WEEK EIGHT CRYSTAL BALL - THURSDAY: Bills and Bucs Square Off in Rare Matchup
WEEK EIGHT CRYSTAL BALL - THURSDAY: Bills and Bucs Square Off in Rare Matchup
My friends, we’ve got the Bucs (3-4) and Bills (4-3) this evening in Buffalo with both teams desperately needing a win.
The cities of Tampa and Buffalo actually have a lot in common:
1. They’re both in the Eastern Time Zone.
2. They both have NFL teams.
3. They’re both in the Eastern Time Zone.
Let’s be honest here: the only reason someone from Tampa would travel to Buffalo would be if they’re (a) seeing relatives or (b) standing trial. Otherwise, there’s no reason to go from beautiful weather and sandy beaches to sunless skies and frigid temperatures.
Average cost of a flight from Buffalo to Tampa: $2,000. Average cost of a flight from Tampa to Buffalo: The airlines pay you!
Hey, I’m joking of course! I love Buffalo! L-O-V-E.
Heck, it’s the city that gave us Buffalo chicken wings which, eaten in mass quantities, will lead to the installation of a pacemaker, which was also invented in Buffalo! And wings, of course, are the last meal of choice for most folks ticketed for the electric chair, another Buffalo original.1
Further, when it’s too hot to think in the middle of July and you’ve got the wing sweats, thank Buffalo when you blast the AC as it’s where the first air conditioning unit was built.
Buffalo. Buffalo! Buffalo!! I’m all in. How could you not love a city whose nicknames include this beauty: “The City of No Illusions”?
The bottom line: Buffalonians are real people. Neighborly. Gritty. Tough. Seasoned. Well-seasoned. But just not with as much salt as Philadelphians.
This evening on Amazon Prime at 8:15 pm ET, the locals will be fully amped as their Bills face the visiting Bucs for just the third time ever in the Nickel City. Crazy right?
Tampa Bay entered the NFL in 1976, sporting their creamsicle uniforms and piled up the losses faster than Bucs superfan HONG KONG MIKE consumes Texas toast at Waffle House, and that’s saying something. But Tampa never lost in Buffalo, largely because they didn’t travel to western New York until 2009! 2009! That is bananas, especially considering the fact that the two teams faced off in Florida eight times before the Bucs made their first trip north.
For the record, the Bills are 2-0 at home against Tampa, earning victories in that 2009 game and again in 2017.2 Life has been a slog of late for Sean McDermott’s crew but I think they get their third home win vs the Bucs tonight. BILLS, 22-19.
That said, why would you take my word for it? I wet the (figurative) bed last week with a 6-7 (.462) record, dropping the season mark to 67-39 (.632). Let’s see if I can get off the schneid this week.
Enjoy the game and I’ll be back in touch later this week. Cheers!
For the record, I’m anti-death penalty and find the electric chair a particularly brutal way to take one’s life, something I wouldn’t wish on anyone, even a lifelong Dallas fan. If you read about the chair’s invention, prepare to be shocked and horrified at how the whole process went down. First, Thomas Edison was involved. Second, the test case was a horse, which was purposely killed by electric shock in Edison’s West Orange, NJ, laboratory. The chair is still in use in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee. I’m guessing the Southeastern Conference schools in those locales leave that tidbit of info out of their promo materials.
Tampa leads the all-time series, 8-4, including a 2021 affair where Tom Brady and the Bucs outdueled Josh Allen and the Bills in overtime, 33-27. By the way, these teams only played once in the 1990s. Once! The NFL did not want these dudes to see one another!