The long torturous season is finally over. After winning their first 4 games and getting the hopes up for playoff starved fans, the Buffalo Bills did what they know how to do best...blow it. The Bills haven't made the playoffs now going on ten years and the way it looks, it may be another ten years before they have a chance to contend again.

The Bills, hoping to be spoilers, didn't live up to the job as the New England Patriots handled the Bills and the hurricane force winds, shutting out the Bills 13-0. The only Buffalo Bill who showed up was Freddie Jackson, who ran over 100 yards in this game. Jackson carried 27 times for 136. However, he could not reach the endzone and neither could any other Bills.

Even though the Patriots ended with a record of 11-5, they missed the playoffs.

This was a season that started off so well, with the Bills storming out of the gates going 4-0. After a loss in Arizona, they came back and beat the San Diego Chargers at home and had an impressive 5-1 record to lead the AFC East. After that, the wheels fell off the Bills wagon. The Bills offense could only muster 6 points in their last 3 home games. They scored only 3 against the 49ers and the Dolphins, a game that was played in Toronto. Then they finished off their season with a shutout at the hands of the Patriots.

The winds of change were definitely in the air in Ralph Wilson Stadium on Sunday. The Bills had yet another inept offensive performance and their coaching staff gets most of the credit. A big Goose Egg was on the scoreboard for the Bills and there was an even bigger egg dropped by Bills head coach Dick Jauron and his band of morons.

One of the big questions going into this game was whether this would be Dick Jauron's last game as Bills head coach. After they way he managed the game, Bills owner Ralph Wilson should have his answer.

Jauron has always had problems with time management and challenging officiating calls. Sunday was Jauron's most tarnished moment of his below average career. Not only did he blotch the Bills final play in the first half that would have allowed his field goal unit on the field to attempt to tie the game at 3-3, but how he didn't employ the 2-minute drill before hand was pathetic. Even a high school coach would have been able to get his team to manage the clock better than the Bills did. The same was true in the second half and Jauron has to accept direct responsibility for the Bills not getting any points in what should be his last game as a Bills coach.

Jauron once again showed that he should not be a head coach in the NFL. Near the end of the first half, the Bills were driving but Jauron mismanaged the clock. The Bills could have at least had a field goal with 22 seconds left, but instead, the Bills ran the ball with no timeouts and were not able to stop the clock as time ran out. A good head coach knows how to manage the clock and the Bills were not even in the 2 minute drill as they drove down the field.

In the third quarter, with time once again winding down and the Bills having the fierce wind at their backs, Jauron should have once again had the Bills in the hurry up offense. Instead, the Bills took their merry o' time in the huddle, wasting time and eventually they had to punt the ball away and lose the wind advantage for the rest of the game.

The sad part of this whole scenario is that Ralph Wilson, who is against paying for a quality coach, will most likely replace Jauron with someone not qualified to be even a college head coach.

Thankfully, the Bills season is over and now maybe the football fans will embrace the real team in town, the University of Buffalo Bulls who play in the International Bowl in Toronto on Saturday.

The Bills are a joke, from the owner on down to their glorified accountant who serves as their GM and on down to the coaching staff. Ralph Wilson, the 90-year old owner who proclaims that no one else will own the team as long as he's alive, is all too much into the bottom line. The bottom line for Wilson is not winning championships, let alone even making the playoffs. The bottom line is how much money he can make before he passes away and takes all the money with him to his green field of dreams.

Wilson will not sell the team to someone like Jim Kelly, who has the financial backing to make it happen and keep the team in Buffalo. He also has not made any provisions in his will to make sure that the fans who supported him since 1960 and made him a billionaire will have an NFL team in Buffalo when he has passed from this good earth. Nope. Wilson plans to stick it to the fans who bought all the tickets throughout the years, sold out the stadium the past 15 years and have been taxed to death financing the stadium improvements.

If Wilson does indeed fire Dick Jauron as head coach, the fans can't expect anyone with a good NFL track record like Bill Cowher or Marty Schottenheimer to come in and get the team back into the playoffs. Nope. The fans have to expect more of the same, with Wilson hiring the cheapest head coach he can possibly find. Winning isn't important to Wilson, only selling out the stadium and getting $10 million a game from Toronto each year is high on his priority list.

For most NFL teams, Jauron would have been fired after his second season of going 7-9. After losing to the Pats, the Bills have been 7-9 in all three of his seasons as coach. The Bills fans realize, however, that if Jauron is fired, he could be replaced with an even worse head coach. Wilson is known for hiring the cheapest coach or GM possible. If Jauron goes, Wilson certainly isn't going to replace him with a quality coach like Bill Cowher or Marty Schottenheimer. No, Bills fans can expect some unknown or a coach that will cost Wilson even less than Jauron makes. That means at least 2 or 3 more years of rebuilding and the Bills playoff drought will go into double digits.

Copyright © 2008 Bills Thunder & Rick Anderson, all rights reserved.