(Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)

Looking ahead to the Week Seven matchup of the Buffalo Bills at Carolina Panthers

The 50th anniversary season was supposed to be special and filled with nostalgia. It is special already, but not for just the nostalgic reasons that people were expecting.

This year's edition of the Buffalo Bills is as bizarre a season as I can recall in quite some time. There are things about the Bills that are strange to begin with, like the four straight defeats in Super Bowls, to the wacky Buffalo weather, to the decision to farm out one of their eight home games to a foreign country that refuses to let the Bills play in the natural elements that they are accustomed to.

Look at the past two games for a deeper appreciation at why this year is so abnormal.

Last week the Bills gave up more than 300 yards in rushing and won the game. That is just not a normal recipe for success. Why the Jets continued to throw one interception after another is quite mysterious. All they had to do was continue to hand the ball off to Thomas Jones and Leon Washington, drive it down the field, wear out the defense and run out the clock.

Apparently, the tape of the New Orleans Saints second-half gameplan to beat the Bills never made it to the Jets' offices. Drew Brees stopped passing the ball, and handed it off to his talented running backs. Miami pretty much did the same thing, as their ground game pounded away on the Bills and eventually wore the defense out.

Then the following week, Cleveland completed just two passes for the entire game and still won it. Bizarre indeed. That shouldn't happen in the NFL.

Dare to imagine that if Leodis McKelvin had simply taken a knee in the end zone during the Monday Night Football opener, the Bills would now be sitting there in a three-way tie for first place with New England and the Jets. Improbable, right, but true?

So now the Bills travel to Carolina and they will probably see another steady diet of rushing attempts all day long. Is another game of 200-plus yards allowed on the ground facing the Bills defense?

Last week Carolina defeated Tampa Bay, and they tore up the Bucs defense with 262 yards rushing compared to only 65 yards passing by Jake Delhomme. That effort was Delhomme's lowest total in the 85 games he's played for the Panthers since 2003.

The Bills should expect to see a whole lot of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart this Sunday. That duo has combined for six rushing touchdowns this year. The Bills have yet to score a rushing touchdown after six contests.

The Bills and Panthers Are Actually Quite Similar

1) Both teams have a high profile wide receiver that is not performing up to their own high standards—the Bills' Terrell Owens and the Panthers' Steve Smith. Smith managed one catch last week, which is one more catch than Owens was able to muster against New Orleans.

2) Both teams have starting quarterbacks that have been struggling to find steady production through the air. Just to illustrate how rough the sledding has gone for both Jake Delhomme and Trent Edwards this year consider this:

Both have completed 59 percent of their pass attempts this year. Not what you want to see.

Both have thrown more interceptions than touchdowns, again not what you want to see.

Both would like to make their top wide receivers happy, but have trouble doing it.

3) Both defenses give up points in the 21-to-25 a game average, and are similarly ranked in both pass defense and rush defense. Carolina has the No. 2 net pass defense at 156 yards per game, while the Bills are No. 4 overall at 170 net yards per game.

Where things start getting ugly is the rush defense numbers for both teams. Carolina is ranked No. 28 at allowing 149 yards per game on the ground, while the Bills are dead last at 181 yards per game average.

If you analyze those numbers, the conclusion would be why throw it when you can run it so easy? It is safe to assume that this logic is still being asked by Jets' fans on talk radio shows even today.

4) Both teams have losing records. Each team has two wins, so the winner of this game will be sitting there with three wins and will thus have some sort of hope that they can still be in the hunt, while the loser will see their win streak snapped at either one win or two.

5) Both teams have only played one common opponent so far—Tampa Bay, and each team beat the Bucs. Then again, who hasn't?

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