To think, the Bills were close to garnering our sympathy toward the end of a long offseason. A near unanimous Super Bowl pick, an MVP front-runner at quarterback, a betting favorite so painfully obvious in nearly every matchup. A team that was slated, in the movie we’ve crafted in our heads, to avenge a premature playoff exit and finally deliver a trophy to a perpetually teased fanbase that still, miraculously, believes in good things.
When does all of this hysteria on paper actually materialize? How many times have we seen a team buried under the madness they had no hand in creating?