Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Worse Week-1 loss: Bengals or Bills?

The first game of the season has the potential to be the best day of the year for bad teams: It is likely the only time they won't have a losing record.

So for the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills, two teams not expected to be competitive in 2009, Week 1 had the potential to be so uplifting that it could've altered the fate of their seasons. Both had commanding leads in the waning minutes. A 1-0 record within reach.

Then...disaster.

First this:



Then this:



BOTH. SEASONS. ARE. OVER.

That's probably a given. Those are unfathomable losses. But which is worse?

The Case for Cincinnati: The Bengals had a one-point lead with .28 seconds left after scoring a go-ahead touchdown and had Denver backed up inside the 15. And then they gave up one of the flukiest plays we've seen in a long while, which essentially ended the game. Cincinnati didn't even get a real shot to counter Denver's score.

The Case for Buffalo: They had the preseason Super Bowl favorite all-but beat. Up 24-13 with 5:32 to go, all the Bills had to do was not fuck things up. Then they fucked things up. After giving up a late score, Leodis McKelvin fielded the ensuing kickoff, didn't kneel it despite receiving the kick on his back foot in the end zone, then fought for extra yards which resulted in a fumble. The Pats recovered and did what the Pats do when they recover fumbles with about a minute left: They scored the fucking touchdown and won the game.

We don't have a good answer on this. Cincinnati's loss is clearly worse, but Denver is supposed to be worse than they are, so really, they should've had the game wrapped up earlier. Buffalo had a win on the road against the best team in football and gave the game away.

Help us decide, football fans. Your pick in the comments.

8 comments:

Bokolis said...

Bengals loss is tougher to take because of the fluke and the finality of it.

The Bills fucked it up, but the circumstances pressured them into the mistake. They were still going to have to get a first down. Even if Brady had gotten the ball back from a punt with no timeouts, the fact that he scored two touchdowns while showing virtually no sense of urgency tells me that going 60 yards with 90 seconds and no timeouts would not have presented an obstacle.

After all that, the Bills got back the ball with enough time to get into field goal range, but fucked that up, too.

JMC said...

well I think it's worse to lose because you fucked it up then to lose because of a crazy fluke that nobody could have ever expected. Plus, the Bills had more at stake because if they won it would have been a much bigger upset, so therefore it stings even worse that they let it slip away.

GMoney said...

I'd say the Bills just because it's been 80 years since they beat the Pats and they had that game. No one chokes on MNF like Dick Jauron.

HM said...

Bengals loss is way worse -- Buffalo loses one game a year like that, sometimes two. Plus the loss just gives them a road loss to New England -- big deal.

The Bengals now have a home loss against a very, very mediocre Denver club. You need to overcome that with an unexpected road win or a home win against Pittsburgh. Good luck with that. Had they simply done NOTHING and allowed Marshall to catch a 17 yard out, the game is over.

Anonymous said...

Bengals easy. It's games like that when you know you must have a child molestor on the team.

Anonymous said...

bills. they were up by a lot and lost due to crappy playing.

the bengals should have won, but they didnt play that well either. denvers not a good team, and they were only up by a point with 20 seconds? not a good game, and when you play that bad, you deserve to lose.

the bills also played a bad game (in the final 2 minutes), but for the most of the game, they had kept brady in check and had a pretty good offence (again, until the last 2 min).

-noah

Pinehurst said...

The Bills should have taken the knee and run the clock out!!! The coach made the error!!!

josh said...

gus freakin' johnson