Bills Playoff Drought

Thinking Out of the Box: Which Drought Brought the Most Pain?

Chris OstranderLeave a comment

Featuring Chris & @BuffaloWins

This series is supported by FOCO. FOCO carries an impressive line of team-branded merchandise and collectibles. They create unique, limited edition bobbleheads of some of the biggest stars in sports and they complement those lines with cool apparel, home decor and more. Check out their full Bills collection by following this link.

Chris: Joe, it’s yet another Sabres season with no playoffs and the top ranked prospect pool. You must be over the moon.

Joe: Ah yes, where’s Ted Black to send out another booklet stating we won the prospect title? Maybe Kris Baker can come out with his own beer called prospect IPA.

Speaking of beer, the only way you can get me through a Sabres game is a beer. Lots of beer. WTF has happened to me? It wasn’t too long ago we’d be fighting over importance of prospects, Derek Roy being a top 20 center, Cody Hodgson getting a lucrative deal, Tim Murray giving away draft picks like he’s giving away tips at the bar, and Kim Pegula telling us we don’t know anything. It’s dark times for me. I’ve watched probably six periods of Sabres hockey this season and while I can blame my newborn baby or 7-9 p.m. is Joe and wife TV time, I’m just beaten by the Sabres. The losing has killed. And as someone who has been around for 44 years and 17 of those happened during the Bills drought, I think this drought is worse somehow. What say you?

Continue reading →

Buffalo Bills All-Drought Team

Chris OstranderLeave a comment

As you may have heard, the Bills won’t be making the playoffs this year. Entering their week 14 pillowfight matchup with Cleveland, they still have a mathematical chance of qualifying, but for all intents and purposes this season is yet another write off for the Bills.

So, as the playoff drought gets one year closer to legal voting age, I decided to form the Bills All-Drought Team to look back fondly on some of the players who admirably contributed to Buffalo’s playoff plight over the past 17 years.

This practice was inspired by this tweet from my friend Russ, whose friends recently held an impressive 11-round Bills Drought Draft.  I decided to put together this little project in a similar vein to the Ultimate Hockey and Football Movie Roster posts I did in previous years. The final product is a 22-man roster along with specialists, general manager, head coach and coordinators that spans the entire length of the Bills’ drought. I was going to include President but there’s really only one choice for that now isn’t there?

My goal was to pick a roster that would best represent the trials, tribulations and ineptitude of the Bills drought. I didn’t want it to simply be a roster of the most random players (of which there are plenty) nor will this be a roster of the worst players (of which there are plenty). Ideally there was to be a mix of good players, average players and downright bad players and I think I did a fair job in accomplishing that. Each position will feature at least one backup (aka honorable mention). In some cases there are multiple backups, that was all dependent on qualified candidates and wealth of choice at certain positions.

Each choice was based on a handful of categories that would go beyond simple on-field contributions. The factors I considered included on field play, off-field activities (positive and negative), career trajectory and their overall impact (expected or actual) on the franchise.

Without further aideu, here is the Buffalo Bills All-Drought Team. Continue reading →