, even question whether he still deserved his long-held title of senior wing analyst for such occasions, he expanded on and clarified his derision.

“They’ll finish 8-8—if they beat Cleveland,” he said, picking up another medium.

A week earlier, I would have considered such a verdict on the Bills as foolish as any negativity about the contents of the buffet at Brofest. Even after getting slapped around at home by the New York Jets—Buffalo’s second straight loss and third in four weeks—it was easy to dismiss the mid-autumn swoon as an improving young team temporarily losing its bearings, or a correction in a division too balanced for any one contender to run away with it too early.

Such guarded optimism rested on a belief that the Bills would break with recent tradition and perform competitively in Foxborough, site of both torturous injustice and abject ineptitude over the past decade.

When Tom Brady was lost for the season way back in early September, a sweep of New England looked entirely possible. Even as the Patriots failed to disintegrate with Matt Cassel taking Brady’s place at quarterback, the Bills’ marked improvement made them the peer of a team which they had long been locked in a dominant/submissive relationship.

Or so it seemed.

Instead, the Bills played puppy, rolling on their collective backs and peeing themselves at the first sign of adversity.

That moment came on the game’s third play, when New England defensive tackle Richard Seymour bypassed handsomely compensated Buffalo guard Derrick Dockery and flattened Trent Edwards, ending the Bills’ first possession in ominous fashion.

It wouldn’t get any better from there.

Cassel, who had not started a game since high school before Brady got hurt, had looked like a highly limited caretaker a week earlier in New England’s loss to Indianapolis, unable or unwilling to throw the ball more than a few yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

Against Buffalo, he was a poised veteran, coolly zipping throws down the sideline and over the middle, even scampering up the middle for the game’s first points when a pliant defense provided the opportunity.

Meanwhile, Edwards looked every bit as lost as every previous Buffalo quarterback has appeared in Foxborough since the Patriots became the National Football League’s superpower.

The Council of Trent, an informal organization born at the dawn of the season when Mark, Brofest’s generous-to-a-fault host, produced and distributed a few dozen T-shirts bearing the 16th-century religious reference, disintegrated into chaos as the game slipped away from Buffalo.

During the year’s initial Brofest, the day of Buffalo’s comeback win in Jacksonville, support for the second-year starter was vocal and unanimous. It’s amazing what a concussion and a few losses will do to such consensus.

“Throw it, you ass,” one woman yelled as Edwards meandered to his left with New England leading 13-3.

He did, off-balance, and the pass bounced incomplete.

Edwards threw two other passes to the wrong team, compiled a dreadful 49.2 quarterback rating, and piloted an offense that accumulated only 168 total yards, compared to New England’s 370.

Buffalo’s defense was no better. Due to a freakish run of injuries, New England’s only option in the running game was BenJarvus Green-Ellis, who until Sunday was far more notable for his proliferation of names than for anything he had done on a football field.

An undrafted rookie, Green-Ellis was a member of the Patriots’ practice squad, the football equivalent of never-to-be-used stand-in, until promoted to the active roster out of sheer necessity on October 12.

Less than a month later, Buffalo’s defense spent the afternoon converting the hopeful youngster into the week’s hottest fantasy-football waiver pickup, accommodating Green-Ellis’ 26-carry, 105-yard afternoon.

The sad display left members of the dispirited Council grasping for words.

He capped his day, and his team’s demonstration of superiority, with a one-yard touchdown run that finished off a drive lasting 19 plays, covering 92 yards and consuming more than nine minutes of game time in the fourth quarter.

“They’re everything a good team isn’t. Wait a minute—they’re not anything that a bad team, or a good team…oh, never mind,” Pommy said, then turned away with a wave of his hand.

Buffalo’s lone touchdown came moments later, with just 1:42 remaining, after rookie Leodis McKelvin’s 85-yard kickoff return drew the afternoon’s loudest reaction from those assembled, shouts of “Go, go, go!” that dissipated into cathartic laughter at the futility of the runback, as well as the scoring pass from Edwards to James Hardy that it produced.

The Bills returned home after the 20-10 loss, having plunged from first to last in the tightly packed AFC East. Even with a seemingly cushy slate for the rest of November, a sweep of which would send them into the season’s final month at 8-4, optimism was a scarce commodity at Brofest late Sunday afternoon.v

“They won’t make the playoffs,” Tim declared unwaveringly. “That’s a pipe dream now.”