Month: September 2017

Tailgating Behind Enemy Lines

In case you missed it, I crossed enemy lines and spent my Sunday entrenched in the heart of Bills Mafia. If I were to describe my experience in Orchard Park as a movie, it would be as if Animal House bred with American Psycho while Rudy played in the background of their rent-by-the-hour motel room.

Imagine the City of Detroit from the Original RoboCop film… filed with drunk idiots… in 93 degree weather… randomly singing Shout. Sprinkle in some of this and this and this and you’ve got yourself quite the afternoon!

As you can imagine, I was more than excited when my caravan of Bills fans who haven’t experienced a playoff victory since before puberty, pulled in next to a group of very brave Broncos fans. As it turns out, they weren’t just fans, they were the proud family of the Broncos very own kicker, Brandon McManus.

Sis, Pops, Yours Truly, Ma… Bates Motel in the Background.

Stick with me because after the fold, as I’m going to share a few insights from “Pops”, as Von Miller’s dad calls him, and the McManus family. Awesome people BTW.

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Gut Reaction: Lessons To Be Learned

So what did we and the Denver Broncos learn about themselves and their opponent today? Plenty of things, as it turns out.

For starters, the Bills are not tanking. Furthermore, the Bills defense isn’t Marcel Dareus and a bunch of nobodies — if anything, quite a few players rank higher than Dareus in terms of their importance to the Bills D. Also, we saw that Rick Dennison can do some good things with his offense when he has personnel that are better fits for his schemes.

As for the Broncos, we found out that Trevor Siemian still has plenty to learn as a quarterback, that we shouldn’t focus solely on right tackle when it comes to pass protection, that Justin Simmons has plenty of room for improvement and that Chris Harris isn’t immune to a subpar outing (hey, he’s only human).

And while it’s easy to grumble about bad calls by the referees, they really aren’t the reason why the Broncos lost today. They still had plenty of things they could control and didn’t do it enough.

Let’s go over the key points about today’s game.
Continue reading Gut Reaction: Lessons To Be Learned