Two Bills Drive

‘Let’s hear it for the Buffalo Bills. Where? At a Pacific Beach saloon called Blind Melons, where on NFL Sundays those faithful to the Bills represent what has become an NFL subculture: persons with an allegiance to a particular team getting together and viewing telecasts of its games through DirecTV’s "NFL Sunday Ticket" package.’

The Buffalo Bills have announced S Tony Driver, CB Antoine Winfield, LB Dominique Stevenson, G Mike Pucillo, T Mike Williams, WR Andre Rone and DE Ryan Denney as inactive for Week 8.

‘"I think his first three years, he was buried in Jacksonville behind Mark Brunell," Keyshawn Johnson said. "He came in, he played well, got traded to Buffalo. Here comes Little Corn Flakes. Little Corn Flake Flutie comes, he’s the town hero, all 5-foot-7 of him. In Buffalo, the underdog city. Rob gets an opportunity to play. He gets hurt. Flutie comes in, scores against Jacksonville, runs around, makes some plays. Everybody is yelling, "Yeah!’ So now they’re all against Rob. Rob comes back, makes a few bad plays, makes a few good ones. Boo. So he’s always in a battle there.’

‘The Bills are heavily favored but can’t afford to slip.’

‘The Bills can hit the midway point of the season at 5-3 with a victory over a Lions team that is 2-4 and has lost 11 straight road games. However, the Bills seem to sense danger in the Lions, who have played four straight competitive games.’

‘It says here that they are for real under that relative term. They have more weapons than flaws but most of all they have Bledsoe.’

‘Growing up with a drug-addicted mom pushed Charles Johnson to a suicide attempt. Fourteen years later, there’s no such thing as a bad day for the Bills’ receiver.’

‘The Bills have too many weapons on offense for the Lions’ defense to contain and will climb to 5-3 with a 30-24 victory.’

‘Football great Jim Kelly and his family will be honored with the first Compeer Award, to be presented Nov. 7 at a dinner to benefit Compeer West in the Buffalo Convention Center.’

‘”We’re home, the crowd will be jacked up, and you shouldn’t expect any letdown in this locker room,” Bills free safety Pierson Prioleau promised. “We have goals and we’re not close to any of those goals yet. It’s only October and we can only play the game this week. If you don’t take care of business today, there won’t be any business to take care of down the road.”‘

‘”I told Travis that maybe he should put some glue on those hands of his,” Henry’s mother, Karnella Regis, recalled the other night from her home in Frostproof, Fla. “He laughed, but I was dead serious. I said, ‘Boy, you’ve got to hold onto that football. That football is your job. You keep letting people take it from you and pretty soon you are going to lose more than the ball.”’

”’Well at center, you’ve got to be a little more in tune with what everybody else on the line is doing. You have to be able to spit stuff out and get everyone on the same page. It’s true, he’s like the quarterback of the line.”’

‘”Number one, the competition is going to pick up and, number two, I think we’ve opened some people’s eyes in the first seven games. We’re not going to sneak up on anyone … they are going to be looking for us.”‘

‘Clearly, when the Bills acquired him from New England for a first round draft choice last April, there was a perception that Buffalo’s quarterback problem was solved. But did anybody reasonably expect that Bledsoe would be the No. 3-rated QB in the NFL, less than halfway into the season … or that the Bills would have a better record than the defending Super Bowl champion Patriots at that point?’

‘This will be Harrington’s first NFL start in an outdoor stadium.’