Same Old Story for the Buffalo Bills: Next Season...

Each year, as a Bills fan, you get the feeling that this could be the year. For the last nine years, we haven't even been able to take that thought past Week 17. And the story is true again for the Bills as they approach Week 17 in a game that won't help them get into the playoffs.

The Bills will take on the Patriots at home, with only the opportunity to eliminate the Patriots from the playoffs. While this would be a nice ending note, this isn't what Donte Whitner guaranteed for the Bills. 

They started out the season 5-1 and actually were considered contenders. Now they played some weak opponents, and the games were closer than they should have been, but it still doesn't fully explain the collapse that the Bills went through. In seasons past, the story was the Bills starting slow, then having a late surge that just falls short of the playoffs. 

This year they started out as hot as can be, but then ran into a brick wall of disappointment. Once again, it leaves Bills fans questioning their allegiance to the team. 

I am a diehard Bills fan, and I truly think it will effect my health in the long run, if not the short run as well. Normally, I am nice, well-mannered person, but when the Bills take the field, and things aren't perfect, my vocabulary and demeanor change in some of the nastiest ways.

In no way do I think Buffalo will lose its love for the Bills. It would take something far worse than another 7-9 season to do that. The love that the city of Buffalo has for its team surpasses many explainable things in this world. It's something I am proud to be a part of. But it's also something that leaves me wondering. 

Often I feel as though we are the joke of the league. No one really takes us seriously. Last week's win against the Broncos was the first win against a team with a winning record since last season against the Washington Redskins. They just don't win against great teams very often and lose to poor teams too often.

It's hard to take a team like that seriously. I think we will always be known as the team that lost four straight Super Bowl's. I still can't believe it's possible for a team to do that. To be consistently that good, but just not good enough, that's a really tight balance. Until the Bills win a Super Bowl, I think that will always be the reputation of the Bills

Considering that history, what hope do I have that the Bills will ever win a Super Bowl? Four opportunities in a row ruined, and now I am just praying for another opportunity like that, but we haven't even been close.

But the thing is that just the possibility of it happening keeps me going each season. Knowing that with patience and a good psychiatrist (make that a great psychiatrist), maybe one day it would be our time. I'm so sad to say that Tim Russert never had the opportunity to see the Bills do it.

He truly was a good man, and he loved this team. But you know wherever he is, he is still wearing Bills red white and blue chanting "go bills." You know that as long as the Bills are in Buffalo, they have a chance and eventually maybe they could do it.

Sports are wonderfully unpredictable. The NFL is a league that constantly has changes in power. One day maybe the Bills could do it. As a Bills fan, I will continue to think and believe that next year we could do it.