There I was on Monday night, sitting in stiff-lipped frustration once again as the Bills seemed utterly incapable of moving the ball against yet another sub-par defense.
I'm a little more down-to-earth than most in my assessment of Trent Edwards, so rather than throwing my hands up looking for the Trent Edwards of September, I just shook my head as the second-year QB made mistake after mistake.
But wait, could it be? "They've actually made an adjustment, here?"
It became clear that first-year offensive coordinator Turk Schonert was giving Edwards more underneath options and, alas, more carries were going to Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson.
And this certainly wasn't due to a lack of protection—his protection was more than adequate—but rather because the second-year QB's confidence was sinking faster my stock portfolio.
Although easy to overlook because they lost the game, this was the kind of in-game adjustment I didn't think Schonert & Co had in them. Frankly, to this point in the season, their offensive gameplan had seemed pretty stubborn.
Willing to bang their heads into the same wall over and over again, they believed that they were just one inside run or long out-route away from breaking through. In fact, I disagreed with one commentator's assessment that this team had not found it's identity, because their identity was clear: stubborn and predictable.
For this reason, I've held off on discounting Trent Edwards' early performance in light of the stinkers he's managed to string together since. This isn't rocket science, and defensive coordinators are quick to assess what you do well, and will try to take that away from you.
That's precisely what's been going on here for the past five weeks. There's no need to contact any sports psychologist (yet).
Well, here we go again. To borrow from Denny Green, the Chiefs "are who we [think] they [are]." Their inability to stop the rush is just what the doctor ordered for a team that desperately needs to find it's running attack and take pressure off it's struggling second-year QB.
Perhaps they will pick up where they left off in the second half on Monday night (except, the losing part) and pound KC on the ground from the first play to the last.
They'll need to take what the defense gives them underneath, [insert your favorite cliche here] or will continue to pound their heads into the wall and hand another victory to a team that is certainly NOT their superior talent-wise.
We'll see. I can't call DirecTV and get a refund on the rest of this season, so I might as well tune-in.
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