Most disappointing losses in last 14 years

[Pitta]

Most disappointing/infuriating/heartbreaking losses in the seemingly never-ending 14 year stretch since the Bills were last a relevant team? I have some good ones that I'd like to share:

 

1) Week 17 loss to Pittsburgh at the Ralph (2004) - the only winning season this team has had since '99, we had a Steelers team that was resting most of their starters coming into our home stadium with a playoff spot on the line. In typical Bills fashion, they suffer an embarrassing loss to a team full of mostly backups, and go on to miss the playoffs in hilarious fashion. This is by far the most gut wrenching loss of this terrible stretch of irrelevant football for me, as I was all but penciling them in for a wildcard matchup...I remember this game being Willie Parker's coming out party, as he torched a Bills defense that was regarded as a solid unit at the time. Just an all around "epic fail" of a game for long suffering Bills fans.

 

2) The Monday Night Miracle against Dallas - I don't even remember the year; this was the game where a no-name defense led b the likes of George Wilson and John DiGiorgio had multiple picks against a Dallas team that was considered elite heading in. Leading for most of the game, and with the entire country sans the population of the state of Texas hoping to see a Cinderella win, Buffalo did what Buffalo always does, and gave the game away at the end, in front of a national audience no less. Once again the the Bills are the proverbial butt of everyone's jokes, and it had to happen against the team that embarrassed us in consecutive Super Bowls years prior. *sigh*

 

3) The Monday Night Miracle in the season opener against New England - I once again forget exactly the year, hard to differentiate when all of the losing and mediocrity seems to glue together as one giant pile of wreaking failure. Once again the Bills found themselves as the giant underdog and media darlings as they were plugging away against an elite Patriots team in their own building, only for a mind blowing gaffe by Leodis McKelvin and subsequent defensive collapse to inevitably occur, resulting in, yet another, gut wrenching and utterly embarrassing loss on national television. Against our arch-rival, a team that seemingly never loses to us, no less. Oh joy. This game will always be remembered by myself, at least, for the trashing of McKelvin's front lawn the next day. Stay classy, Bills fans.

 

4) Season opener @ the Jets last season - this one really stung, which is surprising because at this point I had already grown numb to the constant letdown of being a Buffalo Bills fan. But that year, highlighted by the Mario Williams and Mark Anderson signings, had Bills Nation excited and touted by many media heads and NFL analysts as a potential playoff team. The Jets were the benchmark, a team we HAD to beat; a team we needed to have a statement victory against. Most naive Bills fans, including yours truly, were overly confident heading into this Week 1 matchup, and expected to see the Bills roll the clown show that was the NY Jets. Could we have been more wrong? Instead, our good ol' Bills were beat up, spit on, and left for dead by their division rivals. This game was over before halftime. A game highlighted by Mark Sanchez doing his best Dan Marino impression and torching the Bills' hapless secondary, highlighted by a long touchdown for their rookie 2nd round receiver Stephen Hill, who outclassed our 1st round rookie, Stephon Gilmore multiple times throughout the game. Also notable were a season ending injury to reliable possession receiver David Nelson (never played another down as a Bill) and Fred Jackson (after an arguable cheapshot by Landry). This one really stung.

 

Honorable mentions: White out disaster against the Jets (was that last year or two years ago?), most recent white out disaster against KC (Tuel's goal line INT just another laughable Bills moment to add to the memory bank), and the 6-3 loss to the Browns (or was it a win? does it really matter?) which could quite possibly go down as the worst game played in NFL history. Oh yea, and that brutal Stevie drop against PITT, how could I forget

Edited November 6, 2013 by Pitta

[Pitta]

bump of peace

[Wazzu Bill]

[Charles Romes]

Here are some of my faves:

 

Loss v. cleveland on the road in 07 when we were 7-6 and in the playoff hunt.

 

The shellacking at the hands of Jets at home in '11 when were 5-2 going in (exposed the team as a fraud just like Chris Carter told us).

 

Loss on the road to the Dolphins in '08, blowing a second half lead (would have gone 6-1).

 

Loss at home to SF in '08

 

Loss on the road to the Bucs wk 2, 05 (maybe this Losman thing was not such a good idea)

 

Loss at home to Dolphins in 00 (maybe this Johnson thing was not such a good idea)

 

Shellacking at home on SNF (we were flexed in) to NE in 07 to end 4 gm win streak (NE scores TOUCHDOWNS on 7/7 possessions).

[Pitta]

^^ My God, how could I forget the Pats SNF flex game...I still have nightmares of Randy Moss torching Greer repeatedly.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Pitta

[Gerry]

As I recall, in the Dallas game the 'Boys were out of timeouts but the Bills kept giving them the sideline and they were able to move down the field. It was almost like the Bills wanted to throw the game.

[wnysteel]

how about Earnest Wilford game?

 

http://espn.go.com/nfl/recap?gameId=240912002 for those that forgot

[Livinginthepast]

Most disappointing/infuriating/heartbreaking losses in the seemingly never-ending 14 year stretch since the Bills were last a relevant team? I have some good ones that I'd like to share:

 

1) Week 17 loss to Pittsburgh at the Ralph (2004) - the only winning season this team has had since '99, we had a Steelers team that was resting most of their starters coming into our home stadium with a playoff spot on the line. In typical Bills fashion, they suffer an embarrassing loss to a team full of mostly backups, and go on to miss the playoffs in hilarious fashion. This is by far the most gut wrenching loss of this terrible stretch of irrelevant football for me, as I was all but penciling them in for a wildcard matchup...I remember this game being Willie Parker's coming out party, as he torched a Bills defense that was regarded as a solid unit at the time. Just an all around "epic fail" of a game for long suffering Bills fans.

 

2) The Monday Night Miracle against Dallas - I don't even remember the year; this was the game where a no-name defense led b the likes of George Wilson and John DiGiorgio had multiple picks against a Dallas team that was considered elite heading in. Leading for most of the game, and with the entire country sans the population of the state of Texas hoping to see a Cinderella win, Buffalo did what Buffalo always does, and gave the game away at the end, in front of a national audience no less. Once again the the Bills are the proverbial butt of everyone's jokes, and it had to happen against the team that embarrassed us in consecutive Super Bowls years prior. *sigh*

 

3) The Monday Night Miracle in the season opener against New England - I once again forget exactly the year, hard to differentiate when all of the losing and mediocrity seems to glue together as one giant pile of wreaking failure. Once again the Bills found themselves as the giant underdog and media darlings as they were plugging away against an elite Patriots team in their own building, only for a mind blowing gaffe by Leodis McKelvin and subsequent defensive collapse to inevitably occur, resulting in, yet another, gut wrenching and utterly embarrassing loss on national television. Against our arch-rival, a team that seemingly never loses to us, no less. Oh joy. This game will always be remembered by myself, at least, for the trashing of McKelvin's front lawn the next day. Stay classy, Bills fans.

 

4) Season opener @ the Jets last season - this one really stung, which is surprising because at this point I had already grown numb to the constant letdown of being a Buffalo Bills fan. But that year, highlighted by the Mario Williams and Mark Anderson signings, had Bills Nation excited and touted by many media heads and NFL analysts as a potential playoff team. The Jets were the benchmark, a team we HAD to beat; a team we needed to have a statement victory against. Most naive Bills fans, including yours truly, were overly confident heading into this Week 1 matchup, and expected to see the Bills roll the clown show that was the NY Jets. Could we have been more wrong? Instead, our good ol' Bills were beat up, spit on, and left for dead by their division rivals. This game was over before halftime. A game highlighted by Mark Sanchez doing his best Dan Marino impression and torching the Bills' hapless secondary, highlighted by a long touchdown for their rookie 2nd round receiver Stephen Hill, who outclassed our 1st round rookie, Stephon Gilmore multiple times throughout the game. Also notable were a season ending injury to reliable possession receiver David Nelson (never played another down as a Bill) and Fred Jackson (after an arguable cheapshot by Landry). This one really stung.

 

Honorable mentions: White out disaster against the Jets (was that last year or two years ago?), most recent white out disaster against KC (Tuel's goal line INT just another laughable Bills moment to add to the memory bank), and the 6-3 loss to the Browns (or was it a win? does it really matter?) which could quite possibly go down as the worst game played in NFL history. Oh yea, and that brutal Stevie drop against PITT, how could I forget

This is a pretty good list, you could also add a couple of my personal fav losses. The October 2000 loss vs the Vikings where Flutie had a great game only to lose to a Randy Moss TD in the 4th Q. Also the embarrassing loss vs the Jets in 2002 where Chad Pennington faked Eddie Robinson out of his jock and waltzed into the endzone. The most infuriating and embarrassing loss was vs the Pats under Jauron in 2007 where they crushed us 56-10 and kept going for 2pts in the most classless display of behaviour by a coach ever. I was so angry that nobody was getting mad that Bellichick was purposely humiliating them. Jauron just stared clueless. They kept Brady in the game despite being up by 30pts, kept throwing the ball and what did the Bills do? nothing. I would have blitzed everybody at Brady and broken his legs, but no Jauron just stared!!!

[BillsPride12]

Those are all great choices, another one that comes to mind for me is the loss to Jacksonville on opening day in 2004. Also opening day against the Jets in 2002 where we lost in ot on that kick return after just sending the game into ot.

[Captain Hindsight]

I just threw up a bit

 

 

[1B4IDie]

Wow. Yeah those are all goodies.

McKelvin still gives me nerves when I see him return punts. On Sunday Dan Dickdorf said "He should be one of the more sure handed players" and I thought "Oh Dick you're such a clueless Dick. If only you knew . . ."

 

Last year there were 3 heart breakers that are just now typical Bills games.

The Tennessee Game where George Wilson drops the game winning INT, The Rams game where George Wilson drops the game winning INT, and the Patriots game where TJ Graham hangs a ralph when he was supposed to hang a louie.

 

And if there is a category for Disappointing wins that Cards game last year would be top of the list, they just did everything in their power to lose that game but somehow won. Pathetic.

 

The Bills find new and interesting ways to lose; it is a very rare and special talent. With the KC game you can add 100 yard Pick6 by an undrafted rookie QB to the list. You can not make this stuff up. It all actually happened.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Why So Serious?

[Billshank Redemption]

Worst game I have ever seen in person was by far Dallas, the atmosphere in the stadium that night was special and to lose like that was just awful.

 

Pats on MNF to open up the season would be second just because of the way we lost with the stupid !@#$ing fumble.

[BuffaloBill]

Worst game I have ever seen in person was by far Dallas, the atmosphere in the stadium that night was special and to lose like that was just awful.

 

 

I lived in Dallas at the time of this game so the loss was that much more stinging.

 

As you look back over this stretch it becomes harder and harder to rationalize why we are all so loyal to this team. Losing is one thing but consistently losing and being self-defeating is another. This franchise has really only had two periods of time where it really shined and the latter was marred but four straight Super Bowl losses.

 

In the "modern" free agency period it is just mind numbing to think that we can't emerge from the land of suck. The only good news is that we are not alone. One only needs to look to Cleveland, Detroit and maybe a few others to understand that being "on top" in the NFL is difficult to get to once you are on the bottom.

[1B4IDie]

I lived in Dallas at the time of this game so the loss was that much more stinging.

 

As you look back over this stretch it becomes harder and harder to rationalize why we are all so loyal to this team. Losing is one thing but consistently losing and being self-defeating is another. This franchise has really only had two periods of time where it really shined and the latter was marred but four straight Super Bowl losses.

 

In the "modern" free agency period it is just mind numbing to think that we can't emerge from the land of suck. The only good news is that we are not alone. One only needs to look to Cleveland, Detroit and maybe a few others to understand that being "on top" in the NFL is difficult to get to once you are on the bottom.

 

Actually Buffalo is the exception to the rule.

 

There is quote a bit of turnover from top to bottom every year.

[Buffalo Barbarian]

the Pittsburgh debacle when Mularkey was here where we could have made the playoffs.

[Pitta]

Those are all great choices, another one that comes to mind for me is the loss to Jacksonville on opening day in 2004. Also opening day against the Jets in 2002 where we lost in ot on that kick return after just sending the game into ot.

 

Ahh yes, another exceptional choice.

[Miyagi-Do Karate]

I started a thread on here after the opener re our horrible opener losses. Can you believe this list-- and this is only in season-opening games?

 

http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/161306-opening-season-losses-is-this-for-real/

 

2013: GW FG by the Patriots as time expires

2009: GW TD by the Patriots with 50 seconds left (after Pats trailed by 15 points with 2 minutes left) (1 point loss)

2007: GW FG by Broncos as time expires (1 point loss)

2006: Patriots score 12 unanswered points late in the game, win 19-17

2004: Jax beats us on last play of game

2002: Opening kick of OT returned for a TD--Jets win

1998: 2-point loss to SD

 

Is this for real?

[BRH]

It is hard to believe that Just Give It To 'Em and Home Run Throw Forward actually predated all of this.

 

How were we to know that those were but the canaries in the coal mine?

 

No one has yet mentioned the game in 2001 where David Patten was knocked unconscious in overtime after being hit by Keion Carpenter, fumbling the football. The ball lay inbounds, touching his feet, and was recovered by the Bills. But because his unconscious head was lying out of bounds, the inbounds ball was ruled out of bounds and the Pats* retained possession. Two plays later, the Pats* kicked a FG to win the game.

[Security]

http://www.buffalobillsdraft.com/2013/06/becauseitsbuffalo-counting-down-the-bills-most-heartbreaking-losses-of-the-21st-century/

 

Here are a few................I remember the Broncos game, I was at that one.

[Pitta]

Yes...