2020 or How I learned to stop being right and love Josh Allen

I missed most of “The” Nathan Peterman game. Any Buffalo Bills fan and most even casual NFL observers know exactly which game I’m referring to here. While Peterman’s distinct strain of incompetence shone bright nearly every time he stepped on the field, there was one game that stood above the rest and became perhaps the most memorable three hours of the team’s 17-year playoff drought.
Angry about the circumstances that led to Peterman becoming the starter in Buffalo and confident that he would not be the answer at quarterback, I planned to see “Murder on the Orient Express” at the North Park Theatre on Hertel Avenue in Buffalo around the same time the Bills and Chargers were scheduled to take the field in a week 11 matchup. I was able to catch Peterman’s deflected pick-six and desperate heave of a second interception in the first five minutes of the game before heading out.
While I was distracted by a perfectly-OK but mostly forgettable Agatha Christie adaptation, Peterman once again made an ill-advised pass attempt while being hit and was intercepted again. Then he had an out route jumped for another pick. Desperate near the end of the half, he threw yet another interception.
Five interceptions in one half. Nearly as many picks as completions (six). More than regular starter Tyrod Taylor had in the first nine games of the season.
By the time I walked out of the theater into a fairly cool November night, Peterman was the talk of Twitter. People from all corners of the sports world were dunking not only on the rookie fifth-round pick, but on the Bills for starting him when the team had a chance to break a nearly two decade playoff drought and an adequate starter in Taylor.
I felt so vindicated, as did many of my friends. We were right about Peterman the entire time, more right than we knew. I remember tweeting that being right all the time was not fun, but a tremendous burden.
…
This March, I made the remarkably stupid decision to go to New York City just as COVID was really heating up. Within hours of touching down at JFK, the NBA shut down, Tom Hanks announced that he had contracted the virus and COVID finally got America’s full attention, something it has not yet relinquished.
By the time I got home four days later, it was clear that this was going to be a horrific ordeal. Even for someone as scientifically illiterate as me, it was easy to understand that this disease was more contagious than your average virus and also significantly deadlier. Italy was already dealing with hundreds of deaths per day.
Apparently, many people couldn’t do that simple mental arithmetic or just didn’t want to. If you aren’t just waking up from a year-long coma, you know how that unfolded over the past 9 months. As I type this, roughly 340,000 Americans have been killed by the virus and that number is growing faster than it ever has.
I didn’t know in March that we’d still be dealing with packed hospitals and overflowing morgues through (at least) the New Year. But as I read a New York Times article at the kitchen table that had suddenly become my work space, I knew thousands of deaths were coming. I knew it was mostly preventable. And I knew it would be mishandled.
Being proven right is not much of a comfort these days.
…
In late April 2018, I was lucky enough to witness the beginning of the Josh Allen era from the Buffalo Bills Fieldhouse. Four months removed from the Bills’ first playoff appearance since the Clinton Administration, I was pretty confident the franchise was heading in the right direction. All the Bills had to do was draft one of Baker Mayfield, Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold or Lamar Jackson and I’d be sold. I felt better about the team than I had in years. I finally cheered for a good football team.
The Bills destroyed all that emotional goodwill they built up with me when they took Josh Allen – an unimpressive, inaccurate, big arm from Wyoming. His college stats were nowhere near good enough to justify a top-10 pick. He came off as infuriatingly earnest. Old tweets dug up on draft night made him look dumb. He had the face of a 12-year-old. I dramatically told people that I no longer cared about the Bills.
Like any sports fan, I’m wrong plenty. I thought the Warriors would destroy the Cavs in the 2016 NBA Finals. I was sure Tavaris Jackson was going to be a Pro Bowl quarterback. But when it comes to negative, big-picture takes about one of my teams, I don’t really miss. I guess this comes from having a more pessimistic disposition, but also an inability to lie to myself. This probably seems like bragging, but I promise it’s not. I’d gladly trade brains with someone who earnestly thinks the Sabres could win their division next year.
It took just over two years for Allen to prove me wrong. Fully completely wrong in every way. Nearly everything I said and thought about him in 2018 seems insane now. He even has a little facial stubble, so he doesn’t really look 12 anymore. More like 15, I guess.
The Bills have been one of the very few good things about 2020. For the first time in my memory, they’re as good as anyone in the league. We can talk about the Super Bowl without it being a joke or a story from three decades ago. I can barely believe this even as I type it.
Elsewhere, the worst pandemic in more than a century seemingly only gets knocked out of the top billing in the news cycle when something worse or more troublesome happens. The murder of George Floyd led to one of the most widespread protests in American history and sparked conversations about reforming, defunding or even abolishing police. Of course, the primary and then general election naturally led to conversations about Medicare for All, eliminating student debt, free public college and other ambitious policy goals.
But these aren’t just interesting ideas that would be nice to have in place someday. The popularity for each policy has risen due to need. We have student debt crisis in America. We have millions uninsured, underinsured or in danger of being uninsured if they lose their job. Workers make less every year and CEO’s make more. Minimum wage has been stagnant in many places for a decade. In cities across the country, police too often do not face consequences for wrongdoing. We have thousands of gun deaths every year. We’re in the midst of an opioid crisis. Transgender people are killed and kill themselves at disproportionate rates. There are dozens of other issues I could add here.
Of course, there’s also a ticking clock on global warming. None of what I mentioned above really matters if human life is no longer supported by conditions on Earth.
All of these problems seem even more intractable in light of our response to COVID. It’s easy to look at an election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and feel like change is impossible. Like launching major government programs that make people’s lives better is something that we used to do as a country, not anymore. It makes mentally checking out seem appealing. Just accept that we’re in a nation in decline and enjoy whatever’s new on Netflix.
As silly of a comparison as it is, this all feels to me like the late-aught Bills. Any success is solidly in the rearview mirror and it’s getting harder to convince yourself there’s anything positive to look forward to. We’re a 7-9 country now. It’s not hard to see Biden’s transition into office as Trent Edwards running out of bounds for a two-yard gain on fourth-and-10.
But, my powers of prediction aren’t what they used to be. Josh Allen is an MVP candidate, the Bills are hosting a playoff game and the Patriots are dead.
Here’s to being proven wrong more in 2021 and beyond.