Buffalo Authority

If you look on social media or listen to your favorite local radio show today you might hear from fans that the Bills season is over. “Don’t even bother with the next 16 games, fire everyone now and bench the quarterback”, etc. While the Monday Night Football opener against the Jets will go down as one of the most embarrassing losses in Josh Allen and Sean McDermott’s careers, it is amazing to me that Bills fans are not giving more attention to the story of the night – Aaron Rodgers’ season ending injury. I can hear the retort right now: Jets fans should worry about their team and Bills fans should worry about theirs. But the sobering reminder of the fragility of an NFL season, and how quickly a chapter in a team’s history can be destroyed, is what I am wrestling with today.

Let me be clear: the Buffalo Bills’ season is not over. The New York Jets’ season is. The Buffalo Bills have a healthy franchise quarterback. The New York Jets do not. Granted, Josh Allen did not play anywhere near acceptable last night, and there are questions to be answered about his progress in Ken Dorsey’s offense, but as long as Josh Allen is taking the field every week, the Bills will always have a chance to win and make noise if they reach the postseason.

For me, what happened to Aaron Rodgers last night is a sobering reminder of the fragility of the league and the teams in it. As we all know the Jets have been the talk of the offseason. They added a future Hall of Fame quarterback, and with him came multiple offensive weapons to add to an already impressive roster. The team was featured on NFL’s Hard Knocks to further hype their season. On Monday Night kickoff was 8:15 and by 8:24, the Jets season was finished. Eight months of hype, hope and dreams for fans and players alike shattered in 9 minutes. Despite being a division rival, I am gutted for Jets fans and for the team that invested so much into taking a run at a championship. I can only imagine the anguish we would be feeling if that was Josh Allen last night, or if the Bills ever lost Allen for an entire season.

So today, while I am also concerned about the direction of the offense under Ken Dorsey and Josh Allen’s decision making over the past few seasons, I am choosing to be grateful that we are still having those conversations instead of the ones that are happening over in New Jersey today. Josh Allen has proven that over the course of a 17-game season he will have more magical moments than bad moments, and I am grateful that he will get an opportunity next week to right the ship. As long as Allen and the Bills are afforded that opportunity, it is a blessing. These NFL seasons can be over before they start; sometimes they last all the way to February and sometimes they last just 9 minutes.