TUESDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL: BUFFALO BILLS AT TENNESSEE TITANS

BY ADAM GREENE

Look at us, playing NFL football on a Tuesday like crazy people. You can thank the Tennessee Titans, who spent the last two weeks of the season serving as the league’s disease vector, for giving us this oddball game and schedule as they host the Buffalo Bills in what would have been the premier game Sunday.

BUFFALO BILLS AT TENNESSEE TITANS (+3.5, O/U: 53.5)

Location: Nissan Stadium, Nashville, Tenn.

Kickoff: Oct. 13, 7 p.m. EST

Broadcast: CBS

THE HISTORY

The Titans lead the all-time series 28-19 going all the back to 1960 when they were known as the Houston Oilers and the two teams helped originate the old AFL. The Bills have won the last three match ups dating back to 2015, but no one is going to be talking about any of this.

Nope, what you will see replayed and discussed all night is their Jan. 8, 2000 Wild Card match up won by the Titans and their “Music City Miracle” desperation kickoff return in the game’s final seconds. Tennessee won 22-16 there, then beat the Peyton Manning-led Indianapolis Colts the next week and then crushed the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Championship, only to lose the Super Bowl to the St. Louis Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf, 23-16, in what many people still say is the best Super Bowl ever played. The Rams’ Mike Jones tackled Titans’ wide receiver Kevin Dyson on the one yard-line at the end of the game, preventing a tie game and trip to overtime.  

The Wild Card loss would decimate the Bills as a franchise. They recorded just two winning seasons over the next 16 years and didn’t return to the playoffs until 2017.

BUFFALO BILLS (4-0)

The Bills are 4-0 and it is for real. While you can handwave their first two wins of the season over the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins, they’ve stacked up two good ones  since, a 35-32 shootout win over the 4-1 Los Angeles Rams and a 30-23 victory over the 3-2 Las Vegas Raiders who just knocked off the Kansas City Chiefs.

Josh Allen is on his way to NFL super stardom. He’s completed 70.9 percent of his passes this year for 1,326 yards and 12 touchdowns with just one interception. That puts him on pace for 5,304 yards and 48 passing touchdowns. And that’s not even counting his rushing scores. He has three.

TENNESSEE TITAMS (3-0)

Luckily for the Titans, the NFL has yet to toss this game off the schedule because they might have been looking at a forfeit. For the second week in a row they head trouble with positive COVID-19 cases and this time you can’t just blame it on being based in a state with the nation’s worst plague rats. Nope, some of the players held an “informal” workout after last week’s 20 or so positives and, in this case, the word “informal” can be translated as “stupid.”

As of this writing, and it’s the day before the game, the contest is still on. But, man, did the Titans nearly derail their own season due to… “informality.”

THE PICK

In a just world where karma is a guarantee, Tennessee would lose this game, but the NFL does not run on karma. Otherwise Tom Brady wouldn’t have a fist full of rings. So, considering the Titans have found a way to squeak by not only their first three games, but two weeks of COVID-19 tomfoolery, I believe they’ll do it again. Buffalo is due to drop a game anyway. Titans 23, Bills 20

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