Merriam-Webster defines the word 'futile' as "serving no useful purpose : completely ineffective."
Two games into the 2010 NFL season, and it looks like the Buffalo Bills' season is, by strictest definition of the word, futile.
Two games, two loses. Two opening drives that featured incomplete passes and confidence-destroying, sacks-for-losses from an ineffectual quarterback. Two games into the season and it looks as if the Bills are already treading water, with the fan base, team analysts, and even the in-game announcers desperately looking forward to the 2011 draft, where maybe...maybe...the Bills will acquire some talent. Two games into the season and perhaps the best news is that our starting linebacker will only be out two weeks with his latest injury.
After watching these two games this season, it feels like the past ten seasons all over again. As I understand, the purpose of the regular season is to win, the purpose is to make the playoffs. Most of the effective teams have, in fact, been to the post-season within the past decade [sorry Detroit]. Maybe I am suffering from some sort of a 'childhood lens' syndrome, where I recall everything as being so much bigger, better, and brighter in the days of my youth. But after these two games, I am having a hard time determining how the 2010 Buffalo Bills are the same franchise that I grew up watching in the mid-1990s.
Over the years, coaching change after coaching change, and lame quarterback after quarterback after quarterback, has produced two games this season that were downright embarrassing.
When will this franchise right its course? Can it even do so without something as drastic as moving the team? For the sake of upstate NY, and for the memory of Bills teams past, I hope that this year's team will display at least some promising signs for future success. But something has got to give here. A team cannot attempt to rebuild every year. That would simply be futile.
